Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/506

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

Poetic Edda

Heithrek was the name of a king, whose daughter was called Borgny. Vilmund was the name of the man who was her lover. She could not give birth to a child until Oddrun, Atli's sister, had come to her; Oddrun had been beloved of Gunnar, son of Gjuki. About this story is the following poem.[1]

1.[2] I have heard it told  in olden talesHow a maiden came  to Morningland;No one of all  on earth aboveTo Heithrek's daughter  help could give.
2. This Oddrun learned,  the sister of Atli,That sore the maiden's  sickness was;The bit-bearer forth  from his stall she brought,And the saddle laid  on the steed so black.
3.[3] She let the horse go  o'er the level ground,Till she reached the hall  that loftily rose,
  1. ↑ Prose. Nothing further is known of Heithrek, Borgny or Vilmund. The annotator has added the name of Borgny's father, but otherwise his material comes from the poem itself. Oddrun, sister of Atli and Brynhild, here appears as proficient in birth-runes (cf. Sigrdrifumol, 8). Regarding her love for Gunnar, Guthrun's brother, and husband of her sister, Brynhild, cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 57 and note.
  2. ↑ Olden tales: this may be merely a stock phrase, or it may really mean that the poet found his story in oral prose tradition. Morningland: the poem's geography is utterly obscure. "Morningland" is apparently identical with "Hunland" (stanza 4), and yet Oddrun is herself sister of the king of the Huns. Vigfusson tries to make "Mornaland" into "Morva land" and explain it as Moravia. Probably it means little more than a country lying vaguely in the East. With stanza 28 the confusion grows worse.
  3. ↑

[470]

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.