The Seeds of the Storm (The Song of the Ferryman Book 1)

This possible author has been dismissed as a hoax who tried to brag about his knowledge about the use of metaphors by making a completely unintelligible poem. In my opinion, the most important reason for this dismissal seems to be the fact that the poem is almost impossible to understand from the traditional perspective on the myths as a kind of fairytales.

There is no story and no setting, only a series of cryptic and subtle stanzas often referring to issues and concepts otherwise often, even mostly, unknown to us. From the time that people began trying to decipher the poem, one after the other has given up and dismissed the poem as unintelligible and thus a fake, invented by some hoax perhaps during the 17 th century AD.

This is why this poem also hardly ever is presented in Edda translations and collections. I found, when I tried a translation of my own, that this poem becomes deeply meaningful if the names of characters and places are interpreted and translated, and that it continuously alludes to the basic issues of the Mysteries that in this book are revealed to be at the heart and core of Edda lore.

On this ground, I am firmly convinced that this poem deserves its space among the Edda poems, and I have, in some instances, used some stanzas from this poem as relevant sources. The dead woman declares that the path is terribly dangerous and difficult, but if he succeeds, fortune will be his. The dead witch says farewell with a final advice: The place is dark, hostile and the home of giants. On top of this mountain by the root of the tree sits a dreaming, sleeping maiden: She is accompanied by nine beautiful and friendly maidens.

The guardian challenges the boy, saying that since he is neither dead nor dying, this is not a place for him letting us know that this is a place for the dead and the dying. The boy, now calling himself Wind-Cold, a way of indicating that he is actually dead, begins to engage the giant guardian in a word duel, asking questions to see if the guardian can answer.

Finally, the boy asks the right question and realizes that he has been married to this maiden for an eternity, but that he has forgotten because of multiple deaths. Atli plays the role of a shaman, a priest and a guide through initiation. The title iarl [earl] is derived from the older erilaR and used to refer to a sage or a priest, one who knew runes. He does not succeed in bringing out the maiden, but must return with the King.

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Then they sleep by a river a border between the worlds , and as they sleep, Atli moves into the realm and fetches the maiden for his King and her handmaiden for himself after killing the giant in eagle disguise a symbol of death who has guarded the maidens in a house surrounded by flames.

One day as he sits on a burial mound, nine valkyriur ride past. Helgi has to go through trials in order to win the hand of the valkyria in marriage. Frosty Enclosure, who is a deadly wave, tries to rock the boat into sinking, wanting the bodies of the drowned in her cold embrace, as her lovers which means that she wants to kill them. In this life, Helgi begins his career as a Viking greedy for spoils. She urges him to change his life and go through the same trials of initiation that he did in his previous life.

This time, he is also victorious in the crucial battle at the Rock of Greed. This poem tells the same tale about Helgi Hundingsbani, some events are told in a different version, and some events are added to and complimented, and the comparison to the birth of the universe is not present in this poem. This is not a poem but a prose interlude written by those who edited and wrote down the Edda poem collection of the manuscript that was hidden away until , containing most of the Edda poems in a meaningful chronology I have followed this chronology in this presentation, adding the Song of the Sun and the Raven Charm, which have been transmitted in torn-out pages.

Sigmundr, in grief, takes the body of his son to the shores of death where the Ferryman awaits, and almost goes into the ferry with his son, but the Ferryman refuses him. But the Hundings attack, killing all the men of the family. She has been sleeping since the death of Helgi. If the young man can manage to wake her up, she will teach him knowledge about runes, healing and every language there is, everything that a human being would ever want to know. But there is a danger, namely that he may forget the valkyria bride and fall into the trap of cunning powers weaving for their own ends….

On the way across the ocean they enter a violent storm, yet in the middle of the storm they see a sorcerer standing calmly on a cliff. The young man asks advice for his present quest, and is given counsel. He wins the battle against the Hundings, and Reginn sings his praise. Reginn, suspecting that he is losing his control over the boy, goes angry, but can do nothing.

