Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

It must be admitted that if á fellur austur eitrdæla is the original reading, then a
corruption into á fellur austan eiturdala had almost of necessity to follow, since the
preposition á was taken to be the substantive á, a river, a running stream. How near at
hand such a confounding of these words lies is demonstrated by another Völuspá strophe,
where the preposition á in á sér hún ausast aurgum fossi was long interpreted as the
substantive á.
We shall now see whether the expression á fellur austr eitrdæla makes sense,
when it is introduced in lieu of the dotted lines above:
Sá hún þar vaða
þunga strauma
menn meinsvara
og morðvarga;
(en) á fellur austur
eiturdæla
þanns annars glepur
eyrarúnu.
"There saw she heavy streams (of venom) flow upon (or through) perjurers and
murderers. The waste-water of the venom-troughs (that is, the waste-water of the
perjurers and murderers after the venom-streams had rushed over them) falls upon him
who seduces the wife of another man."
Thus we not only get a connected idea, but a very remarkable and instructive
passage. 2
The verb vaða is not used only about persons who wade through a water. The
water itself is also able to vaða (cp. eisandi uðr veður - Rafns s. Sveinb.), to say nothing
of arrows that wade í fólki (Hávamál 150), and of banners which wade in the throng of
warriors. Here the venom wades through the crowds of perjurers and murderers. The verb
vaða has so often been used in this sense, that it has also acquired the meaning of
rushing, running, rushing through. Heavy venom-streams run through the perjurers and
murderers before they fall on the adulterers. The former are the venom-troughs, which
pour their waste-water upon the latter.
We now return to Saxo's description of the hall of Nastrands, to see whether the
Völuspá strophe thus hypothetically restored corresponds with, or is contradicted by, it.
Disagreeable as the pictures are which we meet with in this comparison, we are
nevertheless compelled to take them into consideration.
Saxo says that the wall of the hall is bespattered with liquid filth (paries obductus
illuvie). The Latin word, and the one used by Saxo for venom, is venenum, not illuvies,
which means filth that has been poured or bespattered on something. Hence Saxo does
not mean venom-streams of the kind which, according to Völuspá, are vomited by the
serpents down through the roof-openings, but the reference is to something else, which
still must have an upper source, since it is bespattered on the wall of the hall.
2 On the whole, Rydberg's reconstruction of these verses is radical and extremely difficult to accept, thus
we must take the poem as it stands, a view he himself advocates at the beginning of this section.