Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

(1) Á fellur austan
um eiturdala
söxum og sverðum,
Slíður heitir sú.
(2) Sá hún þar vaða
þunga strauma
menn meinsvara
og morðvarga
og þanns annars glepur
eyrarúnu.
(1) A river falls from the east
through venom dales
with daggers and swords,
Slid it is called.
(2) There she saw wading
through heavy streams
perjurers,
and murderers,
and him who seduces
another's wife.
These fragments united make ten lines. The fourth line of the fragment (1) Slíður
heitir sú has the appearance of being a mythographic addition by the transcriber of the
poem. Several similar interpolations which contain information of mythological interest,
but which neither have the slightest connection with the context, nor are of the least
importance in reference to the subject treated in Völuspá, occur in our present texteditions
of this poem. The dwarf-list is a colossal interpolation of this kind. If we
hypothetically omit this line for the present, and also the one immediately preceding
(söxum ok sverðum), then there remains as many lines as are required in a regular eightline
strophe.
It is further to be remarked that among all the eight-lined Völuspá strophes there
is not one so badly constructed that a verb in the first half-strophe has a direct object in
the first line of the second half-strophe, as is the case in that of the present text:
Sá hún þar vaða
þunga strauma
menn meinsvara
og morðvarga
og þanns annars glepur
eyrarúnu.
and, upon the whole, such a construction can hardly ever have occurred in a
tolerably passable poem. If these eight lines actually belonged to one and the same
strophe, the latter would have to be restored according to the following scheme:
(1) Sá hún þar vaða
(2) þunga strauma
(3) menn meinsvara
(4) og morðvarga;
(5) . . . . . . .
(6) . . . . . . .
(7) og þanns annars glepur
(8) eyrarúnu.