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SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

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Saga-Book of the <strong>Viking</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />

for this certainty. Now it was a common belief, or at<br />

least fear, among Christians that the last and worst times<br />

would begin in the year 1000. It is easy to trace the way<br />

this fear could reach Iceland. Other reasons have made it<br />

probable that V oluspd was actually composed just before<br />

1000. It is therefore very likely that the ideas and mental<br />

state of Christians had affected the author. Moreover,<br />

even if other reasons did not point to the poem's<br />

composition about this time, a great deal might be<br />

determined from this as to when and how the poem came<br />

into being, for nothing that can be adduced to explain<br />

V oluspd casts as much light upon it as this does."<br />

Revelation xx, 1-3 has the following prophecy:<br />

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of<br />

the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid<br />

hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and<br />

Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into<br />

the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him,<br />

that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand<br />

years be fulfilled; and after that he must be loosed a little<br />

season.<br />

And later it says (Rev. xx, 7-8):<br />

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed<br />

out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which<br />

are in the four quarters of the earth ...<br />

After this comes the description of Doomsday and of the<br />

heavenly Jerusalem.<br />

As may be expected, these scriptural passages provided<br />

much food for thought for men of the Middle Ages. In<br />

those days earthly life was only a fleeting dream. Death,<br />

Doomsday and the after-life were the real truth, which<br />

was deeply pondered, and by which all other things were<br />

75 It may have occurred to many that the author of V 6luspd could have been<br />

influenced by the fear Christians had of Doomsday, I have felt this to be the<br />

key to the understanding of the poem and the poet. Gubbrandur Vigfusson<br />

says, for instance, in Corpus Poeticum Boreale I (1883), lxvii, "The apprehension<br />

of the near crack of doom points to a date near rooo A.D." Bjorn M. Olsen<br />

mentions the same in Um V6luspd, 372, without referring to Gubbrandur.<br />

Nor has either of them attempted to explain this any further, or to produce<br />

reasons for it.

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