He will find the Red Gold of the gods, and then he will find the golden bright maiden who has slept — ever since his previous death. The flames reach high up into the heavens. As he removes her helmet, he discovers that the warrior is a woman. Her armor has grown into her body. The valkyria offers the Mead of Memory to the young man, and with it, she offers the knowledge about how to use the runes for all kinds of purposes: She has to answer for her crimes in life before the death-ogress before she can justify her actions and retrieve the soul of her beloved out of Hel, forever to be together.

The previous poems also contribute to the information about this ancient legend, partly based on and inspired by historical events. The in-laws are identified as Burgunds, a historical German tribe whose ruling class was massacred around the year AD by the Huns under the leadership of a young Attila, in league with the Roman general Aetius who wanted to put an end to the many border squirmishes caused by rebellious Burgunds. These historical events of fifth century Europe have found their way into the legendary lore of the Scandinavian Viking Age, as shown in the Poetic Edda.

Later, Gunnarr is married to one Brynhildr [Armor Battle], a name which refers to her previous incarnation, when she was a sleeping valkyria whose armor had grown into her body. Brynhildr is two characters at the same time: On one side, she is a Hunnish princess, sister to King Atli, married to the Burgund prince after his initiation had made him worthy — although this was in fact a hoax since he had not managed to complete the initiation himself.

On the other side, she is really the valkyria who has been appearing under different names in the previous poems, the valkyria who sleeps when her human is dead, and who reawakenes when he, reborn, come to seek her and wake her up. As a Hunnish Princess, Brynhildr discovers that her marriage to the oldest prince among the Burgunds is not going to make her their first lady, since that honor goes to the oldest princess.

This conflict is subtly revealed as the two sisters-in-law argue about which of them is the First Lady and ranks higher. For a Hunnish princess who was obviously used to patriarchy this was a shock: She felt tricked into marriage with a man that would never become king, and never be the foremost man among his people. This is a deeply humiliating fact for the princess, who feels gravely dishonored and tricked — tricked into marrying the lesser man and tricked into becoming the concubine of the king.

It was her sacred promise never to engage in a relationship with a man who knew fear. She will marry the one who is able to bring the Red Gold — a feat that will only be managed by a man who has no fear in his heart. Now she finds herself living like a human woman in a world of deceit where her husband is a timid man and where her true husband — the one who knows no fear — is married to another and appears to have forgotten her completely.

The valkyria proceeds to have her husband and his brother kill the king in order to usurp the throne. What really happens is that she embarks on a journey of initiation, where she reaches the realm of the norns and learns how to weave fate according to her liking. The trouble is that her previous weavings have caused the Hunnish King Atli to turn his forces against the Burgunds, suspecting them of having driven his sister Brynhildr to suicide, or perhaps even killed her.

But Atli refuses the match. He invites the Burgund princes to a banquet with the secret intention of destroying them. When she fails to prevent them from coming, she dresses up as a warrior and fights alongside her brothers during the battle that is to come.

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But with her submission comes a warning of how a trunk the masculine will topple if the roots the feminine are cut from under it. Atli, failing to understand the message, proposes that she arrange a funeral banquet to honor both their dead relatives. The historical events behind this story are based on a rumor that spread soon after the death of the real Attila in AD. The Hunnish lord had died during his wedding night to a German princess he had many wives, however.

His warriors claimed that he had died from heart attack, but rumour had it that it was the bride who had killed him, thus avenging her father and brothers who had died at his hands. The name of the bride was, according to Roman sources, Ildico, which probably is a Latinized version of Hildegunde.

