Eddic to English
HENRY ADAMS BELLOWS, 1923
The Poetic Edda
The American-Scandinavian Foundation
583 pages
This translation is in the public domain:
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Translated poems (35):
Codex Regius (31)
Vǫluspá, Hávamál, Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Skírnismál, Hárbarðsljóð, Hymiskviða, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða, Vǫlundarkviða, Alvíssmál, Frá dauða Sinfjǫtla, Grípisspá, Reginsmál, Fáfnismál, Sigrdrífumál, Brot af Sigurðarkviðu, Sigurðarkviða hin skamma, Helreið Brynhildar, Dráp Niflunga, Oddrúnargrátr, Atlakviða, Atlamál, Guðrúnarhvǫt, Hamðismál, Helgakviða Hundingsbana (I, II), Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, Guðrúnarkviða (I, II, III)
Non-Codex Regius (4)
Baldrs draumar, Rígsþula, Hyndluljóð, Svipdagsmal
Other notable contents: None
Introduction page length: 17 pages
Note format: Footnotes
Dual Edition? No
Rendering: jǫtunn = "giant" (cf. p. 5), þurs = "giant" (cf. p. 118)
Censorship: No (cf. 162, 163)
Original illustrations? None
I. TRANSLATION SAMPLES
a.) Vǫluspá (p. 9):
An ash I know, Yggdrasil its name,
With water white is the great tree wet ;
Thence come the dews that fall in the dales,
Green by Urth’s well does it ever grow.
b.) Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (p. 327):
Sigrun went in the hill with Helgi, and said:
"Now am I glad of our meeting together,
as Othin's hawks, so eager for prey,
When slaughter and flesh, all warm they scent,
Or dew-wet see the red of day.
c.) Rígsþula (p. 215):
With Rig-Jarl soon the runes he shared,
More crafty he was, and greater his wisdom;
The right he sought, and see he won it,
Rig to be called, and runes to know.
II. Reviews
Gade, Kari Ellen. 1993. Review of 1991 reissue by Edwin Mellen Press. Monatshefte, vol. 85, no. 3 (Fall 1993), p. 381-383.
Excerpt:
Although the introductions and notes to Bellows’s 1923 edition by now are sorely outdated and have little scholarly value, his translations of the eddic poems still rank among the most poetic in the English language, and apart from a few misunderstandings derived from the editions and commentaries on which his translations were based-they quite faithfully follow the Norse originals. A revised edition of Bellows’s The Poetic Edda with an updated scholarly apparatus would certainly be welcome. However, the present edition is substandard and cannot be recommended; Bellows’s work surely deserves a better fate than this.
III. Observations
Polymath Henry Adams Bellows's (d. 1939) history of publications reveals a multi-storied life ever rooted in his early days as an academic. For example, in 1920, the Government Printing Office published Bellows's A Treatise on Riot Duty for the National Guard, and in 1924, Miller published his A Short History of Flour Milling. At various points, Bellows was a United States Army colonel, a founding member of what is today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and a General Mills executive. Bellows also happened to be a poet, and, evidenced by his extremely footnote-heavy edition, it appears that during his time as an academic he came to love the Poetic Edda enough to produce a new translation of this notoriously difficult text for the American-Scandinavian Foundation (cf. acknowledgement on p. ix)
Bellows's tome features a similarly pseudo-archaic style several other translators of the Poetic Edda have also employed (see, for example, the refrain "I rede thee, Loddfafnir!", p. 53-59). Generally speaking, this style occurs when translators attempt to render Old Norse into English by using as many English cognates as possible, words with shared origins (the two languages are quite closely related), or by featuring obscure Old Norse loan words found in the English language. To do this, translators often reach into the Middle English lexicon. While dependence on cognates may yield a more concise translation and there's certainly no harm in learning new words, translations such as these alienate readers who lack a background in, say, historical linguistics.
Regardless of his rendering choices, Bellows's footnotes remain highly useful for obscure topics, as nary a stanza in the entire translation goes without some sort of commentary. Bellows's extensive footnotes are particularly notable in light of a tendency among recent translators to feature no notes at all (such as those of Dodds, 2014, and Crawford, 2015).