{"id":169650,"date":"2025-01-17T10:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T15:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=169650"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T15:41:09","slug":"making-of-a-poem-emily-osborne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/17\/making-of-a-poem-emily-osborne\/","title":{"rendered":"Making of a Poem: Emily Osborne on \u201cCruel Loss of Sons\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

An early draft of a stanza of “Cruel Loss of Sons.”<\/p><\/div>\n

For our series Making of a Poem, we\u2019re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they\u2019ve contributed to our pages. A selection from Emily Osborne\u2019s translation of Egill Skallagr\u00edmsson\u2019s \u201cCruel Loss of Sons<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 appears in our new Winter issue, no. 250.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What was the challenge of this particular translation? <\/b><\/p>\n

The poetry of the Icelandic and Norwegian skalds, or poets, from the Viking Age\u2014the late eighth to mid-eleventh century C.E.<\/small>\u2014is notoriously challenging to translate. It was composed orally and passed down orally for generations before being written down in manuscripts. As a result, in the extant manuscripts and runic fragments found on sticks that preserve the poetry, we find variations in redactions, illegible or illogical word choices made by scribes, and frequent references to obscure myths and cultural traditions. Simply understanding a skaldic poem requires a fair amount of background scholarship. The skaldic practice of using compound kennings, in which metaphors and symbols are substituted for regular nouns, adds another layer of complexity. For instance, in this poem, Egill calls his head the \u201cwagon of thought,\u201d his mouth the \u201cword-temple,\u201d and Odin the \u201cmaker of bog-malt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Above and beyond gleaning the literal meaning of words, a translator must also be able to understand the frequent and surprising tone shifts that add shades of insinuation or emotion. Statements that seem illogical could be ironic or expressing litotes. In \u201cCruel Loss of Sons,\u201d I found it particularly difficult to interpret Egill\u2019s tone when he speaks of his strained relationship with his patron god, Odin, and the other gods after the death of his sons. In lines such as these, the emotions communicated are ambiguous: \u201cI was on good terms \/ with the spear-god, \/ trusted in him, \/ tokened my loyalty, \/ until that trainer \/ of triumphs, champion \/ of chariots, cut cords \/ of closeness with me\u201d; and \u201cI\u2019d scuffle with \/ the sea-god\u2019s girl.\u201d Is the poet indicating betrayal? Sorrow? Defiance? Incredulity? Anger? Self-deprecation? Absurdity? When translating, it can be hard to avoid pinning down the tone too neatly. My task with this poem was to allow grief to carve out its own emotional track.<\/p>\n

How did writing the first draft feel to you?<\/b><\/p>\n

It felt like joining a lineage of transmission fueled by persistence and sorrow. \u201cCruel Loss of Sons\u201d was, as far as we know, composed orally by Egill in the mid-tenth century. The poem made its way into the later medieval prose saga about Egill, Egils saga Skallagr\u00edmssonar<\/i>, which survives in various forms in various manuscripts and manuscript copies of the thirteenth century and after. Questions of origin and authenticity naturally present themselves. Still, I find this lineage of transmission a compelling testimony to the poem\u2019s ability to move audiences separated by centuries.<\/p>\n

Grief, it seems, was the catalyst for transmission. Egils saga Skallagr\u00edmssonar<\/i> tells how Egill was so overcome with grief after his sons\u2019 deaths that he resolved to starve himself to death. His daughter, Thorgerd, convinced him to live by arguing that, if he died too, no one would be left to compose a fitting memorial to their dead kin. She promised her father that, if he composed the memorial poem, she would carve the words on a rune-stick.<\/p>\n

Egill opens his poem with an image of struggling to lift up \u201cpoem-beams\u201d in order to \u201cdrag\u201d poetry out of his mind. The difficulty of constructing an elegy becomes a recurring theme in the work. In the Norse \u201cmead of poetry myth,\u201d an elaborate etiological story referenced in \u201cCruel Loss of Sons\u201d and other medieval Icelandic sources, Odin gives humans and gods the ability to compose poetry by stealing a fermented, \u201cinspirational\u201d liquid from the supernatural race of the j\u00f6tnar<\/i>. I was struck by how Egill mentions Odin\u2019s risky journey to steal this mead so lightly and quickly while spending far more words on his personal difficulties in composing a poem about his dead sons. Composing this poem was grueling for Egill, and I think any translator would feel a sympathetic burden. Translating someone else\u2019s suffering should feel like heavy labor, even across centuries and cultures.<\/p>\n

Did you show your drafts to other writers or friends or confidantes? If so, what did they say?<\/b><\/p>\n

In 2017, I read a freer, more impressionistic translation of part of this poem to an audience at the Vancouver Public Library. It was the first time I had presented one of my Norse translations to a nonacademic audience. The positive feedback and curiosity were overwhelming. Many people were surprised that the Vikings composed poetry at all, let alone sophisticated verse. These reactions first gave me the idea to translate an anthology of skaldic poetry for a general reading audience, partly in order to bring wider attention to a relatively unknown aspect of Viking and medieval Scandinavian culture.<\/p>\n

The next time I shared a translation of \u201cCruel Loss of Sons\u201d with someone wasn\u2019t until 2023, when my husband read my more literal translation of the entire poem. I\u2019m fortunate to be married to a writer, Daniel Cowper\u2014we exchange our writing and are comfortable giving each other\u2019s work tough love. When he read \u201cCruel Loss of Sons,\u201d he didn\u2019t suggest any edits\u2014a rare thing for him! I have made changes since and am sure I will make more, but I think the positive reactions readers have had to my drafts, though they differ greatly from each other and range from impressionistic to literal, speak to the richness of the original poem. You can tap into various veins and mine precious metals.<\/p>\n

When did you know this translation was finished? Were you right about that? Is it finished, after all?<\/b><\/p>\n

I never think of my translations, or the translations of others, as fully finished products. Nor do I think of a translation as producing a static mirror of an original text. Rather, translating is a bit like setting in motion a disco ball. As the ball turns, it reflects its surroundings in myriad impressions and scatters countless points of light back onto its setting and viewers.<\/p>\n

Readers and scholars tend to argue for a \u201cbest\u201d translation based on certain criteria\u2014maybe accuracy, beauty, or readability. To me, any translation invites further translation and interpretation. The near-limitless possibilities are exciting, and even readers who have no familiarity with the original text can wonder how things could have been done differently.<\/p>\n

What appears of \u201cCruel Loss of Sons\u201d in issue no. 250 are selections from a longer poem. Srikanth Reddy and the other editors at The Paris Review<\/i> wisely chose stanzas that track Egill\u2019s intimate response to grief. Other stanzas engage more deeply with religion, myth, war, and social norms. My translation will appear in its entirety in my forthcoming anthology of translations, The Skalds<\/i>. I imagine that before the book is published, I will make further edits to these stanzas, given that they will appear in the context of the rest of the poem. Rather than considering the version published in The Paris Review<\/i> to be finished, I think of it as part of a tradition of preservation that can be traced back to Thorgerd and her rune-stick.<\/p>\n

Did Thorgerd fulfill her promise, converting her father\u2019s poem from spoken words to written runes? Was she the first preserver and publisher of this poem? Is the story of the poem\u2019s origin even true? I cannot know for sure, but I can say I am inspired by the drive of the Vikings and their descendants to preserve and pass on their stories and poems, no matter the difficulties.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emily Osborne is the author of the poetry book\u00a0<\/em>Safety Razor. Her anthology of translations of Old Norse poetry,\u00a0<\/em>The Skalds, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2027.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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