The death of the historical Attila actually led to the rapid decline of the Hunnish empire, which had dominated and subdued the European tribes north of the Roman borders for a century already. The woman who reputedly and single-handedly brought down Attila indirectly also brought down the reign of seemingly invincible oppressors, ultimately causing the liberation of all the tribes. It should come as no surprise if that woman was remembered in legends afterwards. The poem begins with a story about a girl who has concealed her pregnancy for a very long time.

The valkyria arrives and sings powerful charms that finally brings about the birth of the children of New Fortress [ Borgny ] in Mornaland [Land of Tomorrow]. Here on a sudden, in trembling terror, Aeneas grasps his sword, and turns the naked edge against their coming; and did not his wise companion warn him that these were but faint, bodiless lives, flitting under a hollow semblance of form, he would rush upon them and vainly cleave shadows with steel. Here, thick with mire and of fathomless flood, a whirlpool seethes and belches into Cocytus all its sand. A grim ferry man guards these waters and streams, terrible in his squalor — Charon, on whose chin lies a mass of unkempt hoary hair; his eyes are staring orbs of flame; his squalid garb hangs by a knot from his shoulders.

They stood, pleading to be the first ferried across, and stretched out hands in yearning for the farther shore. But the surly boatman takes now these, now those, while others he thrusts away, back from the brink. What seek the spirits? By what rule do these leave the banks, and those sweep the lurid stream with oars? All this crowd that you see is helpless and graveless; yonder ferryman is Charon; those whom the flood carries are the buried. He may not carry them over the dreadful banks and hoarse-voiced waters until their bones have found a resting place.

A hundred years they roam and flit about these shores; then only are they admitted and revisit the longed-for pools. Him, when at last amid the deep gloom he knew the sorrowful form, he first accosts thus: Is this how he keeps his promise? For by chance the helm to which I clung, steering our course, was violently torn from me, and as I fell headlong, I dragged it down with me.

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By the rough seas I sear that not for myself did I feel such fear as for your ship, lest, stripped of its gear and deprived of its helmsman, it might fail amid such surging waves. Three stormy nights over the measureless seas the South Wind drove me wildly on the water; scarce on the fourth dawn, aloft on the crest of a wave, I sighted Italy. Little by little I swam shoreward, and even now was grasping at safety, but as, weighted by dripping garb, I caught with bent fingers at the rugged cliff-spurs, the barbarous folk assailed me with the sword, in ignorance deeming me a prize. Now the wave holds me, and the winds toss me on the beach.

Either case earth on me, for that you can, by seeking again the haven of Velia; or if there be a way, if your goddess-mother shows you one — for not without divine favour, I believe, are you trying to sail these great streams and the Stygian mere — give your hand to one so unhappy, and take me with you across the waves, that at last in death I may find a quiet resting place! But hear and remember my words, to solace your hard lot; for the neighbouring people, in their cities far and wide, shall be driven by celestial portents to appease your dust, and shall build a tomb, and to the tomb pay solemn offerings; and for ever the place shall bear the name of Palinurus.

But when, even from the Stygian wave, the boatman saw them passing through the silent wood and turning their feet towards the bank, he first, unhailed, accosts and rebukes them: This is the land of Shadows, of Sleep and drowsy Night; living bodies I may not carry in the Stygian boat. Trojan Aeneas, famous for piety and arms, descends to his father, to the lowest shades of Erebus. At this his swelling breast subsides from its anger.

No more is said; but he, marveling at the dread gift, the fateful wand so long unseen, turns his blue barge and nears the shore. Then other souls that sat on the long thwarts he routs out, and clears the gangways; at once he takes aboard giant Aeneas.

Edda poems – A Summary

The seamy craft groaned under the weight, and through its chinks took in marshy flood. At last, across the water, he lands seer and soldier unharmed on the ugly mire and grey sedge. To him, seeing the snakes now bristling on his necks, the seer flung a morsel drowsy with honey and drugged meal. He, opening his triple throat in ravenous hunger, catches it when thrown and, with monstrous frame relaxed, sinks to earth and stretches his bulk over all the den. The warder buried in sleep, Aeneas wins the entrance, and swiftly leaves the bank of that stream whence none return.

