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Saga-Book of the Viking Society
as elsewhere, the guest, the wanderer, who has travelled far
(hefir jiQlo um farit, v. IS). Von See shows that there is some
logical progression in the first section, and that nothing can be
gained by shuffling the strophes, as several scholars have done.
The guest arrives, but he must be wary. He needs warmth, food,
water and a friendly welcome. He also needs wits and caution;
he must not make a fool of himself, as 66inn once did, by drinking
too much.
Although in this first section Ooinn can plainly be heard as the
speaker only in the strophes mentioned, these lines (on
drunkenness) place the same value on moderation as many others.
In this same section emphasis is laid on the transitoriness of everything,
culminating in the famous lines:
Deyr fe,
deyja framdr,
deyr sialfr it sarna ...
Von See regards this sentiment as Christian as much as pagan and
he believes this strophe to be derived from the Hakonarmdl of
Eyvindr Skaldaspillir:
Deyr fe,
deyja framdr.
Eyoisk land ok 1M ...
Eyvindrs lines, in their turn, are associated with the Old
English Wanderer:
Her bi6 feoh lzene, her bi6 freond la-ne,
her bi6 mon lrene, her bi6 mzeg lame.
The use of jeoh " freond, je ... [rcendr in the two poe ms is
striking, even though the meanings of jreond and framdr are
different, and both the Old English and the Old Norse lines seem
to echo Ecclesiastes 3, 19: "For that which befalleth the sons of
men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one
dieth, so dieth the other; yea they have all one breath; so that a
man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity."
In conclusion it should be said that yon See's work is
concentrated and informative. Many details are explained in
a new light, but it is difficult to see that the general theme is so
revolutionary as might be supposed. The chief question which
remains unanswered is who was the redactor? Did he put the
Hdvamdl together in oral form, inserting strophes of his own
where he thought desirable, or was he the first man to put the
extant Hauamdl on parchment, perhaps in the early thirteenth
century, filling it out with new strophes to link the various
sections together? Von See has shown that th« Hicoamal has