Njörðr and
Skaði
|
Njörðr á þá konu, er Skaði heitir, dóttir Þjaza jötuns. Skaði vill hafa bústað þann, er átt hafði faðir hennar, þat er á fjöllum nökkurum, þar sem heitir Þrymheimr, en Njörðr vill vera nær sæ. Þau sættust á þat, at þau skyldu vera níu nætr í Þrymheimi, en þá aðrar þrjár at Nóatúnum. En er Njörðr kom aptr til Nóatúna af fjallinu, þá kvað hann þetta: Leið erumk fjöll, Þá kvað Skaði þetta: Sofa ek né
máttak |
Njörðr has to wife the woman called Skaði, daughter of Þjazi the giant. Skaði would fain dwell in the abode which her father had had, which is on certain mountains, in the place called Þrymheimr; but Njörðr would be near the sea. They made a compact on these terms: they should be nine nights in Þrymheimr, but the second nine at Nóatún*. But when Njörðr came down from the mountain back to Nóatún, he sang this lay: Loath were the hills to
me, Then Skaði sang this: Sleep could I never |
*The abode of Njörðr at the seaside.
The Prose Edda or Younger Edda was composed around 1220 by Snorri Sturluson, the greatest Icelandic writer of the Middle Ages. It is both a poetics treaty designed to preserve the art of the skalds and a digest of Northern mythology. It is made of three great parts: the Gylfaginning ("Beguiling of Gylfi") that tells of the great Scandinavian myths, the Skáldskaparmál ("Poesy of Skalds") that lists names and kennings in use in skaldic poetry and explains them, and the Háttatal ("Enumeration of Metres") that displays and illustrates the different kiends of verse used in that poetry.
We offer here an extract from chapter 23 of the Gylfaginning. The mutual incompatibility between Njörðr and Skaði certainly inspired Tolkien for the story of Aldarion and Erendis published in Unfinished Tales.
The Prose Edda has come to us through four manuscripts. The text given here follows the version of the Codex Regius. The translation is by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur and was made in 1916, that we slightly edited to have the names in Old Norse standardised spelling.
Références
Jörmungrund. Hosted by: Háskóli Íslands, Reykjavík. URL: http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/
Sturluson, Snorri. The Prose Edda. Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. Hébergé par : Internet Sacred Text Archive. URL: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/index.htm
Quotations of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, Édouard Kloczko, Christopher Gilson, Patrick Wynne, Rhona Beare, Thomas Alan Shippey, Charles Kennedy, Elaine Treharne, André Crépin, Régis Boyer, François-Xavier Dillmann, Gabriel Rebourcet, Keith Bosley, Pierre-Yves Lambert, Gwyn Jones, Thomas Jones are under the copyright of their publishers.
Last update of the site : 2006, August 9th.
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