Near them were those on false charge condemned to die. Yet not without lot, not without a judge, are these places given: The region thereafter is held by those sad souls who in innocence wrought their own death and, loathing the light, flung away their lives. How gladly now, in the air above, would they bear both want and harsh distress! Fate withstands; the unlovely mere with its dreary water enchains them and Styx imprisons with his ninefold circles.

Here those whom stern Love has consumed with cruel wasting are hidden in walks withdrawn, embowered in a myrtle grove; even in death the pangs leave them not. With them goes Laodamia, and Caeneus, once a youth, now a woman, and again turned back by Fate into her form of old. Among them, with wound still fresh, Phoenician Dido was wandering in the great forest, and soon as the Trojan hero stood near and knew her, a dim form amid the shadows — even as, in the early month, one sees or fancies he has seen the moon rise amid the clouds — he shed tears, and spoke to her in tender love: Was the tale true then that came to me, that you were dead and had sought your doom with the sword?

By the stars I swear, by the world above, and whatever is sacred in the grave below, unwillingly, queen, I parted from your shores. Stay your step and withdraw not from our view. Whom do you flee? This is the last word Fate suffers me to say to you. She, turning away, kept her looks fixed on the ground and no more changes her countenance as he essays to speak than if she were set in hard flint or Marpesian rock. At length she flung herself away and, still his foe, fled back to the shady grove, where Sychaeus, her lord of former days, responds to her sorrows and gives her love for love.

Yet none the less, stricken by her unjust doom, Aeneas attends her with tears afar and pities her as she goes. And now they gained the farthest fields [the neutral region, neither Elysium nor Tartarus], where the renowned in war dwell apart. Here Tydeus meets him; here Parthenopaeus, famed in arms, and the pale shade of Adrastus; here, much wept on earth above and fallen in war, the Dardan chiefs; whom as he beheld, all in long array, he moaned — Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus, the three sons of Antenor, and Polyboetes, priest of Ceres, and Idaeus, still keeping his chariot, still his arms.

Round about, on right and left, stand the souls in throngs. To have seen him once is not enough; they delight to linger, to pace beside him, and to learn the causes of his coming. Scarce, indeed, did he know the quivering form that tried to hide its awful punishment; then, with familiar accents, unhailed, he accosts him: Who had power to deal thus with you?

Rumour told me that on that last night, weary with endless slaughter of Pelasgians, you had fallen upon a heap of mingled carnage. Then I myself set up a cenotaph upon the Rhoetean shore, and with loud cry called thrice upon your spirit. Your name and arms guard the place; you, my friend, I could not see, nor bury, as I departed, in your native land. It was she who left these memorials! For how we spent that last night amid deluding joys, you know; and all too well must you remember! When the fateful horse leapt over the heights of Troy, and brought armed infantry to weight its womb, she feigned a solemn dance and around the city led the Phrygian wives, shrieking in their Bacchic rites; she herself in the midst held a mighty torch and called the Danaans from the castle-height.

Meanwhile, this peerless wife takes every weapon from the house — even from under my head she had withdrawn my trusty sword; into the house she calls Menelaus and flings wide the door, hoping, I doubt not, that her lover would find this a great boon, and so the fame of old misdeeds might be blotted out. Why prolong the story? They burst into my chambers; with them comes their fellow counsellor of sin, the son of Aeolus [Ulysses]. O gods, with like penalties repay the Greeks, if with pious lips I pray for vengeance! But come, tell in turn what chance has brought you here, alive.

Or what doom compels you to visit these sad, sunless dwellings, this land of disorder? Here is the place, where the road parts: Go, you who are our glory, go; enjoy a happier fate! In front stands a huge gate, and pillars of solid adamant, that no might of man, nay, not even the sons of heaven, could uproot in war; there stands an iron tower, soaring high, and Tisiphone, sitting girt with bloody pall, keeps sleepless watch over the portal night and day.

