NOTES TO THE TWELFTH CANTO.
Specimen of the original.
Han sad i Hallen og taenkte derpaa,
Hans Haevn ham glaedte saa saare:
Naar Sif sig nu speiler i blanken Aa,
Da faelder hun modige Taare.
[43] By leek and by crout: a common method of swearing among the Scandinavians to this day.
[44] Bauta-sten means a tombstone, or funeral monument.
[45] Odin’s eye, i.e. the sun.
[46] By this description, the poet has probably meant to designate the fossil formations of the earth.
[47] The new hair made for Sif may possibly represent a meteor, comet, or shooting star, or perhaps lightning, as connected with thunder (Thor). Finn Magnussen thinks that, in this mythe, Sif typifies the earth, and her hair the corn, which is cut down by Lok (time), and reproduced and gilded by him at the instigation of Thor; i.e. the electrical heat of summer ripening the corn.
I have adopted a similar metre to the original in my translation of this Canto, but with greater prodigality of rhyme, the middle rhymes being only used by the author in the nine last stanzas.