The Cock Beneath the Earth

34. There on a height sat, striking a harp, the giantess’s watch, the joyous Egdir; by him crowed, in the bird-wood, the bright red cock, which Fialar hight.

35. Crowed o’er the Æsir Gullinkambi, which wakens heroes with the sire of hosts; but another crows beneath the earth, a soot-red cock, in the halls of Hel.

In Völuspá the seeress describes three cocks. Fjalar, a bright red cock, crows in the bird-wood beside Egðir, the giantess’s watchman, who sits on a height playing a harp. Gullinkambi crows over the Æsir and wakens the heroes. A third, soot-red in Thorpe’s translation, crows beneath the earth in the halls of Hel. The third is not named, and the passage does not say what it wakens or whom it answers.

Translators render the colour of the third cock differently, and the stanza is numbered differently in different editions. The cock is unnamed, and the poem does not say how it relates to the other two, to the hound of Baldrs draumar or to the cave Gnipahellir.