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(1) Á fellr austan um eitrdala söxum ok sverdum, Slidr heitir sú. |
(1) Falls a river from the east around venom dales with daggers and spears, Slid it is called. |
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(2) Sá hon thar vada thunga strauma menn meinsvara ok mordvarga ok thanns annars glepr eyrarúnu. |
(2) There saw she wade through heavy streams perjurers murderers and him who seduces another's wife. |
These fragments make united ten lines. The fourth line of the fragment (1) Slidr heitir sú has the appearance of being a mythographic addition by the transcriber of the poem. Several similar interpolations which contain information of mythological interest, but which neither have the slightest connection with the context, nor are of the least importance in reference to the subject treated in Völuspa, occur in our present text-editions of this poem. The dwarf-list is a colossal interpolation of this kind. If we hypothetically omit this line for the present, and also the one immediately preceding (söxum ok sverdum), then there remains as many lines as are required in a regular eight-line strophe.
It is further to be remarked that among all the eight-lined Völuspa strophes there is not one so badly constructed that a verb in the first half-strophe has a direct object in the first line of the second half-strophe, as is the case in that of the present text:
Sá hon thar vada
thunga strauma
menn meinsvara
ok mordvarga
ok thann's annars glepr
eyrarúnu;
and, upon the whole, such a construction can hardly ever have occurred in a tolerably passable poem. If these eight lines actually belonged to one and the same strophe, the latter would have to be restored according to the following scheme:
(1) Sá hon thar vada
(2) thunga strauma
(3) menn meinsvara
(4) ok mordvarga;
(5) .......
(6) .......
(7) thann's annars glepr
(8) eyrarúnu.
and in one of the dotted lines the verb must have been found which governed the accusative object thann.
The lines which should take the place of the dots have, in their present form, the following appearance:
á fellr austan
um eitrdala.