Voluspo 45 (Bellows)

The opening of the description of Ragnarok. Only the first two lines are quoted: Bellows notes that lines 4 and 5 of this stanza look like an interpolation and that editors arrange the seven lines in several different ways, so anything beyond line 2 should not be cited without naming the arrangement. In Germanic society the bond between a man and his sister's son was especially close, which is what makes the second line an image of total collapse.