SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

THE LAY OF ATTILA
By URSULA DRONKE
(Presidential address, 8 March, 1963)
THE text of Atlakvioa presents uncommon difficulties.
Some stanzas are defective, or marred by disjointed
phrasing. Some lines are repeated ineptly, others seem
to belong to different poems altogether, while others again
are so unusual in their wording that, even though we can
translate them, they remain cryptic. There are, besides,
such vivid changes in metre and diction that critics have
seen the poem as a patchwork by as many as four authors'!
Yet despite all textual obstacles, the sequence of events
is clear, the structure solid, and, within that structure,
the poem has remarkable subtleties. Most of those who
have examined the poem closely have been concerned to
trace the joins and patches of different poets or different
stages of the legend. I should like to explore the opposite
approach, to trace the coherences in the poem's structure
and the nature of its subtleties, to see whether it is possible
to discern trom this a single poet at work.
The poem is ordered in three great acts, and each act is
given its own climax: each moves from doubt to certainty,
from concealment to revelation. Atli's messenger comes
straight to Gunnarr's court, "to hearth-encircling benches
and delicious ale". And there is drinking, but it is not gay.
Drink usually loosens men's tongues, but here there is
a tense silence of suspicion, a sense of ill-omen - oreioi
sdz bcir H1Jna - broken by the cold voice of the
messenger, the foreigner, uttering Atli's invitation. The
inducements he offers acquire a specious warmth: exotic
gifts of harness and horses, of multiple wealth, are
fulsomely poured out in prospect to persuade the
Burgundians of the cordiality of Atli's message. Atli
']. Becker, 'Die Atli-lieder der Edda', PBB XXXIII (1908), 205; see also
G. Neckel, Beitrdge zur Eddaforschung (1908), 169 ff.; R. C. Boer, Die Edda
(1922), II, especially 299 ft.
B