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Poetic Edda

  Hogni spake:17.[1] "Now a storm is brewing,  and wild it grows swiftly,A dream of an ice-bear  means a gale from the east."
  Kostbera spake:18.[2] "An eagle I saw flying  from the end through the house,Our fate must be bad,  for with blood he sprinkled us;..............From the evil I fear  that 'twas Atli's spirit."
  Hogni spake:19.[3] "They will slaughter soon,  and so blood do we see,Oft oxen it means  when of eagles one dreams;
  1. ↑ Two lines may have been lost after line 2, but the Volsungasaga paraphrase gives no clue. Ice-bear: polar bears, common in Greenland, are very rarely found in Iceland, and never in Norway, a fact which substantiates the manuscript's reference to Greenland as the home of the poem.
  2. ↑ The manuscript indicates no gap, but most editors assume the loss of a line after line 1 or 2; Grundtvig adds, after line 1: "Black were his feathers,  with blood was he covered." Atli's spirit: the poet's folk-lore seems here a bit weak. Presumably he means such a female following-spirit ("fylgja") as appears in Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar, prose following stanza 34 (cf. note thereon), but the word he uses, "hamr" (masculine) means "skin," "shape." He may, however, imply that Atli had assumed the shape of an eagle for this occasion.
  3. ↑ The manuscript indicates line 4 as beginning a new stanza.

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