Poetry
The Lay of Atli
Atlakviða
Anonymous · 900
Opening lines
Atli sendi
ár til Gunnars
kunnan segg at ríða,
Knéfröðr var sá heitinn;
Atli sent
long ago to Gunnarr
a well-known man on horseback,
Knéfröðr was his name;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from heimskringla.no
Synopsis
Atli, king of the Huns, sends his messenger Knéfrøðr to invite his Burgundian brothers-in-law, Gunnarr and Högni, to his court, promising them weapons, horses, lands and treasures. The two brothers, who already own an immense hoard of gold, are wary; Högni reads a warning in the ring wrapped in wolf's hair that their sister Guðrún, Atli's wife, has sent them. Gunnarr nevertheless accepts, swearing that no one will profit from his riches if he does not return, and the two kings cross the mountains and the forest of Myrkviðr to Atli's ramparts, where Guðrún tells them that they should not have come.
Context
The Atlakviða is among the oldest poems of the Edda: it is dated to around 900, perhaps to the ninth century, before the settlement of Greenland. The Codex Regius calls it Greenlandic, but most scholars see in this a borrowing from the title of the following poem, the Atlamál, and a Norwegian origin seems probable. Felix Genzmer proposed as its author the skald Þorbjörn hornklofi, in 872, on the basis of its resemblance to the Hrafnsmál. The metre mixes fornyrðislag and málaháttr, and the text is damaged in places. Atli is Attila there, and the saga of the Völsungs retells the story in prose.
Who it is for
A short and brutal poem of some forty stanzas, to be read in an annotated edition that explains the names and allusions.
Prizes and reception
Perhaps the oldest of the heroic poems of the Edda, on a legend that the Atlamál tells differently.