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Poetic Edda

20.[1] He sat, nor slept,  and smote with his hammer,Fast for Nithuth  wonders he fashioned;Two boys did go  in his door to gaze,Nithuth's sons,  into Sævarstath.
21.[2] They came to the chest,  and they craved the keys,The evil was open  when in they looked;To the boys it seemed  that gems they saw,Gold in plenty  and precious stones.
  Völund spake:22.[3] "Come ye alone,  the next day come,Gold to you both  shall then be given;Tell not the maids  or the men of the hall,To no one say  that me you have sought."

    stanza 20. The elimination of the passages in parenthesis produces a four-line stanza which is metrically correct, but it has little more than guesswork to support it.

  1. ↑ The editions vary radically in combining the lines of this stanza with those of stanzas 19 and 21, particularly as the manuscript indicates the third line as the beginning of a stanza. The meaning, however, remains unchanged.
  2. ↑ Several editions make one stanza out of lines 3-4 of stanza 20 and lines 1-2 of stanza 21, and another out of the next four lines. The evil was open: i.e., the gold in the chest was destined to be their undoing.
  3. ↑ The manuscript indicates line 3 as the beginning of a stanza, and several editors have adopted this grouping. In the Thithrekssaga Völund sends the boys away with instructions not to come back until just after a fall of snow, and then to approach his dwelling walking backward. The boys do this, and when, after he has killed them, Völund is questioned regarding them, he points to the tracks in the snow as evidence that they had left his house.

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