Landviði

17. O’ergrown with branches and high grass is Vidar’s spacious Landvîdi: There will the son descend, from the steed’s back, bold to avenge his father.

Grímnismál lists Landviði as Víðarr’s home and describes it as spacious and overgrown with branches and high grass. The same stanza looks ahead: the son is to ride from here, dismounting from his horse’s back, bold to avenge his father.

Elsewhere in the poems Víðarr is the one who goes against the wolf at the end of the world, and in Vafþrúðnismál, stanza 51 in Thorpe’s numbering, he and Váli are said to live in the gods’ holy places after Surt’s fire has died down. Snorri’s Gylfaginning calls Víðarr strong, silent and trusted by the gods, but, in the translation used here, does not name Landviði.

The name looks like land, “land”, plus víðr, “wide”, which fits Thorpe’s “spacious”: a wide land. Víðarr’s title in Snorri is “the Silent”.

The untended, grassy picture is unlike most of the dwellings in Grímnismál, several of which are halls decked with gold or silver. The stanza’s last lines point forward to the final battle, where Víðarr is to avenge Odin. Nothing in the sources places it, and it is not tied to a particular region.