Norse Poetry

I got a couple of emails about Egil’s poems, so I thought I’d share one from Njals’s Saga that I had printed in Icelandic and English and framed as a gift for a fisherman friend on his birthday.

It’s set in the time of the conversion of Iceland to Christianity, which was overall quite peaceful, although there were a few nasty episodes: “From there they went to Fljotshlid and preached the faith. The strongest opposition came from Vetrlidi the Poet and his son Ari; so they killed Vetrlidi.” (Ohh-kaay.) After a poem about the hammer of death crashing down on Vetrlidi’s head,* it explains how an opponent of the new faith (Thorvald the Ailing) tried to get Ulf Uggason to kill the Christian missionary, but Ulf was not interested in taking sides at that time:

Thorvald sent him this verse:

This message I send
To my friend Ulf Uggason
That wolf with armoured pelt
Of whom I have no fear:
Drive the cowardly cur
That howls against our gods
Over the cliff of death,
While I take care of the other.

Ulf Uggason answered him with another verse:

I refuse to rise
To the tempting fly
Of the message I was sent,
Feathered with bright poetry.
I am too wise a fish
To gobble the angler’s bait:
These are troubled waters,
But I can avoid being caught.

It’s a shame that people rarely send such poetry when the communicate. SMS (text messaging) doesn’t seem quite the proper medium for it.

*Here’s the poem celebrating the killing of Vetrlidi:

The tester of shields came south
To bring home the tools of war
To the prayer-forge
In the poet-warrior’s breast.
Then the tester of battle-faith
Brought the hammer of death
Crashing down on the anvil
of Vetrlidi’s head.