Lyfjaberg: A Mountain of Help

36. Tell me, Fiolsvith! etc., what that mount is called, on which I see a splendid maiden stand?

37. Hyfiaberg ’tis called, and long has it a solace been to the bowed-down and sorrowful: each woman becomes healthy, although a year’s disease she have, if she can but ascend it.

38. Tell me, Fiolsvith! etc., how those maids are called, who sit at Menglod’s knees in harmony together?

39. Hlif the first is called, the second is Hlifthursa, the third Thiodvarta, Biort and Blid, Blidr, Frid, Eir and Orboda.

Fjölsvinnsmál is a dialogue at the gate of a fenced hall. A stranger who gives his name as Vindkald is challenged by the watchman Fjölsviðr and asks him question after question: about the hall’s lady Menglöð, the gate Þrymgjöll, the dogs Gifr and Geri, the tree Mímameiðr and the bird Víðófnir that sits in it. Later he asks about the hall and the mountain.

Asked what the mount is called where a bright maiden stands, Fjölsviðr answers Lyfjaberg, adding that it has long comforted the sorrowful and that any woman who can climb it is made well, even of a year’s illness. He then names the maidens who sit at Menglöð’s knees and says they help those who offer to them. At the end the stranger is recognised as Svipdagr, the one promised to Menglöð, and let in.

The name is usually read as a mountain of healing or help, from the same root as the word for a remedy; the poem’s own explanation is the passage quoted above. Thorpe prints it as “Hyfiaberg”.

Fjölsvinnsmál (“the sayings of Fjölsviðr”) is the second half of a pair with Grógaldr, and the two are often printed together as Svipdagsmál. Editions number the combined text differently, so a stanza number depends on the edition. The tree Mímameiðr, which the same dialogue names, has its own entry on this site. The poem does not say where Menglöð’s hall lies, and this site does not place the mountain in any of the nine worlds.