Sal sá hon standa
sólu fjarri
Náströndu á
nordr horfa dyrr;
fellu eitrdropar
inn um ljora,
Sá er undinn salr
orma hryggjum.
Sá hon thar vada
thunga strauma
menn meinsvara
ok mordvarga
ok thanns annars glepr
eyrarúna;
thar saug Nidhöggr
nái framgengna,
sleit vargr vera.
"A hall she saw stand far from the sun on the Nastrands; the doors opened to the north. Venom-drops fell through the roof-holes. Braided is that hall of serpent-backs."
"There she saw perjurers, murderers, and they who betrayed the wife of another (adulterers) wade through heavy streams. There Nidhog sucked the náir of the dead. And the wolf tore men into pieces."
Gylfaginning (ch. 52) assumes that the serpents, whose backs, wattled together, form the hall, turn their heads into the hall, and that they, especially through the openings in the roof (according to Codex Ups. and Codex Hypnones.), vomit forth their floods of venom. The latter assumption is well founded. Doubtful seems, on the other hand, Gylfaginning's assumption that "the heavy streams," which the damned in Nastrands have to wade through, flow out over the floor of the hall. As the very name Nastrands indicates that the hall is situated near a water, then this water, whether it be the river Slidr with its eddies filled with weapons, or some other river, may send breakers on shore and thus produce the heavy streams which Völuspa mentions. Nevertheless Gylfaginning's view may be correct. The hall of Nastrands, like its counterpart Valhal, has certainly been regarded as immensely large. The serpent-venom raining down must have fallen on the floor of the hall, and there is nothing to hinder the venom-rain from being thought sufficiently abundant to form "heavy streams" thereon (see below).
Saxo's description of the hall in Nastrands—by him adapted to the realm of torture in general—is as follows: "The doors are covered with the soot of ages; the walls are bespattered with filth; the roof is closely covered with barbs; the floor is strewn with serpents and bespawled with all kinds of uncleanliness." The last statement confirms Gylfaginning's view. As this bespawling continues without ceasing through ages, the matter thus produced must grow into abundance and have an outlet. Remarkable is also Saxo's statement, that the doors are covered with the soot of ages. Thus fires must be kindled near these doors. Of this more later.
77.
THE PLACES OF PUNISHMENT (continued). THE HALL IN NASTRANDS.
Without allowing myself to propose any change of text in the Völuspa strophes above quoted, and in pursuance of the principle which I have adopted in this work, not to base any conclusions on so-called text-emendations, which invariably are text-debasings, I have applied these strophes as they are found in the texts we have. Like Müllenhoff (D. Alterth., v. 121) and other scholars, I am, however, convinced that the strophe which begins sá hon thar vada, &c., has been corrupted. Several reasons, which I shall present elsewhere in a special treatise on Völuspa, make this probable; but simply the circumstance that the strophe has ten lines is sufficient to awaken suspicions in anyone's mind who holds the view that Völuspa originally consisted of exclusively eight-lined strophes—a view which cannot seriously be doubted. As we now have the poem, it consists of forty-seven strophes of eight lines each, one of four lines, two of six lines each, five of ten lines each, four of twelve lines each, and two of fourteen lines each—in all fourteen not eight-lined strophes against forty-seven eight-lined ones; and, while all the eight-lined ones are intrinsically and logically well constructed, it may be said of the others, that have more than eight lines each, partly that we can cancel the superfluous lines without injury to the sense, and partly that they look like loosely-joined conglomerations of scattered fragments of strophes and of interpolations. The most recent effort to restore perfectly the poem to its eight-lined strophes has been made by Müllenhoff (D. Alterth., v.); and although this effort may need revision in some special points, it has upon the whole given the poem a clearness, a logical sequence and symmetry, which of themselves make it evident that Müllenhoff's premises are correct.
In the treatise on Völuspa which I shall publish later, this subject will be thoroughly discussed. Here I may be permitted to say, that in my own efforts to restore Völuspa to eight-lined strophes, I came to a point where I had got the most of the materials arranged on this principle, but there remained the following fragment: