Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/111

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Vafthruthnismol

And thence arose our giants' race, And thus so fierce are we found."

Othin spake:32. "Seventh answer me well, if wise thou art called, If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:How begat he children, the giant grim, Who never a giantess knew?"

Vafthruthnir spake:
33.^[1] "They say 'neath the arms of the giant of ice Grew man-child and maid together;And foot with foot did the wise one fashion A son that six heads bore."

Othin spake:34. "Eighth answer me well, if wise thou art called, If thou knowest it, Vafthruthnir, now:What farthest back dost thou bear in mind? For wide is thy wisdom, giant!"

froze into ice-banks over Ginnunga-gap (the "yawning gap" referred to in Voluspo, 3), and then dripped down to make the giant Ymir.

↑ Snorri gives, without materially elaborating on it, the same account of how Ymir's son and daughter were born under his left arm, and how his feet together created a son. That this offspring should have had six heads is nothing out of the ordinary, for various giants had more than the normal number, and Hymir's mother is credited with a little matter of nine hundred heads; cf. Hymiskvitha, 8. Of the career of Ymir's six-headed son we know nothing; he may have been the Thruthgelmir of stanza 29.

[77]

[Vafthruthnismol_33-1] Snorri gives, without materially elaborating on it, the same account of how Ymir's son and daughter were born under his left arm, and how his feet together created a son. That this offspring should have had six heads is nothing out of the ordinary, for various giants had more than the normal number, and Hymir's mother is credited with a little matter of nine hundred heads; cf. Hymiskvitha, 8. Of the career of Ymir's six-headed son we know nothing; he may have been the Thruthgelmir of stanza 29.

[1]