From it are heard groans, the sound of the savage lash, the clank of iron and the dragging of chains. Aeneas stopped, and terrified drank in the tumult. With what penalties are they scourged? What is this vast wailing on the wind? Straightway avenging Tisiphone, girt with the lash, leaps on the guilty to scourge them, and with left hand brandishing her grim snakes, calls on her savage sister band.

Then at last, grating on harsh, jarring hinge, the infernal gates open. Do you see what sentry [Tisiphone] sits in the doorway? The monstrous Hydra, still fiercer, with her fifty black gaping throats, dwells within. Then Tartarus itself yawns sheer down, stretching into the gloom twice as far as is the upward view of the sky toward heavenly Olympus. Here, too I saw the twin sons of Aloeus, giant in stature, whose hands tried to tear down high Heaven and thrust down Jove from his realm above.

Borne by four horses and brandishing a torch, he rode triumphant through the Greek peoples and his city in the heart of Elis, claiming as his own the homage of deity. Madman, to mimic the storm clouds and inimitable thunder with brass and the tramp of horn-footed horses! Likewise one might see Tityos, nursling of Earth the mother of all. Over nine full acres his body is stretched, and a monstrous vulture with crooked beak gnaws at his deathless liver and vitals fruitful of anguish; deep within the breast he lodges and gropes for his feast; nor is any respite given to the filaments that grow anew.

High festal couches gleam with backs of gold, and before their eyes is spread a banquet in royal splendour. Reclining hard by, the eldest Fury stays their hands from touch of the table, springing forth with uplifted torch and thunderous cries. Seek not to learn that doom, or what form of crime, or fate, overwhelmed them! Some roll a huge stone, or hang outstretched on spokes of wheels; hapless Theseus sits and evermore shall sit, and Phlegyas, most unblest, gives warning to all and with loud voice bears witness amid the gloom: All dared a monstrous sin, and what they dared attained.

Nay, had I a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and voice of iron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime, or rehearse all the tale of torments. I descry the ramparts reared by Cyclopean forges and the gates with fronting arch, where they bid us lay the appointed gifts. Aeneas wins the entrance, sprinkles his body with fresh water, and plants the bough full on the threshold.

Here an ampler ether clothes the meads with roseate light, and they know their own sun, and stars of their own. Some disport their limbs on the grassy wrestling ground, vie in sports, and grapple on the yellow sand; some tread the rhythm of a dance and chant songs. There, too, the long-robed Thracian priest [Orpheus] matches their measures with the seven clear notes, striking the lyre now with his fingers, now with is ivory quill.

From afar he marvels at their phantom arms and chariots. Their lances stand fixed in the ground, and their unyoked steeds browse freely over the plain. The same pride in chariot and arms that was theirs in life, the same care in keeping sleek steeds, attends them now that they are hidden beneath the earth.

Others he sees, to right and left, feasting on the sward, and chanting in chorus a joyous paean within a fragrant laurel grove, from where the full flood of the Eridanus rolls upward through the forest. These, as they streamed round, the Sibyl thus addressed, Musaeus before all; for he is centre of that vast throng that gazes up to him, as with shoulders high he towers aloft: For his sake are we come, and have sailed across the great rivers of Erebus.

We dwell in shady groves, and live on cushioned riverbanks and in meadows fresh with streams. But if the wish in your heart so inclines, surmount this ridge, and soon I will set you on an easy path. Then they leave the mountaintops. And as he saw Aeneas coming towards him over the sward, he eagerly stretched forth both hands, while tears streamed from his eyes and a cry fell from his lips: Is it given me to see your face, my son, and hear and utter familiar tones?

Even so I mused and deemed the hour would come, counting the days, nor has my yearning failed me. Over what lands, what wide seas have you journeyed to my welcome!