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Hamthesmol

The men would I bind  with strings of bows,And Gjuki's heirs  on the gallows hang."
24.[1] In the hall was clamor,  the cups were shattered,Men stood in blood  from the breasts of the Goths.
25.[2] Then did Hamther speak forth,  the haughty of heart:"Thou soughtest, Jormunrek,  us to see,Sons of one mother  seeking thy dwelling;Thou seest thy hands,  thy feet thou beholdest,Jormunrek, flung  in the fire so hot."
26.[3] Then roared the king,  of the race of the gods,Bold in his armor,  as roars a bear:"Stone ye the men  that steel will bite not,Sword nor spear,  the sons of Jonak."

    and such editors as have retained this arrangement have had to resort to varied and complex explanations to account for it.

  1. ↑ Editors have made various efforts to reconstruct a four-line stanza out of these two lines, in some cases with the help of lines borrowed from the puzzling stanza 11 (cf. note on stanza 23). Line 2 in the original is doubtful.
  2. ↑ Some editors mark line 1 as an interpolation. The manuscript marks line 4 as beginning a new stanza. As in the story told by Jordanes, Hamther and Sorli succeed in wounding Jormunrek (here they cut off his hands and feet), but do not kill him.
  3. ↑ The manuscript marks line 3, and not line 1, as beginning a stanza. Of the race of the gods: the reference here is apparently to Jormunrek, but in the Volsungasaga the advice to kill Hamther and Sorli with stones, since iron will not wound them (cf. note on stanza 11), comes from Othin, who enters the hall as an old man with one eye.

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