Völuspá - The prediction of the prophetess Old Norse and English versions with commentaries It is also supplemented, after the poem, by historical indications on Verden massacre and citations of Gautrek’s saga and Refutes 19 argument claiming a Christian influences, all due to academic specialists. Here is an nth translation of Völuspá, a poem of poetic Edda. It is essentially different from the others in that it provides information on the suspicions of Christian influences associated to one or another of its stanzas ... and that it shows that, most often, these so-called suspicions are based on commonalities of words used in very different contexts in Völuspá and in the Christians texts supposed to have been inspiring it. On ‘Christian influences’ It is clear that all the manuscripts of the poetic Edda were written in a social context where being Christian was compulsory and paganism banned. Their content has thus been more than less overseen by Church authorities. Looking for ‘Christian influences’ in these texts is to behave as a supposed civilization carrier sifting the good Christian wheat from the pagan chaff. Colonizers mistreated ‘prime’ civilizations in good conscience in the name of the intellectual superiority of European thought. Modern commentators looking for Christian influences in Eddic texts mistreat them by challenging their authenticity. For example, the myth of ‘Baldr’s death’ is classically supposed to have received a Christian influence due to his ‘obvious’ similarity with Christ and Frigg’s cries? Indeed, Frigg cries for her bloody son. And his father also mourns his son - all this can reflect a Christian behavior. His father, however, has Baldr's assassin killed by another of his sons. Do you see there a negligible gory heathenish detail to be carefully forgotten ? More generally, recall the profusion of texts, mostly medieval ones, dealing with the problem of human destiny and the end of the world. This topic of thought is called an “eschatology.” There are therefore many eschatologies, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist ones etc. each inspired by the worldview of the religion that produced it. Völuspá describes an ancient Norse eschatology named ‘Ragnarök’, which means ‘the judgment of the powers’, better known thanks to Wagner under the name of ‘twilight of the gods’. But it can be noted immediately that the word ‘eschatology’ has just been improperly used, since an eschatology deals with the destiny of humankind while Ragnarök deals with the destiny of ‘god-kind’. That is why it is not very logical to speak of a Norse eschatology. Anyhow, the vast majority of readers of ancient Norse texts live in true Christian eschatology and use it to understand a Norse ‘non-eschatology’. It is not surprising that they find there a multitude of what they feel as Christian-likeness they call ‘influence’. Already in Völuspá s. 1 we will meet such a misunderstanding with the word spjall that we translate like everyone else by ‘knowledge’, whereas its real meaning is closer to ‘incantation’ or ‘saying’. Another famous example of an ill-treated Norse word is the one of ‘siðr’ that we translate as ‘religion’ (alternatively, we could also say that the word ‘religion’ does not exist in Old Norse). In fact, ‘siðr’ refers to a custom or a behavior rather than religion, by which the old religion is called forn siðr and the new one became nýr siðr (Christian ‘religion’). Old custom describes old behaviors rather than faith. This is why the dates of Christianization (when words have taken their Christian meaning) of a country are much later than those of the corresponding conversion (when speaking is still a pagan one). This also explains why it so easy to misunderstand the content of Völuspá. This poem is the one that raised the largest suspicion concerning ‘Christian influences’. Quite often these accusations are uttered as insults, which does not lead to honest discussion. It turns out that a fairly recent book, The Nordic Apocalypse, edited by Terry Gunnell and Annette Lassen (2013), took stock of these influences. All the articles in this book, except the one of Lassen (who exposes a history of the past scholarly reactions to this poem) and Gunnell (who describes how the poem could be declaimed and 'played'), have explicitly taken a stand in favor of the existence of these influences. We thus have here a sort of academic summary of the positions of these supporters of influences, which enables a calm discussion that has been undertaken in parallel to a personal translation of the poem. To avoid lengthy references repetition, a special form of quotation is used here: Author name (GL 2013, pp. Number of the pages cited). For example, Gunnell's poetic contribution would be presented as: Gunnell (GL 2013, pp. 70-72). In order not to confuse this discussion with those related to the translation itself, they are