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Of old was an age when Odin walked
(the opening of Andvara-gull ). At the top of this page, however, my father wrote in pencil: ‘This should all be written in short line form, which looks better – as in Upphaf .’ I have therefore set out the text of the Lay of the Volsungs in this way.
§4 THE SPELLING OF NORSE NAMES
I have thought it best to follow closely my father’s usage in respect of the writing of Norse names in an English context. The most important features, which appear in his manuscript of the poems with great consistency, are these:
The sound ? of voiced ‘th’ as in English ‘then’ is replaced by d: thus Gu?run becomes Gudrun, Hrei?marr becomes Hreidmar, Bu?li becomes Budli, Asgar?r becomes Asgard.
As two of these examples show, the nominative ending -r is omitted: so also Frey, Volsung, Brynhild, Gunnar for Freyr, Volsungr, Brynhildr, Gunnarr.
The letter j is retained, as in Sinfjotli, Gjuki, where it is pronounced like English ‘y’ in ‘you’ (Norse Jork is ‘York’).
The only case where I have imposed consistency is that of the name of the god who in Norse is O?inn. In his lecture notes my father naturally used the Norse form (which I have retained in the text of his lecture on the ‘Elder Edda’, p.22). In the carefully written manuscript of the ‘New Lays’, on the other hand, he ‘anglicized’ it, changing ? to d, but (as generally in all such cases) retaining the acute accent indicating a long vowel. But he used two forms, favouring one or the other in different parts of the Lay of the Volsungs: Odin and Odinn. But in section VI, Brynhildr, where the name occurs frequently in the form Odinn, he wrote (stanza 8) Odinn bound me, Odin’s chosen. This is because in the Norse genitive nn changes to ns: O?ins sonr, ‘son of Odin’.
Seeing that in section VIII, stanza 5, where the name is repeated, Odin dooms it; Odinn hearken!, my father later struck out the second n of Odinn, and since it seems to me that inconsistency in the form of the name serves no purpose, I have settled for Odin. In the case of the name that is in Norse Reginn my father wrote Regin throughout, and I have followed this.
§5 THE VERSE-FORM OF THE POEMS
The metrical form of these Lays was very evidently a primary element in my father’s purpose. As he said in his letters to W.H. Auden, he wrote in ‘the old eight-line fornyr?islag stanza’, and I give here an abbreviated account of its nature.
There are three metres found in the Eddaic poems, fornyr?islag, malahattr, and ljo?ahattr (on this last see the note to the Lay of the Volsungs, section V, lines 42–44, pp.211–13); but here we need only consider the first, in which most of the narrative poems of the Edda are composed. The name fornyr?islag is believed to mean ‘Old Story Metre’ or ‘Old Lore Metre’ – a name which, my father observed, cannot have arisen until after later elaborations had been invented and made familiar; he favoured the view that the older name was kvi?uhattr, meaning ‘the “manner” for poems named kvi?a’, since the old poems in fornyr?islag, when their names have any metrical import, are usually called ~kvi?a: hence his names Volsungakvi?a and Gu?runarkvi?a.
The ancient Germanic metre depended, in my father’s words, on ‘the utilization of the main factors of Germanic speech, length and stress’; and the same rhythmical structure as is found in Old English verse is found also in fornyr?islag. That structure was expounded by my father in a preface to the revised edition (1940) of the translation of Beowulf by J.R. Clark-Hall, and reprinted in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983). In that account he defined the nature of the Old English verse- structure in these words.
The Old English line was composed of two opposed word-groups or ‘halves’. Each half was an example, or variation, of one of six basic patterns.
The patterns were made of strong and weak elements, which may be called ‘lifts’ and ‘dips’. The standard lift was a long stressed syllable, (usually with a relatively high tone). The standard dip was an unstressed syllable, long or short, with a low tone.
The following are examples in modern English of normal forms of the six patterns:
A, B, C have equal feet, each containing a lift and dip. D and E have unequal feet: one consists of a single lift, the other has a subordinate stress (marked `) inserted.
These are the normal patterns of four elements into which Old English words naturally fell, and into which modern English words still fall. They can be found in any passage of prose, ancient or modern. Verse of this kind differs from prose, not in re-arranging words to fit a special rhythm, repeated or varied in successive lines, but in choosing the simpler and more compact word-patterns and clearing away extraneous matter, so that these patterns stand opposed to one another.
The selected patterns were all of approximately equal metrical weight* : the effect of loudness (combined with length and voice-pitch), as judged by the ear in conjunction with emotional and logical significance†. The line was thus essentially a balance of two equivalent blocks. These blocks might be, and usually were, of different pattern and rhythm. There was in consequence no common tune or rhythm shared by lines in virtue of being ‘in the same metre’. The ear should not listen for any such thing, but should attend to the shape and balance of the halves. Thus the roaring sea rolling landward is not metrical because it contains an ‘iambic’ or a ‘trochaic’ rhythm, but because it is a balance of B + A.
These patterns are found also in fornyr?islag, and can be readily identified in my father’s Norse lays: as for example in stanza 45 of the Lay of Gudrun (p.268), lines 2–6:
A
runes of healing
D (
a
)
