Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/127
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Grimnismol
21.[1] Loud roars Thund, and Thjothvitnir's fish Joyously fares in the flood;Hard does it seem to the host of the slain To wade the torrent wild.
22.[2] There Valgrind stands, the sacred gate, And behind are the holy doors;Old is the gate, but few there are Who can tell how it tightly is locked.
23.[3] Five hundred doors and forty there are, I ween, in Valhall's walls;Eight hundred fighters through one door fare When to war with the wolf they go.
- ↑ Thund ("The Swollen" or "The Roaring"): the river surrounding Valhall. Thjothvitnir's fish: presumably the sun, which was caught by the wolf Skoll (cf. Voluspo, 40), Thjothvitnir meaning "the mighty wolf." Such a phrase, characteristic of all Skaldic poetry, is rather rare in the Edda. The last two lines refer to the attack on Valhall by the people of Hel; cf. Voluspo, 51.
- ↑ Valgrind ("The Death-Gate"): the outer gate of Valhall; cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 68 and note.
- ↑ This and the following stanza stand in reversed order in Regius. Snorri quotes stanza 23 as a proof of the vast size of Valhall. The last two lines refer to the final battle with Fenrir and the other enemies.
- ↑ This stanza is almost certainly an interpolation, brought in through a confusion of the first two lines with those of stanza 23. Its description of Thor's house, Bilskirnir (cf. stanza 4 and
[93]