She sings of the world before the gods were made, of the coming and the meeting of the Aesir, of the origin of the giants, dwarfs and men, of the happy beginning of all things, and the sad ending that shall be in the chaos of Ragnarök. The latter part of the poem is understood to be a kind of necromancy--according to Vigfusson, "the raising of a dead völva"; but the mystical language of the whole, its abrupt transitions and terse condensations, and above all the extinct and mysterious cosmology, an acquaintance with which it presupposes, make the exact interpretation of the _Völuspá_ extremely difficult. The charm and solemn beauty of the style, however, are irresistible, and we are constrained to listen and revere as if we were the auditors of some fugual music devised in honour of a primal and long-buried deity. The melodies of this earliest Icelandic verse, elaborate in their extreme and severe simplicity, are wholly rhythmical and alliterative, and return upon themselves like a solemn incantation. _Hávamál_, the Lesson of the High One, or Odin, follows next; this contains proverbs and wise saws, and a series of stories, some of them comical, told by Odin against himself. The _Vafprúðnismál_, or Lesson of Vafprúðnir, is written in the same mystical vein as _Völuspá_; in it the giant who gives his name to the poem is visited by Odin in disguise, and is questioned by him about the cosmogony and chronology of the Norse religion. _Grimnismál_, or the Sayings of The Hooded One, which is partly in prose, is a story of Odin's imprisonment and torture by King Geirrod. _För Skirnis_, or the Journey of Skirnir, _Harbarðslióð_, or the Lay of Hoarbeard, _Hymiskviða_, or the Song of Hymir, and _Aegisdrekka_, or the Brewing of Aegir, are poems, frequently composed as dialogue, containing legends of the gods, some of which are so ludicrous that it has been suggested that they were intentionally burlesque. _Thrymskviða_, or the Song of Thrym, possesses far more poetic interest; it recounts in language of singular force and directness how Thor lost his hammer, stolen by Thrym the giant, how the latter refused to give it up unless the goddess Freyia was given him in marriage, and how Thor, dressed in women's raiment, personated Freyia, and, slaying Thrym, recovered his hammer. _Alvíssmál_, or the Wisdom of Allwise, is actually a philological exercise under the semblance of a dialogue between Thor and Alvis the dwarf. In _Vegtamskviða_, or the Song of Vegtam, Odin questions a völva with regard to the meaning of the sinister dreams of Balder. _Rígsmál_, or more properly _Rígspula_, records how the god Heimdall, disguised as a man called Rig, wandered by the sea-shore, where he met the original dwarf pair, Ai and Edda, to whom he gave the power of child-bearing, and thence sprung the whole race of thralls; then he went on and met with Afi and Amma, and made them the parents of the race of churls; then he proceeded until he came to Faðir and Moðir, to whom he gave Jarl, the first of free men, whom he himself brought up, teaching him to shoot and snare, and to use the sword and runes. It is much to be lamented that of this most characteristic and picturesque poem we possess only a fragment. In _Hyndluljóð_, the Lay of Hyndla, the goddess Freyia rides to question the völva Hyndla with regard to the ancestry of her young paramour Ottar; a very fine quarrel ensues between the prophetess and her visitor. With this poem, the first or wholly mythological portion of the collection closes. What follows is heroic and pseudo-historic. The _Völundarkviða_, or Song of Völundr, is engaged with the adventures of Völundr, the smith-king, during his stay with Nidud, king of Sweden. Völundr, identical with the Anglo-Saxon Wêland and the German Wieland (O.H.G. _Wiolant_), is sometimes confused with Odin, the master-smith. This poem contains the beautiful figure of Svanhvít, the swan-maiden, who stays seven winters with Völundr, and then, yearning for her fatherland, flies away home through the dark forest. _Helgakviða, Hiörvarðs sonar_, the Song of Helgi, the Son of Hiörvarð, which is largely in prose, celebrates the wooing by Helgi of Svava, who, like Atalanta, ends by loving the man with whom she has fought in battle. Two Songs of Helgi the Hunding's Bane, _Helgakviða Hundingsbana_, open the long and very important series of lays relating to the two heroic families of the Völsungs and the Niblungs. Including the poems just mentioned, there are about twenty distinct pieces in the poetic _Edda_ which deal more or less directly with this chain of stories. It is hardly necessary to give the titles of these poems here in detail, especially as they are, in their present form, manifestly only fragments of a great poetic saga, possibly the earliest coherent form of the story so universal among the Teutonic peoples. We happily possess a somewhat later prose version of this lost poem in the _Völsungasaga_, where the story is completely worked out. In many places the prose of the _Völsungasaga_ follows the verse of the Eddaic fragments with the greatest precision, often making use of the very same expressions. At the same time there are poems in the _Edda_ which the author of the saga does not seem to have seen. But if we compare the central portions of the myth, namely Sigurd's conversation with Fafnir, the death of Regin, the speech of the birds and the meeting with the Valkyrje, we are struck with the extreme fidelity of the prose romancer to his poetic precursors in the _Sigurðarkviða Fafnisbana_; in passing on to the death of Sigurd, we perceive that the version in the _Völsungasaga_ must be based upon a poem now entirely lost. Of the origin of the myth and its independent development in medieval Germany, this is not the place for discussion (see NIBELUNGENLIED). Suffice to say that in no modernized or Germanized form does the legend attain such an exquisite colouring of heroic poetry as in these earliest fragments of Icelandic song. A very curious poem, in some MSS. attributed directly to Saemund, is the Song of the Sun, _Sólarlióð_, which forms a kind of appendix to the poetic _Edda_. In this the spirit of a dead father addresses his living son, and exhorts him, with maxims that resemble those of _Hávamál_, to righteousness of life. The tone of the poem is strangely confused between Christianity and Paganism, and it has been assumed to be the composition of a writer in the act of transition between the old creed and the new. It may, however, not impossibly, be altogether spurious as a poem of great antiquity, and may merely be the production of some Icelandic monk, anxious to imitate the Eddaic form and spirit. Finally _Forspjallsljóð_, or the Preamble, formerly known as the Song of Odin's Raven, is an extremely obscure fragment, of which little is understood, although infinite scholarship has been expended on it. With this the poetic _Edda_ closes. Entry: 2