Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/281

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

Svipdagsmol

  Fjolsvith spake:48.[1] "Lyr is it called,  and long it shall On the tip of a spear-point tremble;Of the noble house  mankind has heard, But more has it never known."
  Svipdag spake:49. "Now answer me, Fjolsvith,  the question I ask, For now the truth would I know:What one of the gods  has made so great The hall I behold within?"
  Fjolsvith spake:50.[2] "Uni and Iri,  Bari and Jari, Var and Vegdrasil,Dori and Ori,  Delling, and there Was Loki, the fear of the folk."

    with the sword in Sinmora's possession, and Sinmora will give up the sword only in return for the tail feather of the cock.

  1. ↑ Lyr ("Heat-Holding"): just what the spear-point reference means is not altogether clear. Presumably it refers to the way in which the glowing brightness of the lofty hall makes it seem to quiver and turn in the air, but the tradition, never baffled by physical laws, may have actually balanced the whole building on a single point to add to the difficulties of entrance.
  2. ↑ Loki, the one god named, was the builder of the hall, with the aid of the nine dwarfs. Jari, Dori, and Ori appear in the Voluspo catalogue of the dwarfs (stanzas 13 and 15); Delling appears in Hovamol, 161, and Vafthruthnismol, 25, in the latter case, however, the name quite possibly referring to some one else. The other dwarfs' names do not appear elsewhere. The manuscripts differ as to the forms of many of these names.

[247]

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.