Description: Óðinn
charging at Fenrir, who will devour him, at the Battle of
Ragnarök. Óðinn is riding Sleipnir and holding his spear
Gungnir. This scene is from the Eddaic poem Völuspá in Karl
Gjellerup's Den Ældre Eddas
Gudesange.
Source: Den Ældre Eddas Gudesange
Folio or Page: 17
Medium: Not known
Date: 1895
Dimensions (mm): 120 x 70
Provenance:
Gift of Estate of Richard Beck to Special Collections at the
University of Victoria. This illustration from Den Ældre Eddas Gudesange was photographed by
P. A. Baer in August 2011.
Call number: PT7234 A2G5
Rights:
This illustration from Den Ældre Eddas
Gudesange is in the public domain.
Research notes, early print reviews, etc.:
P. A. Baer notes that Lorenz Frølich has depicted Óðinn's horse Sleipnir
with four legs in this illustration instead of his usual eight. However, Frølich
does portray Sleipnir as being eight-legged on page 144 of Den Ældre Eddas Gudesange at the end of Hárbardsljóð
(Harbard's Song).
Rudolf Simek notes in Dictionary of Northern
Mythology that "although Sleipnir is repeatedly referred to in the
Eddic lays the horse is rarely mentioned in skaldic poetry which suggests that
the name is quite young, perhaps only originating as the name of Óðinn's horse
towards the end of the 10th century. The story of Loki giving birth to Sleipnir
was probably only an invention of Snorri's."(293).
Bibliography:
Editions
Ældre Eddas
Gudesange.
Translated by
Karl
Gjellerup,
Kjøbenhavn: P.G. Philipsens
Forlag, 1895.
Secondary Sources
Baer,
Patricia
Ann. An Old
Norse Image Hoard: From the Analog Past to the Digital Present.
Diss.
U. of Victoria, 2013.
Web.
Cleasby, Richard
and
Vigfússon
Guðbrandur
. An Icelandic-English Dictionary.
Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1957.
Simek,
Rudolf.
Angela
Hall
. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. W
Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer,
2007.
Gungnir (non.)
Óðinn's spear whose name means "swaying one."
Creatures: animals, birds, monsters etc.
Fenrir (non.)
One of the names for the monstrous wolf who is one of the three
monstrous offspring of Loki and the giantess Angrboða.
Fenris (non.)
One of the names for the monstrous wolf who is one of the three
monstrous offspring of Loki and the giantess Angrboða.
Fenrisúlfr (non.)
Fenris Wolf (en.)
One of the names for the monstrous wolf who is one of the three
monstrous offspring of Loki and the giantess Angrboða.
Sleipnir (non.)
Óðinn´s eight-legged horse which Loki bore after mating with the Giant
Builder's stallion Svaðilfari.
Gods and Goddesses
Óðinn (non.)
Odin (en.)
The chief god of the Æsir in The Prose Edda.
However, in Heimskringla he was a mortal who
tricks the King of Sweden into believing that he was a god.
Myths
The Battle of
RagnarökThe myth concerning the final great battle between
the gods and the giants.
Mythological Events
Ragnarök (non.)
Ragnarok (en.)
The final great battle between the gods and the giants.
EddukvæðiPoetic Edda
This collection of eddic poems was compiled by an anonymous scholar in
Iceland in the twelfth century. It was for a time mistakenly attributed
to a scholar named Sæmundr hinn fróði (1056–1133) and thus was known as
Sæmundar Edda.
Völuspá (non.)
Prophecy of the Seeress (en.)
One of the mythological poems in the Poetic Edda. A Völva, or seeress,
recites the history of the world to Óðinn. She then goes on to
prophesize the destruction of the world at the Battle of Ragnarok and
its rebirth after the battle. Völuspá is preserved in the late
thirteenth-century Codex Regius manuscript, a.k.a. GKS 2365 4º, and in
the fourteenth-century Hauksbók manuscripts, i.e., AM 371 4to, AM 544
4to and AM 675 4to.
Ældre Eddas
Gudesange (da.)
An edition of the Poetic Edda with
illustrations by Lorenz Frølich.
Source Persons
Frølich,
Lorenz (da.)
b. 1820
d. 1908
Nationality: Danish
Frolich was a painter, illustrator and etcher.
Gjellerup,
Karl (da.)
b. 2nd June 1857
d. 13th October 1919
Nationality: Danish
Gellurup was a Danish poet and novelist who won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1917.
