Sólarljóð

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The Sólarljóð is an Old Norse poem that is sometimes included in editions of the Poetic Edda due to its imagery from Norse mythology.

The poem is in some manuscripts assigned to Sæmund. In 83 ljóðaháttr stanzas it gives an account of a dream, in which a deceased father is supposed to address his son from another world. The first 7 stanzas seem hardly connected with the following ones, which, as far as the 32nd consist chiefly in aphorisms with examples, some closely resembling those in the Hávamál. In the remaining portion is given the recital of the last illness of the supposed speaker, his death, and the scenes his soul passed through on the way to its final home.

The composition exhibits a strange mixture of Christianity and Heathenism, whence it would seem that the poet's own religion was in a transition state. Of the allusions to Heathenism it is, however, to be observed that they are chiefly to persons and actions of which there is no trace in the Odinic mythology, as known to us, and are possibly the fruits of the poet's own imagination^[1]. The title of the poem is given in the final stanza, and no doubt derives from the allusion to the Sun at the beginning of the stanzas 39-45, all beginning with Sól ek sá ... "The Sun I saw ...". The two last stanzas in the edition of Ólafur Briem follow.

81. Kvæði þetta,

er þér kennt hefig,

skaltu fyr kvikum kveða:

Sólarljóð,

er sýnast munu

minnst að mörgu login.

82. Hér við skiljumst

og hittast munum

á feginsdegi fira;

drottinn minn

gefi dauðum ró,

en hinum líkn, er lifa.

[edit] References

^ All in all, Sólarljóð are an addition to the eddaic poems although they happen to be preserved in the same manuscript. The author was undoubtably Christian. In fact, the last stanza is often recited at Christian burials.