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Voluspo

38.^[1] A hall I saw, far from the sun,On Nastrond it stands, and the doors face north;Venom drops through the smoke-vent down,For around the walls do serpents wind.

39.^[2] I saw there wading through rivers wildTreacherous men and murderers too.And workers of ill with the wives of men;There Nithhogg sucked the blood of the slain,And the wolf tore men; would you know yet more?

("the Not Cold"): possibly a volcano. Brimir: the giant (possibly Ymir) out of whose blood, according to stanza 9, the dwarfs were made; the name here appears to mean simply the leader of the dwarfs.

↑ Stanzas 38 and 39 follow stanza 43 in the Hauksbok version. Snorri quotes stanzas 38, 39, 40 and 41, though not consecutively. Nastrond ("Corpse-Strand"): the land of the dead, ruled by the goddess Hel. Here the wicked undergo tortures. Smoke-vent: the phrase gives a picture of the Icelandic house, with its opening in the roof serving instead of a chimney.
↑ The stanza is almost certainly in corrupt form. The third line is presumably an interpolation, and is lacking in most of the late paper manuscripts. Some editors, however, have called lines 1-3 the remains of a full stanza, with the fourth line lacking, and lines 4-5 remains of another. The stanza depicts the torments of the two worst classes of criminals known to Old Norse morality—oath-breakers and murderers. Nithhogg ("the Dread Biter"): the dragon that lies beneath the ash Yggdrasil and gnaws at its roots, thus symbolizing the destructive elements in the universe; cf. Grimnismol, 32, 35. The wolf: presumably the wolf Fenrir, one of the children of Loki and the giantess Angrbotha (the others being Mithgarthsorm and the goddess Hel), who was chained by the gods with the marvelous chain Gleipnir, fashioned by a dwarf "out of six things: the

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[Voluspo_38-1] Stanzas 38 and 39 follow stanza 43 in the Hauksbok version. Snorri quotes stanzas 38, 39, 40 and 41, though not consecutively. Nastrond ("Corpse-Strand"): the land of the dead, ruled by the goddess Hel. Here the wicked undergo tortures. Smoke-vent: the phrase gives a picture of the Icelandic house, with its opening in the roof serving instead of a chimney.

[Voluspo_39-2] The stanza is almost certainly in corrupt form. The third line is presumably an interpolation, and is lacking in most of the late paper manuscripts. Some editors, however, have called lines 1-3 the remains of a full stanza, with the fourth line lacking, and lines 4-5 remains of another. The stanza depicts the torments of the two worst classes of criminals known to Old Norse morality—oath-breakers and murderers. Nithhogg ("the Dread Biter"): the dragon that lies beneath the ash Yggdrasil and gnaws at its roots, thus symbolizing the destructive elements in the universe; cf. Grimnismol, 32, 35. The wolf: presumably the wolf Fenrir, one of the children of Loki and the giantess Angrbotha (the others being Mithgarthsorm and the goddess Hel), who was chained by the gods with the marvelous chain Gleipnir, fashioned by a dwarf "out of six things: the

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