THE FOOLING OF GYLFE.
CHAPTER I.
This story about the ploughing of Gylfe reminds us of the legend told in the first book of Yirgil's Æneid, about the founding of Carthage by Dido, who bought from the Libyan king as much ground as she could cover with a bull's hide. Elsewhere it is related that she cut the bull's hide into narrow strips and encircled therewith all the ground upon which Carthage was afterward built. Thus Dido deceived the Libyan king nearly as eiFectually as Gef jun deluded King Gylfe. The story is also told by Snorre in Heimskringla, see p. 231.
The passage in verse, which has given translators so much trouble in a transposed form, would read as follows: Gef jun glad drew that excellent land (djuprodul = the deep sun = gold; o6la = udal = property; djuprodul o^la = the golden property), Denmark's increase (Seeland), so that it reeked (steamed) from the running oxen. The oxen bore four heads and eight eyes, as they went before the wide piece of robbed land of the isle so rich in grass.
Gefjun is usually interpreted as a goddess of agriculture, and her name is by some derived from y^ and fjon, that is, terræ separatio; others compare it with the Anglo-Saxon geofon = the sea. The etymology remains very uncertain.
