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Voluspo
6.[1] Then sought the gods their assembly-seats,The holy ones, and council held;Names then gave they to noon and twilight,Morning they named, and the waning moon.Night and evening, the years to number.
7.[2] At Ithavoll met the mighty gods,Shrines and temples they timbered high;Forges they set, and they smithied ore,Tongs they wrought, and tools they fashioned.
8.[3] In their dwellings at peace they played at tables.Of gold no lack did the gods then know,—Till thither came up giant-maids three.Huge of might, out of Jotunheim.
- ↑ Possibly an interpolation, but there seems no strong reason for assuming this. Lines 1-2 are identical with lines 1-2 of stanza 9, and line 2 may have been inserted here from that later stanza.
- ↑ Ithavoll ("Field of Deeds"?): mentioned only here and in stanza 60 as the meeting-place of the gods; it appears in no other connection.
- ↑ Tables: the exact nature of this game, and whether it more closely resembled chess or checkers, has been made the subject of a 400-page treatise, Willard Fiske's "Chess in Iceland." Giant-maids: perhaps the three great Norns, corresponding to the three fates; cf. stanza 20 and note. Possibly, however, something has been lost after this stanza, and the missing passage, replaced by the catalogue of the dwarfs (stanzas 9-16), may have explained the "giant-maids" otherwise than as Norns. In Vafthruthnismol, 49, the Norns (this time "three throngs" instead of simply "three") are spoken of as giant-maidens;
as daughter and son of Mundilferi, cf. Vafthruthnismol, 23 and note, and Grimnismol, 37 and note.
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