Jackson Crawford - The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes Translated and Edited, with Introduction, by J ACKSON C RAWFORD Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge Copyright 2015 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Brian Rak Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson Composition by William Hartman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edda Smundar.

The Poetic Edda : stories of the Norse gods and heroes / translated and edited, with introduction, by Jackson Crawford. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-62466-356-7 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-62466-357-4 (cloth) 1. EddasTranslations into English. 2. 3. 3.

Mythology, NorsePoetry. I. Crawford, Jackson, translator, editor. II. Title. PT7233.C73 2015 839.61dc23 2014032991 PRC ISBN: 978-1-62466-415-1 To two fire-hearted heroes, gone far away,
whose spirits breathe life in me still:
To Papa, my biggest inspiration,
and Wyatt, my smallest.

Og til deg, du nkkel, ls og dr,
mitt hjartas stad
mi grue, kveike, ved og glr,
eg gjev mitt kvad.

I would like to acknowledge my professors at the Universities of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Texas Tech, particularly Sal Calomino, Tom Dubois, Rob Howell, Jared Klein, Brian McFadden, Joe Salmons, and my doctoral advisor Kirsten Wolf. I am grateful to Christy Lenzi for giving me her rich input on this books Introduction, and to my students at UCLA, especially Justine Bateman, Colin Bogan, Jenna Bremer, Jessica Brodsky, Courtney Cook, Casey James Holmberg, Cameron Kemper, Chanda Lenee, Masha Lepire, Tinho Mang, Jules Robins, Charlotte Rose, and Rafael Semedo, for their comments on my translations in the courses where they were first field-tested. I thank Katherine Crawford, who suggested some of the measures I took to render the Old Norse names more readable in English, and who shared the birds with me. I thank also the anonymous reviewer for Hackett, as well as editorial director Brian Rak, production director Liz Wilson, and copyeditor Harbour Fraser Hodder, who all made many important suggestions that improved this book. Thanks also to Johanna and Kelley, who let me spend so many hours writing at their restaurant.

The mistakes and infelicities in this book are, naturally, attributable to me alone. Jackson Crawford
Riverton, Wyoming
December 29, 2014

The page numbers in curly braces {} correspond to the print edition of this title. Titles of Related Interest Available from Hackett Publishing Note: The English titles are not necessarily translations of the Old Norse titles, but are meant to assist in remembering the content of each poem. The Poetic Edda is a collection of poems in the Old Norse language. These poems are the source of almost all the myths of the Norse godsfamous characters in popular culture such as Odin, Thor, and Lokiand also of the thrilling and tragic adventures of legendary Viking heroes, especially Sigurth, his wife Guthrun, and her brothers Gunnar and Hogni. The poems of the Poetic Edda have their roots in the cold, brutal world of medieval Scandinavia.

During the so-called Viking Age (roughly AD 8001100), the fierce Scandinavian pirates and adventurers known as Vikings robbed and raided in nearly every country of Europe, and explored as far afield as Baghdad and the eastern coast of present-day Canada. Meanwhile, they developed an extensive poetic literature about their gods and heroes, which their Christian descendants would commit to writing many centuries later. Readers must understand a few facts about the culture that produced these poems, since the characters in them often act in a way that is incompatible with twenty-first-century social norms. Norse society prized a warlike, aggressive stance in men, and in the gods they worshipped. Fighting over limited resources, and even naked aggression against neighbors, was not necessarily considered wrong if it advanced ones wealth and honor and that of ones family. With the availability of natural resources sharply limited in medieval Scandinavia by its harsh climate and (in many regions) by sparse farmland, violent competition between families was a fact of life, and the raiding of overseas territories blessed with more food and gold must have seemed no more ethically problematic than the killing of an animal for its flesh and hide.

Not that Norse society recognized no code of ethics. But unlike modern moral standards, which tend to be utilitarian and altruistic (Does a given action benefit someone without harming someone else?), the Norse moral code was based on gaining and maintaining {x} honor, and avoiding shame. Honor was gained principally through displays of ones courage in confrontations with enemies, initiative and hard work at the farm and aboard ship, and a readiness to use violence in return for the violence done to ones friends and relatives. Those who show these qualities most abundantly, such as the god Thor and the hero Sigurth, are praised, in spite of actions that modern society would consider crude or evil (Thor owns slaves, for instance, and in the poem Harbarthsljoth he tells his father Odin that he would have gladly helped him hold down a woman he was trying to have his way with). In a society in which the main social unit was not the individual but the family, it was imperative for members of the family to maintain their honor by avenging any harm done to another member of their family. If a mans brother had been killed, he would have to take revenge on the killer, but he might exact vengeance by killing a member of the killers family rather than by killing the perpetrator directly.

This promise of mutual revenge bound a family together in a feuding world, and thus there was a special horror for the notion of accidentally or knowingly doing damage to ones own family. Nonetheless, the heroes of the Poetic Edda are sometimes forced to take action against their own families, usually because of the ironclad force of their sworn words and boasts. The Eddic poems depict a world in which a persons words are absolutely binding, no matter the consequenceswhich are often tragic. For instance, in Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar, Hethin boasts (while drunk) that he will take his brother Helgis lover, the Valkyrie named Svava. Though Hethin regrets this foolish and dangerous oath almost immediately, Helgi casually accepts that it is his brothers duty to carry it through: [33] Dont concern yourself, Hethin; the oaths men make while drinking will always prove true. A king has challenged me to a duel, and before three nights have passed, I must meet him at the appointed place.

I doubt that I will survive; and then it would be good, if you took Svava. {xi} But of course, the problems created by such oaths are not always resolved so conveniently. The greatest tragedy of the heroic poems is the murder of Sigurth, which is brought about because Brynhild has been tricked into breaking her vow that she will marry only a man who knows no fear (she marries Gunnar, believing him to be the fearless man who braved her test of courage, but in fact it was Sigurth in disguise). Since not Brynhild but her sister-in-law Guthrun married the fearless Sigurth, Brynhild insists that her husband Gunnar must kill him. But even here, Gunnar and his brother Hogni will not break their oaths of blood-brotherhood with Sigurth, and Gunnar instead must get his brother Gotthorm, who was too young to swear oaths with Sigurth, to commit the murder. One gets a sense from scenes like this that faithfully keeping promises ought to be the glue that holds society together, but instead tears it apart.