[4]. No lacuna indicated in the manuscript; one editor fills the stanza out with a second line running: “Then to her breast Slagfith embraced.”
[5]. Line 3 looks like an interpolation, but line 5, identical with line 2 of stanza 1, may be the superfluous one. [[257]]
[6]. The phrase “Völund home from a weary way” is an emendation of Bugge’s, accepted by many editors. Some of those who do not include it reject line 4, and combine the remainder of the stanza with all or part of stanza 7.
[7]. The manuscript marks the second, and not the first, line as the beginning of a stanza. Some editors combine lines 2–3 with all or part of stanza 8. No gap is indicated in the manuscript, but many editors have assumed one, some of them accepting Bugge’s suggested “Till back the maiden | bright should come.”
[8]. No line in this stanza is indicated in the manuscript as beginning a new stanza; editors have tried all sorts of experiments in regrouping the lines into stanzas with those of stanzas 7 and 9. In line 3 the word long is sheer guesswork, as the line in the manuscript contains a metrical error.
[9]. Some editors combine the first two lines with parts of stanza 8, and the last two with the first half of stanza 10. Njars: [[258]]there has been much, and inconclusive, discussion as to what this name means; probably it applies to a semi-mythical people somewhere vaguely in “the East.”
[10]. Some editors combine lines 3–4 with the fragmentary stanza 11.
[11]. No gap indicated in the manuscript; some editors combine these lines with lines 3–4 of stanza 10, while others combine them with the first two lines of stanza 12. The one ring which Nithuth’s men steal is given to Bothvild, and proves the cause of her undoing.
[12]. The manuscript indicates line 3, and not line 1, as the beginning of a stanza, which has given rise to a large amount of conjectural rearrangement. Line 2 of the original is identical with the phrase added by Bugge in stanza 6. Line 5 may be [[259]]spurious, or lines 4–5 may have been expanded out of a single line running “The wind-dried wood | for Völund burned well.”
[13]. Elves: the poem here identifies Völund as belonging to the race of the elves. Hlothver’s daughter: Hervor; many editors treat the adjective “all-wise” here as a proper name.