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By Esaias Tegnér
THREE miles extended around the fields of the homestead, on three sides | |
| Valleys and mountains and hills, but on the fourth side was the ocean. | |
| Birch woods crowned the summits, but down the slope of the hillsides | |
| Flourished the golden corn, and man-high was waving the rye-field. | |
| Lakes, full many in number, their mirror held up for the mountains, | 5 |
| Held for the forests up, in whose depths the high-horned reindeers | |
| Had their kingly walk, and drank of a hundred brooklets. | |
| But in the valleys widely around, there fed on the greensward | |
| Herds with shining hides and udders that longed for the milk-pail. | |
| ’Mid these scattered, now here and now there, were numberless flocks of | 10 |
| Sheep with fleeces white, as thou seest the white-looking stray clouds, | |
| Flock-wise spread o’er the heavenly vault, when it bloweth in spring-time. | |
| Coursers two times twelve, all mettlesome, fast fettered storm-winds, | |
| Stamping stood in the line of stalls, and tugged at their fodder. | |
| Knotted with red were their manes, and their hoofs all white with steel shoes. | 15 |
| Th’ banquet-hall, a house by itself, was timbered of hard fir. | |
| Not five hundred men (at ten times twelve to the hundred) | |
| Filled up the roomy hall, when assembled for drinking, at Yule-tide. | |
| Thorough the hall, as long as it was, went a table of holm-oak, | |
| Polished and white, as of steel; the columns twain of the High-seat | 20 |
| Stood at the end thereof, two gods carved out of an elm-tree; | |
| Odin with lordly look, and Frey with the sun on his frontlet. | |
| Lately between the two, on a bear-skin (the skin it was coal-black, | |
| Scarlet-red was the throat, but the paws were shodden with silver), | |
| Thorsten sat with his friends, Hospitality sitting with Gladness. | 25 |
| Oft, when the moon through the cloud-rack flew, related the old man | |
| Wonders from distant lands he had seen, and cruises of Vikings | |
| Far away on the Baltic, and Sea of the West, and the White Sea. | |
| Hushed sat the listening bench, and their glances hung on the graybeard’s | |
| Lips, as a bee on the rose; but the Scald was thinking of Brage, | 30 |
| Where, with his silver beard, and runes on his tongue, he is seated | |
| Under the leafy beech, and tells a tradition by Mimer’s | |
| Ever-murmuring wave, himself a living tradition. | |
| Midway the floor (with thatch was it strewn) burned ever the fire-flame | |
| Glad on its stone-built hearth; and thorough the wide-mouthed smoke-flue | 35 |
| Looked the stars, those heavenly friends, down into the great hall. | |
| Round the walls, upon nails of steel, were hanging in order | |
| Breastplate and helmet together, and here and there among them | |
| Downward lightened a sword, as in winter evening a star shoots. | |
| More than helmets and swords the shields in the hall were resplendent, | 40 |
| White as the orb of the sun, or white as the moon’s disk of silver. | |
| Ever and anon went a maid round the board, and filled up the drink-horns, | |
| Ever she cast down her eyes and blushed; in the shield her reflection | |
| Blushed, too, even as she; this gladdened the drinking champions. | |
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