THE VIKING PROPHECY (I), THE POEM VÖLUSPÁ (EDDA)

Claire Fontaine, The Grandma, Egil and his family (Astrid, Sigurd and Arne) have just arrived to Tromsø where Joseph de Ca'th Lon was waiting for them. 

In this Artic city, they are going to spend some days discovering Norse mythology and learning about it with the Völuspá. Join them in reading the medieval poem of the Poetic Edda, a literary experience that will transport you to the dreamlike and magical world of the Vikings.

In Germanic paganism, a seeress is a woman said to have the ability to foretell future events and perform sorcery. They are also referred to with many other names meaning prophetess, staff bearer and sorceress, and they are frequently called witches both in early sources and in modern scholarship. In Norse mythology the seeress is usually referred to as völva or vala.

The various names in North Germanic sources may give the impression that there were two types of sorceress, the staff-bearers, or seeresses (vǫlva), and the women who were named for performing magic (seiðkona).

The Völuspá, in Old Norse Vǫluspá, is a medieval poem of the Poetic Edda that describes how the world might have come into shape and would end according to Norse mythology. 

The story of about 60 stanzas is told by a seeress or völva, in Old Norse vǫlva, also called spákona, foretelling woman, summoned by the god Odin, master of magic and knowledge. According to this literary text, the beginning of the world was characterized by nothingness until the gods created the nine realms of Norse cosmology, somehow linked by the World Tree, Yggdrasil.

At the same time, the fate of everything was set in stone by a group of seeresses. In the very beginning, two families of gods were involved in a war, ending with a truce and a wall around their divine citadel of Asgard. However, they would not live in peace forever because the universe has been doomed since the very moment of its creation. Every god has a specific enemy with whom they will do battle and many will be slain, including the chief god Odin. 

 

Hljóðs bið ek allar helgar kindir,
meiri ok minni mögu Heimdallar;
viltu, at ek, Valföðr! vel framtelja forn spjöll fíra,
þau er fremst um man.

Ek man jötna ár um borna,
þá er forðum mik fœdda höfðu;
níu man ek heima, níu íviði,
mjötvið mœran fyr mold neðan.

Ár var alda þar er Ýmir bygði,
vara sandr né sær né svalar unnir,
jörð fannsk æva né upphiminn,
gap var ginnunga, en gras hvergi.

Áðr Burs synir bjöðum um ypðu,
þeir er Miðgarð mœran skópu;
sól skein sunnan á salar steina,
þá var grund gróin grœnum lauki.

Sól varp sunnan, sinni mána,
hendi inni hœgri um himinjódyr;
sól þat ne vissi hvar hon sali átti,
máni þat ne vissi hvat hann megins átti,
stjörnur þat ne vissu hvar þær staði áttu.

Hearing I ask, from the holy races,
From Heimdall's sons, both high and low;
Thou wilt, Valfather, that well I relate
Old tales I remember, of men long ago.

I remember yet, the giants of yore,
Who gave me bread, in the days gone by;
Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree
With mighty roots, beneath the mold.

Of old was the age, when Ymir lived;
Sea nor cool waves, nor sand there were;
Earth had not been, nor heaven above,
But a yawning gap, and grass nowhere.

Then Bur's sons lifted, the level land,
Mithgarth the mighty, there they made;
The sun from the south, warmed the stones of earth,
And green was the ground, with growing leeks.

The sun, the sister, of the moon, from the south
Her right hand cast, over heaven's rim;
No knowledge she had, where her home should be,
The moon knew not, what might was his,
The stars knew not, where their stations were.

 

Fjölð veit ek fræða, fram sé ek lengra
Um ragna rök römm sigtíva.

I know many things, I see further ahead
About the arguments of the wise, the wise man.

Wardruna