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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 28

Tord of Meeresburg

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Tord of Meeresburg

(Old Danish Folk-Song).

This "Volkslied," which manifestly relates the same story as the "Thrymsquidha," is an interesting illustration of the change and development which takes place in oral tradition. It is taken from the "Kæmpe-Viser," first printed in 1591, and we may assume the Eddaic lay to have taken this shape in the Danish islands about the first of the sixteenth century. Wilhelm Grimm, in the preface to his admirable German version of the "Kæmpe og Elskovs Viser," com-paring the two lays, says :—"In the Eddaic song, all occurs among the gods : Thor tosses his beard, and shakes his head, as he fails to find Ms hammer: Loki asks the feather-garb from Freyja, and she will give it to him if it were of gold or of silver. And how divinely rages Freyja at the proposal to become the giant's wife! all the dwellings of the gods tremble, and the great flashing jewel burets asunder. In the 'Volkslied,' on the contrary, there is no trace of the gods; there are other names (only the crafty servant is called Loki also); all happens in a human manner, and is told wholly without ornament." *

In his appendix, Grimm points out a remarkable similarity between the same tale and a narrative in the Samsonfagra Saga. (Ibid, 520.)

The Kæmpe Viser (p. 424) contains the first verse of another version of the same song, in which Tord is called Torekal.

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* Grimm's Altdänische Heldenlieder. Heid. 1811. Introd. XIX.