Hverr byggir há fjöll? Hverr fellr í djúpa dali?
Hverr andalauss lifir? Hverr æva þegir?
Heiðrekr konungr, hyggðu at gátu.
Hverr byggir há fjöll? Hverr fellr í djúpa dali? Hverr lifir andalauss? Hverr þegir æva? Heiðrekr konungr, hyggðu at gátu.
Who lives on high mountains? Who falls in the deep dales? Who lives without breath? Who is never silent? King Heiðrekr, think about the riddle.
[3] andalauss ‘without breath’: Found elsewhere in poetry only in another of the riddles, Gestumbl Heiðr 9/5 (Heiðr 56), where it refers to a smith’s bellows. In the present context, cf. Gylf (SnE 2005, 28), which gives anda fisksins ‘breath of the fish’ alongside several seemingly impossible constituent parts of the dwarf-made fetter Gleipnir, used to tie up the mythical wolf Fenrir.