Prophecy & the Seeress

If Hávamál is the wisdom of the Norse world and Gylfaginning its prose handbook, Völuspá — 'the Seeress's Prophecy' — is its poetry: a single sweeping vision, the grandest poem the North produced, that holds the whole history of the cosmos from its first making to its end and rebirth. It is spoken by a völva, an ancient seeress, whom Odin has raised — perhaps from the dead — to compel her secret knowledge.^[1]

She begins by calling for silence from all the worlds and declaring that she remembers things older than anything living: the giants who bore her in the dawn of time. This is the framing that gives the poem its uncanny authority — it is not a god explaining the world from outside, but a being older than the gods themselves, recounting what she has seen, in the present tense of prophecy. Gylfaginning told this same cosmos as a question-and-answer; Völuspá sings it as a vision. They are the prose and the verse of one mythology, and this poem is the source much of the other draws on.

The collection closes with its darkest and quietest poem, Baldrs Draumar — 'Baldr's Dreams'. The gods gather in alarm because Baldr, the bright god, has been troubled by ominous dreams of his own death.^[1] To learn what they mean, Odin saddles his horse and rides down the long road to Hel, to the grave of a long-dead seeress, and wakes her with spells of the dead to compel her prophecy.

She tells him, grudgingly and with dread, the truth he has come to fear: that the benches of Hel stand decked and waiting for Baldr, that he will be slain by his blind brother's hand, and that vengeance will follow. It is the same doom the Seeress sings in Völuspá and the death told in Gylfaginning, here approached from its most intimate angle — a father riding into the realm of the dead to hear, from a corpse, that he cannot save his son. In that image is the whole tragic grandeur of Odin: the god who knows everything, including the one thing he most wishes were not true, and who rides willingly to hear it confirmed. These seven poems show the gods knowing, doing, desiring, and grieving — powerful and flawed and, every one of them, walking knowingly toward an end they cannot escape.

One hard winter of dearth, with the fishing failed and a fever in the settlement, they sent for Þorbjörg, the 'little sybil' — last living of nine prophetess-sisters. The saga dresses her with extraordinary care, and it is the fullest portrait of a völva we have: a blue mantle inlaid with gems to the hem, glass beads, a black lambskin hood lined with ermine, catskin gloves white and furred within, a brass-knobbed staff, a pouch of talismans, and a ritual meal of the hearts of every kind of animal to be had.^[1]

To work her seiðr she needed a woman who knew the weird-songs — and only Guðríðr did, taught them in Iceland by her foster-mother, though she protested she was a Christian and wanted no part in heathen rite. Pressed, she sang them, and so beautifully that the spirits drew near. The völva foretold the famine's end — and turned to Guðríðr with a destiny: a great and shining line of descendants would spring from her, though her path led back to Iceland.^[2] Two faiths stand in one scene — the old magic and the new creed — in the body of one reluctant woman.

What wears Gísli down is not the hunt but his sleep. Through his outlaw years two dream-women visit him: a good one who comforts and counsels him, and a worse one who comes with horror.^[1]

As the end nears, the better dream-wife fades and the evil one takes hold — washing his hair in blood, binding a bloody hood about his brow, drenching him in gore. The dreams grow so terrible that Gísli, like Grettir before him, becomes afraid to be alone in the dark, unable to bear it when Auðr leaves his side.^[2] Two of the sagas' greatest outlaws, both undone in the same way: a strength no enemy can break, brought low by dreams that make solitude unendurable. The dreams even show Gísli his own last fight, fought and lost, before it comes.

The saga opens, as the best tragedies do, by telling you the end. Þorsteinn, son of Egil Skallagrímsson and master of Borg, dreams of a lovely swan on his rooftop — and of two eagles that come to her, one from the mountains and one from the south, and fight each other to the death over her, until both lie dead; then a third bird comes and carries the swan away.^[1]

A wise guest reads the dream without mercy: a peerless daughter will be born to Thorstein, two noble suitors will destroy each other over her, and a third man will take her in the end. Thorstein, troubled, orders the coming child exposed if it is a girl — but the order is quietly disobeyed, and so Helga the Fair is born and raised, the most beautiful woman in Iceland, with her fate already spoken over her cradle.