''Völuspá hin skamma'' (

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

: 'The Short

Völuspá ''Vǫluspá'' (also ''Völuspá'', ''Vǫlospá'' or ''Vǫluspǫ́''; Old Norse: 'Prophecy of the völva, a seeress'; reconstructed Old Norse: ) is the best known poem of the ''Poetic Edda''. It tells the story of the creation of the world and ...

) is an Old Norse poem which survives as a handful of stanzas in ''

Hyndluljóð ''Hyndluljóð'' (Old Norse: 'The Lay of Hyndla') is an Old Norse poem often considered a part of the ''Poetic Edda''. It is preserved in its entirety only in ''Flateyjarbók'', but some stanzas are also quoted in the ''Prose Edda'', where they ...

'', in the ''

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic me ...

'', and as one stanza in the ''

Gylfaginning ''Gylfaginning'' (Old Norse: 'The Beguiling of Gylfi' or 'The Deluding of Gylfi'; c. 20,000 words; 13th century Old Norse pronunciation ) is the first part of the 13th century ''Prose Edda'' after the Prologue. The ''Gylfaginning'' deals with th ...

'' section of

Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of the ...

's ''

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' ( is, Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often assumed to have been t ...

''. The name of the poem is only known due to Snorri's citation of it in ''Gylfaginning'' (chapter 5): The additional stanzas that remain appear in ''Hyndluljóð''. In his translation of ''Hyndluljóð'', Henry Adams Bellows comments that the preserved fragment of ''Völuspá hin skamma'' shows that it was a "late and very inferior imitation of the great Voluspo", and he dates it to the twelfth century. He further suggests that its appearance in ''Hyndluljóð'' is due to the blunder of a copyist who confused the two poems, and he does not consider them to be of any great value either as poetry or as mythology.

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MyNDIR (My Norse Digital Image repository)
illustrations from Victorian and Edwardian retellings of Voluspa Hin Skamma. Clicking on the thumbnail will give you the full image and information concerning it.

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