Sá hon thar vada
thunga strauma
menn meinsvara
ok mordvarga;
(en) á fellr austr
eitrdæla
thann's annars glepr
eyrarúna.
"There saw she heavy streams (of venom) flow upon (or through) perjurers and murderers. The waste-water of the venom-troughs (that is, the waste-water of the perjurers and murderers after the venom-streams had rushed over them) falls upon him who seduces the wife of another man."
Thus we get not only a connected idea, but a very remarkable and instructive passage.
The verb vada is not used only about persons who wade through a water. The water itself is also able to vada (cp. eisandi udr vedr undan—Rafns S. Sveinb.), to say nothing of arrows that wade i fólk (Havam., 150), and of banners which wade in the throng of warriors. Here the venom wades through the crowds of perjurers and murderers. The verb vada has so often been used in this sense, that it has also acquired the meaning of rushing, running, rushing through. Heavy venom-streams run through the perjurers and murderers before they fall on the adulterers. The former are the venom-troughs, which pour their waste-water upon the latter.
We now return to Saxo's description of the hall of Nastrands, to see whether the Völuspa strophe thus hypothetically restored corresponds with, or is contradicted by, it. Disagreeable as the pictures are which we meet with in this comparison, we are nevertheless compelled to take them into consideration.
Saxo says that the wall of the hall is bespattered with liquid filth (paries obductus illuvie). The Latin word, and the one used by Saxo for venom, is venenum, not illuvies, which means filth that has been poured or bespattered on something. Hence Saxo does not mean venom-streams of the kind which, according to Völuspa, are vomited by the serpents down through the roof-openings, but the reference is to something else, which still must have an upper source, since it is bespattered on the wall of the hall.
Saxo further says that the floor is bespawled with all sorts of impurity: pavimentum omni sordium genere respersum. The expression confirms the idea, that unmixed venom is not meant here, but everything else of the most disgusting kind.
Furthermore, Saxo relates that groups of damned are found there within, which groups he calls consessus. Consessus means "a sitting together," and, in a secondary sense, persons sitting together. The word "sit" may here be taken in a more or less literal sense. Consessor, "the one who sits together with," might be applied to every participator in a Roman dinner, though the Romans did not actually sit, but reclined at the table.
As stated, several such consessus, persons sitting or lying together, are found in the hall. The benches upon which they sit or lie are of iron. Every consessus has a locus in the hall; and as both these terms, consessus and locus, in Saxo united in the expression consessuum loca, together mean rows of benches in a theatre or in a public place, where the seats rise in rows one above the other, we must assume that these rows of the damned sitting or lying together are found in different elevations between the floor and ceiling. This assumption is corroborated by what Saxo tells, viz., that their loca are separated by leaden hurdles (plumbeæ crates). That they are separated by hurdles must have some practical reason, and this can be none other than that something flowing down may have an unobstructed passage from one consessus to the other. That which flows down finally reaches the floor, and is then omne sordium genus, all kinds of impurity. It must finally be added that, according to Saxo, the stench in this room of torture is well-nigh intolerable (super omnia perpetui fætoris asperitas tristes lacessebat olfactus).
Who is not able to see that Völuspa's and Saxo's descriptions of the hall in Nastrands confirm, explain, and complement each other? From Völuspa's words, we conclude that the venom-streams come from the openings in the roof, not from the walls. The wall consists, in its entirety, of the backs of serpents wattled together (sá er undinn salr orma hryggjom). The heads belonging to these serpents are above the roof, and vomit their venom down through the roof-openings—"the ljors" (fellu eitrdropar inn um ljóra). Below these, and between them and the floor, there are, as we have seen in Saxo, rows of iron seats, the one row below the other, all furnished with leaden hurdles, and on the iron seats sit or lie perjurers and murderers, forced to drink the venom raining down in "heavy streams." Every such row of sinners becomes "a trough of venom" for the row immediately below it, until the disgusting liquid thus produced falls on those who have seduced the dearest and most confidential friends of others. These seducers either constitute the lowest row of the seated delinquents, or they wade on the floor in that filth and venom which there flows. Over the hall broods eternal night (it is sólu fjarri). What there is of light, illuminating the terrors, comes from fires (see below) kindled at the doors which open to the north (nordr horfa dyrr). The smoke from the fires comes into the hall and covers the door-posts with the "soot of ages" (postes longæva fuligine illitæ).