Gylfaginning Pt. I

  Get your giggles out now please. Yes, that is pronounced gil-fag-inn-ing.
I'm not quite sure what the ing is, since Norse doesn't use the "ing" for verbs, but it breaks down into "The Beguiling of Gylfi", Gil from Gylfi, fag (and possibling ing, faging mea- I'm not going to officially say "faging" means to beguile. Even if it's not english, I feel dirty just thinking that) being part of beguiling, and inn being an article for "the". There you go. Now you know some Norse. In case you're wondering why I'm doing this, check it out here, here, or here.

  So the story starts out when a beggar lady shows up to King Gylfi of Sweden and is all like,
Yo, ho, dosey do, yo ho dolity doh!
 So King Gylfi is all like, "You're pretty amusing, have some land!" So he gives her "as much as four oxen might turn up in a day and a night." I have no idea how much that is, but if he's a king, it's probably a lot.

  Well it turns out, surprise surprise, that the beggar chick was one of the Æsir(1) . Her name was Gefjun(2), which is cool I guess. So she goes home, and travels to goddamn Jötunheimr(3) to get four Jötunn(4) oxen. Well, Jötunn oxen are fucking huge, so of course they come tramping in like they own the place, and tear the land a new asshole.

Probably for the best.

  The area that the oxen plowed is now called Lake Mälaren, which is a lake in Sweden (even ancient Norse mythology has a "humble beginning" story).

  Well Gylfi gets all bent out of shape, because honestly, would you want a goddess living on your land? She's the goddess associated with virginity, so it's not even like she's your hot neighbor or anything cool like that. Gylfi, in his anger, disguises himself and decides he's going to go to Ásgard(5). Gylfi is arbitrarily a wise man and knew magic(6), so he disguises himself as an old man, because the Norse pantheon is totally weak to two things, kryptonite and young men in an old-men cloaks. Just kidding, Odin can see the future from his throne in Ásgard's citadel, so he was able to see Gylfi coming before he even left his house, so Odin & Co. set up a fake hall (hut, tavern...thing. Just google meadhall), which seems rather immature, fighting fire with fire.

  For no reason other than plot device as only the Norse can do, Gylfi, in all of his wisdom and knowledge, goes "into the town", which is the most generic, "let's get this shit going already" transition. So to get shit going already, Gylfi walks into this hall, which was described as "a hall so high that he could not easily make out the top of it: its thatching was laid with golden shields after the fashion of a shingled roof." I suppose if I saw that I'd think more of it than just a regular hall, but it seems odd that if he's looking for gods the first place he would go would be town but whatever!!!

GET ON WITH IT!

Right, so Gylfi walks in and sees this guy juggling anlaces, "having seven in the air at one time". Don't bother google imaging anlaces, the world doesn't seem to think they exist. Dictionary.com defines them as "a medieval short dagger with a broad tapering blade". That just seems dangerous. The guy, I assume without stopping, is like, "Hey there 'old man', who are you to come into this hall?"

See? I can talk fancy too.

Well you don't give your real name to the first guy who asks when you're a secret agent in a magic hall of the gods, so he tells him that his name is Gangleri (Technically, Ek heiti Gangleri. Bam), and asks if he could he stay at this sweet-ass hall for the night. Then he asks who owns the hall, to which the guy with the daggers replies that their king owns it. I assume at this point Gangleri has to stop himself from saying, "Aw snap, I'm a king too! Best friends forever!" The ladies love me for my Paintbrush skills.

  Then the juggler tells Gangleri that he would go talk to the king and that he should come with to talk on his own behalf and they would see what was what. The two of them leave the room and as soon as they're in the next room, "straightway the door closed itself on his heels."

And with that we're going to end this blog, because it's getting really long and I'd rather not have a super-duper long post. Also, I like parts. Whiiich sounds a lot more serial killer-esque than I'd like.

-Skald out!

p.s.
I promise that this gets a lot more interesting. This is just the set up for a bunch of stories told in response to a series of challenges to the new king's wisdom.

1. The main pantheon of gods. The other one is the Vanir, which will come later.

2. Gef-yuhn
3. Literally "home of the giants".  I'm hoping to get somewhere in New York renamed. Pronounced Yo-ton-heimr, but in english the "r" wouldn't be there. We speak goddamn Norse here.
4. Also means Frost Giants in the right context.
5. As-guard, but if you want to sound like a gigantic cock, technically pronounced Ahz-guard.
6. You will see a lot of this throughout the mythology. Just wait til I get to Sigurd/Sigmund...

Prose Edda: Introductions

  Hello there! Yes, you, sitting in front of your computer reading this! Do you know anything about Thor? Forget about what you know about the comic book character, because the Thor that Thor is based on is even cooler. It's like... Well it's like a movie being based on a book. Obviously the original Thor and the comic book Thor are technically both "book" Thors, but I'm talking about an older book. It's called the Prose Edda, which is a manuscript written by one Snorri Sturlson, who also happens to the be author of the Poetic Edda (yes, that Poetic Edda, I was excited too!). There's a lot of speculation as to who the hell Snorri was (can I call him Snorri? It's a bit informal, but do I really have to call someone 800 years dead "sir"?). Some say that he was an adventuring priest who got shit done. The other version is that he was a priest, but also the son of a politician. It's also been speculated that through some shady dealings, Snorri's father was assassinated, and Snorri was behind it. Now, personally, I can't condemn a man named Snorri, which is probably why they don't ask me back for jury duty. I like to go with the badass priest story. I'm sure he was a politician (well Wikipedia says it at least, and that's a reliable source), but I'm hoping he was one of those cool guys who decided to travel around because he was the son of a very powerful man and could do that sort of thing over spring break while everyone else is in Florida.

  Snorri was alive during the Christianization of Iceland and the other Scandinavian countries, which sucks, but what can you do about it? I guess at some point he decided that he wanted the dying mythology to be recorded, and because of that, I present to you, The Prose Edda; Interpreted by Me. Man, that really needs a picture drawn in crayon...

Not crayon, but aaaaw yeeeeaaah.

  Anyway, like everything else I do, I don't have much of a "true" background, meaning a degree or formal study, but for about a year I studied the Norse language and spent half a year reading the entire Prose Edda and about 75% of the Poetic Edda. At the beginning of this school year, I reread most of the Gylfaginning, the first, and best known, part of the Prose. So my senior year of high school I used to regale my friends with tales from the Eddas. But of course I'm not going to be able to memorize Norse poetry, that's ridiculous. Here's a sample from the actual poems:

1. "Sawest thou Sigrlin, | Svafnir's daughter,
The fairest maid | in her home-land found?
Though Hjorvath's wives | by men are held
Goodly to see | in Glasir's wood."


So for their sake and mine, I paraphrased. They seemed to enjoy it, and I think you will too. So without further ado, to you and you and you, The Gylfaginning.

All texts here and following are taken from Sacred Texts and is considered Public Domain. For the Prose to see what the hell I'm talking about, click here. For the crazy/wordy Poetic Edda coming much later, click here!