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Poetic Edda

3.[1] Mightily wove they  the web of fate,While Bralund's towns  were trembling all;And there the golden  threads they wove,And in the moon's hall  fast they made them.
4.[2] East and west  the ends they hid,In the middle the hero  should have his land;And Neri's kinswoman  northward castA chain, and bade it  firm ever to be.
5.[3] Once sorrow had  the Ylfings' son,And grief the bride  who the loved one had borne.******Quoth raven to raven,  on treetop resting,Seeking for food,  "There is something I know.

    preside ove Helgi's early destiny, and not a Valkyrie, as in Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar.

  1. ↑ Line 2 is largely guesswork, the manuscript being obscure. Moon's hall: the sky.
  2. ↑ East, etc.: the Norns give Helgi fame in the East, West, and North; in the North his renown is particularly to endure. This suggests that the poet was aware of the spread of the Helgi story over many lands. Neri's kinswoman: evidently one of the Norns, but nothing further is known of Neri, and the word may not be a proper name at all.
  3. ↑ The manuscript indicates no gap, but it looks as though something had been lost after line 2. Ylfings' son: Sigmund is evidently meant, though calling him an Ylfing (cf. Hyndluljoth, 11 and note) is a manifest error. Helgi, in the tradition as it came from Denmark, was undoubtetly an Ylfing, and the poet, in order to combine the two legends, has to treat the Ylfings and Volsungs as if they were the same family.

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