The Skald's Daughter

I have found my thoughts turning to poetic forms more recently as I continue with my Norse-inspired literature.  The Poetic Eddas are a constant source of wonderment and confusion for me and so I have begun to study the anonymously authored Fornyrðislag of Eddaic poetry. I love this idea, that the Edda is the property of all storytellers and poets to be peformed and enjoyed without censure or boundaries. This was in contrast to Dróttkvæði, the bread and butter of the Old Norse courtly bard, the Skald. Skalds sang of their liege Lord's prowess and valour, the Eddas were the stuff of the Ancients, with their origins lost to time... Just as the daughter is a step removed from her Sire, so is the Poetic Edda a separate entity to the poetry of the Skaldic domain.

This is my first foray into Poetic Edda-form and an overture to producing a true rendering of things mythological...

Hear me sing of the ages

Of times well past

And those that shall come.

These songs from the void.

I give Time a voice

And Space, a home.

Stories of the ancestors

Shall bring them back

A way of ancient words

Across the years;

Through the night

Into home and hearth

Death, birth and the gods

All that lies between

Shall be revealed through me

The whispers I hear

Thin as cobwebs

A thousand times as strong

Pour the mead, a golden sea

See it flow, like these words

That spill from my lips

Travelling across the fires

Infinite as the universe

Open your mind's eye...

Pictures from the past

I will share with you

Sent by the Old Ones!

A vision, a gift.

A warning, a dream

Of forever.

Born in the dust of the world

Raised up by sun

To dance with the moon;

Blessed by the stars.

Child, Woman, Crone.

I open the crane skin bag....

Sif Dreaming

Sif, the second wife of Thor, is the lady with the corn-gold hair. Some sources state that she has the gift of prophecy, although this is not mentioned in the Eddas. 

I find the sonnet both challenging and rewarding for its structural limitations, but found it fit the melding of ancient and classical modes of poetic delivery. Though this is a stylistic deviation of this curtal sonnet from the traditional English form, it'll suffice for now - I will revisit it in time...

Continuing my reworking of Norse myth, I offer one of Sif's prophecies. 

The Götterdämmerung

Thrice the white Shroud falls, Moon and Sun are dimm'd,

O’er wights that flee before dark blades of kin.

Bright toothed, the horn’s song answers cry and string

When Fen-dweller the fetter’d link doth break

The earth, as sea to Coils unravelling.

And Great vessels set to grim purpose, sail,

To bring all death to ride the Battle’s Shake

Who herald this Gold-glimps’d Twilight fate.

With Fire and Ice darts Shifting treachery;

Then Bravery shall fall and so shall we.

A Landdísir remembers...

We were not born. We were made.

Before the Age of Men and its wheels and chains and the weight of logic, we had no form.  We existed in the winds, rain and the warmth of the sun, dwelling in rock and tree and waterfall.  Present in all things, we were Landvættir.  Our light was the life of the earth and though hidden it was not unnoticed. They were thankful our lakes quenched their thirsts, our forests offered them game to hunt, that stones could shelter. Then mortals began to need us. Their petitions for aid in their fleeting lives were a plea we could not ignore – and thus we sealed our fate, changed by the needs of man. The power of thought, the magick of the mind!

We became Álfar.

Made into this word of man, this world of men, their belief shaped us anew, shifting our forms as they changed their minds as to what we were. The destruction was a creation.  Reified, the naming gave us substance.  In the minds and mouths of humans we were given flesh - clothed in their word-form. How strange they are with their need to name, but words hold power and once they spoke our new name aloud they held dominion over us.

Elf. 

Their voices called us forth from the tree in the wood, the flower on the tundra, the pool-stirring breeze. 

Fashioned from fen and forest, sedge and waterway.

Moulded from  mountain and cliff, valley and grove.

Shaped from sea and shore, fjord and pasture.

The pain this caused us was fleeting in mortal terms, though it is a wound we shall bear until the End Of All Things. 

So we stepped into the world, our immortal forms in the guise of our creators. From Álfheimr we slipped through doorways onto the mortals’ plane.  Out of the earth we came; out of darkness we brought our Light into Manheimr.   Our purpose changed too, no longer soothing the base sufferance of human existence, but a required finesse as humanity created wonders – art, music, song... our magick became theirs, born out of their connection with nature.


Humanity grew, and changed. And that which we had invested so much energy and love in could not be left to wither and fade.  Our brightness was both a gift to mortals and a curse to Elfkind and in time we became earthbound as with their craftsmanship came beautiful bonds.  The subtle chains of servitude.


Some Elves left, abandoning their kin and mankind - returning forever to Álfheimr, returning to dwell in tree and rock and pool. The rest of us stayed, hopeful we could exist in harmony, always attempting bring beauty and love, trying to share Elf-nature –bringing them out of themselves as they brought us into the world.   

No more could the brilliance of our Vril refresh and sustain the land, the water or the air.  Steel and steam, glass and greed, iron and anger - such is the stuff of human life now.  We could not inhabit these forms of matter, so our energies waned. 

And so began the debilitation of the earth and the necessity for repetition of our countless rebirths in mortal form.  Once we were nature, now we are a dying culture.  There is no longer a need for us, nor a belief in our kind.  Yet we still walk the earth clad in the thick meat of human bodies, our outer brightness burned away through the monotony of myriad mortal lives. We are still immortal though many of us have forgotten our true nature and dwell evanescent, content in their endless repetitions, caught in the same traps as the wights we first came to aid.

I hold onto the knowledge that our inner essence remains truly Light. And when I and the other Ljósálfr leave these bodies with this understanding, we shall return to Elfhome and exist once again as pure energy - sustaining, renewing, loving. Freed at last from this point in space and time, I shall be unfettered from these cycles of Doing, able to just Be... MysElf.