“In sickness and pain | and every sorrow.”
[[64]]
[148]. Second, etc., appear in the manuscript as Roman numerals. The manuscript indicates no gap after line 2.
[152]. The sending of a root with runes written thereon was an excellent way of causing death. So died the Icelandic hero Grettir the Strong. [[65]]
[156]. House-riders: witches, who ride by night on the roofs of houses, generally in the form of wild beasts. Possibly one of the last two lines is spurious.
[157]. The last line looks like an unwarranted addition, and line 4 may likewise be spurious.
[158]. Lines 4–5 are probably expanded from a single line. [[66]]
[159]. The sprinkling of a child with water was an established custom long before Christianity brought its conception of baptism.
[161]. This stanza, according to Müllenhoff, was the original conclusion of the poem, the phrase “a fifteenth” being inserted only after stanzas 162–165 had crept in. Delling: a seldom mentioned god who married Not (Night). Their son was Dag (Day). Thjothrörir: not mentioned elsewhere. Hroptatyr: Othin. [[67]]
[163]. Some editors have combined these two lines with stanza 164. Others have assumed that the gap follows the first half-line, making “so that—from me” the end of the stanza.