Gripla - 20.12.2018, Page 148

GRIPLA148
Sæviet ignis halitus
Circa seculi nutritorem
Alta flamma alludet
Ipsi coelo.27
[Vapor of fire will rage around the nourisher of the world, high
flame will play against heaven itself.]
the commentary on Vid aldvrnára states:
nempe stirpem, arborem vel columnam mundanam Yggdrasill
dictam, qvæ seculum totum vel omnia in mundo viventia nutrit.28
[namely the stem, tree or column of the world called Yggdrasill,
which nourishes the whole world, or all living creatures in the
world.]
according to this interpretation, eimr ‘vapor of fire’ rages around aldurnári
‘the nourisher of the world’, i.e. the world tree Yggdrasill.
the proposed reading aldurnára did not find widespread acceptance. It
still figures in Munch’s edition of the Poetic Edda, and, curiously enough,
in a french translation of Gylfaginning by Bergmann, who claims, however,
that the word means ‘killer of the world’ (Tuant-le-Siècle), a force of de-
struction.29 In any case, this reading was explicitly rejected by Bugge.30
Seemingly unaware of the original proposal in the Copenhagen edition
of 1828, Peter Hallberg presented arguments for the same idea in the mid-
20th century, even repeating them a quarter of a century later, in both cases
without any reference to the earlier work.31 On the understanding that fire
generally functions as a destructive force in Völuspá, Hallberg claims that
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Den Ældre Edda: Samling af norrøne oldkvad, indeholdende Nordens ældste gude- og helte-sagn,
ed. by Peter andreas Munch (Christiania: P. t. Malling, 1847), 6. La fascination de Gulfi
(Gylfa ginning), traité de mythologie Scandinave composé par Snorri fils de Sturla, ed. by
frédéric Guillaume Bergmann (Strasbourg: treuttel & Würtz, 1861), 198.
30 Norræn fornkvæði, 391.
31 Hallberg, “Världsträdet och världsbranden,”; Peter Hallberg, “Elements of Imagery,” Edda:
A Collections of Essays, ed. by r. J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason (Winnipeg: uni-
versity of Manitoba Press, 1983), 47–85.