Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/220

 harmony or other essential property of verse to us; as our minds, ears, and the genius of our language are formed in a different mould. Besides, the peculiarities of the construction of the verse, the poetical language, and the allusions to the Odin mythology, are so obscure, involved, and far-fetched, that volumes of explanation would be necessary almost for every line in any verbatim translation. Torfæus, who was himself an Icelander, and was unquestionably the first of northern antiquaries, declares that much of the scaldic poetry is so obscure, that no meaning at all can be twisted out of it by the most intense study. The older and younger Eddas were in fact hand-books composed expressly for explaining the mythological allusions and metaphors occurring in the poetry of the scalds; so that this obscurity and difficulty appear to have been felt even before the Odin worship was totally extinct, and its mythology forgotten. Examples will best illustrate the obscurity of allusion. In the verses composed by Berse, quoted in the 48th chapter of Olaf the Saint's Saga, in the sixth line, the literal translation of the text would be, "Giver of the fire of the ship's out-field." The "out-field" of the ship is the ocean which surrounds a ship, as the out-field surrounds a farm. The fire of the ocean is gold; because Ægir, when he received the gods into his hall in the depths of the ocean, lighted it with gold hung round instead of the sun's rays; and hence the ocean's rays is a common poetical term for gold in the scaldic poetry. Now "the giver of the fire of the ship's out-field" means the giver of gold, the generous king. Another example of the obscurity of allusion is in the first line of the verses quoted in the 21st chapter of Olaf Tryggvesson's Saga. In the original the expression is literally, "Hater of the bow-seat's fire." Now the bow-seat is the hand which carries the bow; its fire is the gold which adorns the hand in rings or