'Völuspá: The Song of the Sybil'

Dead Can Dance - Song of the Sibyl

DannyAbaris

Song - The Song Of The Sibyl (Live Remastered)
Artist - Dead Can Dance
Album - Toward The Within (Remastered)
Licensed by - [Merlin] Beggars (on behalf of 4AD); UBEM, Public Domain Compositions, UMPI, CMRRA, and 1 Music Rights Societies

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Völuspá

Völuspá (Old Norse Vǫluspá or Vǫluspǫ́, Prophecy of the Völva (Seeress); reconstructed Old Norse [ˈwɔlʊˌspɒː], Modern Icelandic is the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda. It tells the story of the creation of the world and its coming end, related to the audience by a völva addressing Odin. It is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology. Henry Adam Bellows proposed a 10th-century dating and authorship by a pagan Icelander with knowledge of Christianity. He also assumes the early hearers would have been very familiar with the "story" of the poem and not in need of an explanation.

The poem is preserved whole in the Codex Regius and Hauksbók manuscripts while parts of it are quoted in the Prose Edda. It consists of approximately 60 fornyrðislag stanzas.

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The Song of the Sibyl

The Song of the Sibyl (Catalan: El Cant de la Sibil) is a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant, the lyrics of which compose a prophecy describing the Apocalypse, which has been performed at some churches of Majorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) and Alghero (Sardinia, Italy), and some Catalan churches, in Catalan language on Christmas Eve nearly uninterruptedly since medieval times. It was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on November 16, 2010.

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Dead Can Dance

Formed in Australia in 1981, Dead Can Dance is something of a legend in neoclassical dark wave and related genres.

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'Völuspá: The Song of the Sybil'

This short booklet, published in 1968, is a translation of the Old Norse Eddic poem Völuspá by W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor. In the book's title, they combined Odinic prophesy with the title of a prophetic Gregorian chant as the sub-title.

Heidi men call me when their homes I visit,
A far seeing Völva, wise in talismans.
Caster of spells, cunning in magic.
To wicked women welcome always.

-- From 'The Song of the Sybil'

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'Völuspá: The Song of the Sybil', Auden and Taylor 1981. The title of this piece would be translated more literally as the 'Prophecy of the Volva. Volva or volve, means "woman with a magic wand" or "wand-bearer" and hence denoted a woman knowledgeable in seiðr (Gordon, 1957).

-- Footnotes from 'Witchcraft Out of the Shadows' (Ruickbie, 2004)

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