se songs
are to the German poem what the ante-Homeric ballad literature of Greece
about Troy and Ulysses was to the Iliad and Odyssey as reduced to unity by
Homer.

The first poem in the first part of the poetic Edda is the Voluspa, or
Wisdom of Vala. The Vala was a prophetess, possessing vast supernatural
knowledge. Some antiquarians consider the Vala to be the same as the
Nornor, or Fates. They were dark beings, whose wisdom was fearful even to
the gods, resembling in this the Greek Prometheus. The Voluspa describes
the universe before the creation, in the morning of time, before the great
Ymir lived, when there was neither sea nor shore nor heaven. It begins
thus, Vala speaking:--

"I command the devout attention of all noble souls,
Of all the high and the low of the race of Heimdall;
I tell the doings of the All-Father,
In the most ancient Sagas which come to my mind.

"There was an age in which Ymir lived,
When was no sea, nor shore, nor salt waves;
No earth below, nor heaven above,
No yawning abyss and no grassy land.

"Till the sons of Bors lifted the dome of heaven,
And created the vast Midgard (earth) below;
Then the sun of the south rose above the mountains,
And green grasses made the ground verdant.

"The sun of the south, companion of the moon,
Held the horses of heaven with his right hand;
The sun knew not what its course should be,
The moon knew not what her power should be,
The stars knew not where their places were.

"Then the counsellors went into the hall of judgment,
And the all-holy gods held a council.
They gave names to the night and new moon;
They called to the morning and to midday,
To the afternoon and evening, arranging the times."

The Voluspa goes on to describe how the gods assembled on the field of
Ida, and proceeded to create metals and vegetables; after that the race of
dwarfs, who preside over the powers of nature and the mineral world. Then
Vala narrates how the three gods, Odin, Honir, and Lodur, "the mighty and
mild Aser," found Ask and Embla, the Adam and Eve of the Northern legends,
lying without soul, sense, motion, or color. Odin gave them their souls,
Honir their intellects, Lodur their blood and colored flesh. Then comes
the description of the ash-tree Yggdrasil, of the three Norns, or sisters
of destiny, who tell the Aser their doom, and the end and renewal of the
world; and how