SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

108 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
sources of heathen lore, as the commentary to the text
in my edition will have made clear. Yet some of these
ancient tales of the gods are understood differently in
Valuspa than in their popular interpretation, and some
events the poet seems to have altered to suit his own
convenience or even invented himself. Of these we may
mention the story of the creation of earth and mankind,
the life of the .£sir on mavellir, the tale of Gullveig and
the builder of the citadel, the return of the JEsir after
Ragnarok, But these incidents are peculiarly prominent
in the poem because the poet could not avoid speaking of
them in some detail. Where he followed well-known tales
of the gods it was enough just to mention them.
As was already said, however, it is not the content of
Valuspa which sets it apart from the other sources of
Norse mythology, nor the things in it which the poet may
have created himself, nor yet those which may be of
Christian origin. The .£sir faith had no restricted and
well-defined system of dogma. The tales of gods grew
like wild flowers. Every poet was permitted to alter them
or add to them, and the way was open to influences from
other religions. The author of Valuspa is unique precisely
because he tries to create a system, a theology. He takes
the diverse and childish ideas of the end of the world which
had sprung from a healthy people's longing for life,
selects from them, casts them into a single whole and
interprets everything with a new and spiritual understanding
so that it becomes a purification, not a
destruction - the curse turns into a blessing. If we
compare the depth of vision and understanding in
Valuspa and Vafpruonismal, the question automatically
arises whether this reflects the inner growth of paganism,
or the result of external influences. For even if there
were not one single event in Valuspa which could not be
found in some pagan source, yet the stature of the poem,
its spirit, and the system drawn up in it would tell
clearly enough that the poet had read the ancient runes