Gripla - 01.01.1990, Page 264

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GRIPLA
the sun in Völuspá casts its rays from the south, extending an ‘arm’
around the horizon, so the sun-stag with its two attendants wends from
the south to the entrance of hell, the south being a realm of light in
both Völuspá and Sólarljóð,36 The beast is of tremendous size, with
horns that touch the sky. It has been lent heroic dimensions by an epic
simile from Helgakviða II (loc. cit.), in which the dead Helgi is com-
pared to a young stag with the dew on him: ‘. . . sá dýrkálfr, / dgggo
slunginn, / er 0fri ferr / gllum dýrom / ok horn glóa / við himin siálf-
an. ’37 The simile in effect has been modified to a metaphor for Christ
in Sólarljóð.
Under a Christian interpretation poetic details in the Eddas might
flesh out the composite figure of the sun-stag, but the bristling intent
of the great animal towards hell has another, biblical source. The fact
that this stag is at once an emanation of the sun and a manifestation of
Christ implies that it is symbolically bringing light to some very dark
places and preparing to harrow hell. The scene is set as in the apoc-
ryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (translated into Old Icelandic as Niðr-
stigningar saga), when Adam and the Old Testament prophets per-
ceive the irresistible incoming of the light of Christ to the darkness of
hell - ‘. . . scein þar lios fagrt oc biart sva sem af solo iver oss alla.’38
In the context of this Gospel I suspect that the two unidentified lead-
ers of the sun-stag may be either the principal prophets, Isaiah and
Daniel, or perhaps the alleged authors of the Gospel, Charinus and
Lenthius, who were rescued from hell by Christ and returned from the
dead (like the Icelandic seer) to record the glorious event for Nicode-
mus. The Gospel was at least the generic prototype of the frame-story
of Sólarljóð.
The Sólarljóð poet picks up the redemptive theme of the sun-stag
again in stanzas 78-79 of the ‘runic’ epilogue of the poem - so called
because a horn of the beast is forthcoming (after its death), carved
with runes:
36 Hence in stanza 56 of our poem the seven Niðja synir (= ‘the sons of man’?) who
ride from the north must be akin to the children of darkness - whoever else they may
be. Cf. George Tate’s paper from the Sixth Intemational Saga Conference (1985),
“Heiðar stjörnur’ / ‘heiðnar stjörnur,” Proceedings, II, 1030-1, on the directional corre-
spondences between Sólarljóð and Völuspá.
37 As quoted from Eddadigte III, ed. Jón Helgason, Copenhagen, etc. 1968, p. 39.
Heilagra manna spgur, II, 1.
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