Introductory Note:
Not included in all manuscript versions of the Poetic Edda in part due to the Christian elements, there are a lot of elements taken
from Forn Seðr that have been incorporated into a poem that has an unusal mixture of the two.
The translation for this poem comes from Benjamin Thorpe.
This singular poem, the authorship of which is, in some manuscripts, assigned to Saemund
himself, may be termed a Voice from the Dead, given under the form of a dream, in which a
deceased father is supposed to address his son from another world. The first 7 strophes seem
hardly connected with the following ones, which, as far as the 32nd consist chiefly in
aphorisms with examples, some closely resembling those in the Havamal. In the remaining
portion is given the recital of the last illness of the supposed speaker, his death, and
the scenes his soul passed through on the way to its final home.
The composition exhibits a strange mixture of Christianity and Heathenism, whence it would
seem that the poet's own religion was in a transition state. Of the allusions to Heathenism
it is, however, to be observed that they are chiefly to persons and actions of which there
is no trace in the Odinic mythology, as known to us, and are possibly the fruits of the poet's
own imagination. The title of the poem is no doubt derived from the allusion to the Sun at the
beginning of strophes 39-45.
For an elaborate and learned commentary, with an interlinear version of "the Song of the Sun,"
the reader may consult "Les Chants de Sol," by Professor Berg- mann, Strasbourg & Paris,
1858.