framed in a visible way below the corresponding stanza, as below a particularly complicated argumentation that will be further detailed: Ursula Dronke (1997, pp. 99-104) studied the possibility of Christian influences linked to similarities between Völuspá and the Sibylline Oracles, very popular in the Middle Ages ... but Karl G. Johansson (GL 2013, pp. 161-184) disputed some of her points and he refined Dronke's analysis using the Tiburtine Oracle ... but Stephen J. Shoemaker (ref: http in bibliography), reports that many modifications to the known texts of the Oracles of Tibur are in progress. This ends up having no more interest than a discussions on the gender of angels. A few words on presentation and translation A personal presentation of Hávamál (available on Akademia.edu) is done in a similar spirit, but in a less argumentative way since all the attempts to spot Christian influences in Hávamál have been ridiculed by several scholars (see the 2nd interlude associated to s. 21). On the contrary, and relatively recently, Völuspá became for most people a very Christianized piece of lore, yet another incredible miracle. In what follows, no Scandinavian name or concept will appear without explanation. Once explained, I will use some of these names as if they were well-known. When dealing with Eddic poems, we must remember that they are known by a remarkably small number of manuscripts which however present different versions. I will use here as reference Codex Regius, in the version published by Hans Kuhn, Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1962. Kuhn presents a great number of variations which are in the various manuscripts, but I will not give these details. For reasons of the convenience, I will keep the letter ö, used to represent an ‘o tailed’ in Kuhn’s edition. Once that a manuscript is chosen, the Old Norse language of poetry is hard to understand. For my translation, I used De Vries’ etymological dictionary (noted ‘de Vries’), Cleasby-Vigfusson’s Icelandic-English dictionary (noted C. -V. ) and very often also, Sveinbjön Egilsson’s Lexicon poëticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis (noted as LexPoet). This last provides the meaning of a greater number of words than C. -V. , associated a variety of quotations illustrating the use of the words, mainly in poetry. I also built a reliable, readable and cherchable list of irregular verbs, made available at IRREGULAR VERBS . Some useful preliminary explanations A prophetess was called a völva that gives völu in the singular genitive: this is the “völu” in völuspá (‘spá of a völva’). She practised a kind of shamanism which resembles much that of North American Indians, which became so popular since a few years. This kind of Scandinavian shamanism is called seiðr or seið – often spelled ‘seidr’. In spite of the scarcity of available testimony, we know that a völva practised seiðr outside, on a kind of wooden platform, surrounded by all her helpers and customers, and she required someone singing a special song. There is also a solitary form of practice, called “útiseta” (outside sat) to which Völuspa seems to refer. It seems that seidr was practised primarily by women since it is known that the practice of the seidr ‘to perfection’ makes the men impotent where this word can also be understood as ‘homosexual’. Thus, what had been in the past a highly respected ability, since it was reserved to women or to effeminate men (or, according to my personal interpretation: reserved to the female side of men - and women!), became gradually scorned, and is often used as an insult in texts and runic inscriptions Note that we will always speak of the mythic Giants and Dwarves in order to single them out of the tall or short individuals. Likewise the word god will never carry a capital letter in order to differentiate it from God. Óðinn (often written: Odin, or Odhin, or Odhinn) is the main of the Scandinavian gods, the Æsir. There was also another kind of gods, the Vanir who might have been more ancient, but they will be reconcile with the Æsir, after a war evoked below in stanzas 21-26. Lastly, the Giants are also supra human beings who seem to be irreducible enemies to the Æsir. They will cause Ragnarök as described in stanzas 44 to 58 Old Norse civilization was equipped with a spirituality associated to an ancestors’ worship, to which poems and sagas refer. This worship is also firmly proven by the multitude of offerings found in the howes of the powerful ones and close to the tombs of humble ones, and by the meetings held around these sites during hundreds of years. VÖLUSPÁ (The Seeress Prophecy) Old Norse (ON) Litteral meaning followed by an Comments from the Codex English translation Regius Stanza 1 Old Norse Literal translation orð eptir orð (word Explanations and comments for word) followed by an English one The first line is a ritual formula used to ask 1.