This stanza is the last part of a short mini-series in which Odins tells of his struggle to, ahem, 'get his end away' with the daughter of Billingr: in verse 97 Odin first sees the maiden; in 98 he converses with her; in 99 he's well and truelly smitten with desire; in 100 he tries to break in to her house, but is met by the men of the house who were waiting for him; and in this verse he finally gets into the maidens sleeping quarters and only has the dog to get past.
I suppose that if nothing else we can humans can take comfort that even Gods (whether one considers Gods as spirit beings or as archetypes) with all of their wisdom and power suffer from base human desires/temptations.
101
Ok nær morni
er ek var enn um kominn
þá var saldrótt um sofin
grey eitt ek þá fann
innar góðu konu
bundit beðjum á
And towards morning,
when I came back again,
the hall retainers were asleep.
Then I found only
the good woman's [4] bitch
bound to the bed.
[End.]
No comments:
Post a Comment