Hrafnagaldur Óđins (Forspjallsljóđ) ed. by Annette Lassen (review)

Hrafnagaldur Óðins (Song of Óðinn’s ravens) is an Icelandic poem that has been well known in Iceland within educated circles for several hundred years, as this edition describes in detail, but is not very familiar outside its native land. Fairly recently it came back into prominence there when, in 2002, the Icelandic scholar Jónas Kristjánsson published a new edition of the poem in Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, claiming it as a fourteenth-century production. The dating of this poem, and the question of whether it is a medieval production or the work of a poet of the seventeenth or eighteenth century composing in imitation of an eddic mode, thus came back into prominence, and the present editor, Annette Lassen, has produced what may well be the definitive edition of this text, which places it firmly in the post-medieval period, specifically in the mid-seventeenth century within the learned circle of men at Skálholt around Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson, who began the revival of interest in eddic poetry with the rediscovery of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda in 1643. Although, she argues, the poem itself was not ancient, people rather quickly began to consider it so, and it appears regularly in many late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts that include it along with genuinely old eddic poems from the Codex Regius and manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, as well as some other Old Icelandic poems that were not part of the Poetic Edda collection. It was printed in several significant nineteenth-century editions of eddic poetry, and finds a place in the first volume of the Arnamagnaean edition of Edda Sæmundar hinns fróda (1787).

A large part of this edition (74 pages) is taken up with a meticulously detailed Introduction that justifies Lassen’s assessment of the poem’s age and provenance, and describes all known extant manuscripts (37) that contain it. This Introduction is not simply a description of these manuscripts, many unknown to all but a small number of specialists, but it comprises an intellectual history of the Icelandic reawakening of interest in Iceland’s own medieval culture, particular its poetry, and gives an account of how that interest spread by means of manuscript copying for the most part to Denmark, Sweden, the British Isles and, in a smaller way, to Germany. As Lassen states (pp. 78–81), this aspect of the reception of Icelandic culture outside Iceland is not well appreciated today, but her excellent book will certainly open the eyes of many readers to its importance.

The poem itself is a curious hybrid, presented as an eddic narrative in fornyrðislag verse-form (with a very thin plot) and replete with vocabulary and stylistic features, especially kennings, that remind one strongly of the techniques of rímur rather more than of medieval skaldic verse. The title Hrafnagaldur Óðins is a misnomer, as Óðinn’s ravens are never mentioned. Instead, it appears that the world is in turmoil at an unspecified plan of the ‘All-father’ (a name for Óðinn in medieval sources, but possibly here denoting the Christian god). This plan implicitly relates to the destruction that will take place at Ragnarök, which the pre-Christian deities want to prevent from happening. They are represented as vainly trying to extract knowledge of what is to happen from a goddess, Iðunn, who breaks down in tears without giving away any secrets or indeed indicating whether she has any to give. Those gods sent out on the quest for knowledge return empty-handed to a merry drinking feast held by Óðinn, then they sleep on the fact that they lack numinous information, and next morning Heimdallr blows his horn, which brings on the inevitable Ragnarök. Clearly the poem is conceived as a prequel to Völuspá.

The anonymous poet of Hrafnagaldur Óðins was a magpie, taking names from a...