Loki, Lord of Lies, lyrics

TYR - Lord of lies by midnight-dancer

This is an interesting video by the Faroese folk metal band Týr - see the official website www.tyr.fo - whose songs focus almost entirely on old Nordic lore, mythology, and history. Lord of Lies has a rather odd and catchy metal-mediaeval riff , and its lyrics are a powerful and mythologically accurate description of the legend of Loki bound until Ragnarök.

The text is worth close examination as poetry, both for its mythological allusions and its verbal devices. It stands perfectly well as a piece of epic verse that makes strong use of alliteration like the Old Norse poetry it alludes to, as well as both tail rhymes and internal rhymes.

Shakes the ground in agony the Lord of Lies
Once for every drop of venom in his eyes
Anger festers in his heart and loud he cries
My revenge will be the end and you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands

Truth of prophecies is always in your hands
When you heed her words and do as she commands
Seals your fate and your memorial it stands
All the world ablaze I'll set and you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands for my lore
And legend of these lands

Bound upon the ground until the
Day the sun will go away
Three winters snow falls in a row;
Your bonds will break from me

Skelvur jørðin øll og rapa bjørg og fjøll
Brýtur hav um lond og slitena so øll bond

So you stand before the breaking of the world
Gather all your strength in vain for you will

See me rise, out of fact and fiction, Sacrifice
Raise your hands for my lore
And legend of these lands

End, it has begun, now I am free,
Your ending sails with me
My serpent son stirs up the sea;
The Ship of Nails breaks free.

- Týr, Lord of Lies, Ragnarok, 2006

The "three winters snow" is the Fimbulvetr, the abnormally long winter preceding Ragnarök. Loki's "serpent son" is Jörmungandr, the World Serpent and the son of Loki by the giantess Angrboða. The "Ship of Nails" is Naglfar, a boat made entirely from the fingernails and toenails of the dead, which is foretold to sail to the battlefield Vígríðr, ferrying hordes that will battle with the gods. As to the meaning of this couplet in Faroese ...

Skelvur jørðin øll og rapa bjørg og fjøll
Brýtur hav um lond og slitena so øll bond

... it isn't findable online, but (with the help of the Týr Forum and Føroysk-ensk orðabók) I've arrived at a tentative idiomatic translation:

Shakes all the Earth and tumbles berg and fell
Breaking apart the land and snapping all my bonds

Anyone know Faroese?

This is all a good excuse to mention a wonderfully cross-genre University of Ghent dissertation paper that I'd otherwise have put in the out-takes: Old Germanic Heritage In Metal Music: A Comparative Study Of Present-day Metal Lyrics And Their Old Germanic Sources (Lorin Renodeyn, 2010 - see bibliographic data). If you like your Norse mythology, this is great reading. The author (there can't be anyone else of that name) is from Brugge, a roadie for two bands - Schrywoud and Johnny Crash and The Knocked-Ups - and rather a good photographer.

- RG