Iceland and Old Norse Poetry in Two Unpublished Texts by Tomas Tranströmer

This article analyses two unpublished texts (thank-you speeches) of Tomas Tranströmer’s, where the poet describes his experiences about travelling in Iceland and reading Old Norse literature. We show how the poet uses both the Icelandic landscape and Old Norse mythological beings in his poems by giving them new symbolic meanings and values. Specifically, eddic lays, in particular Vǫlundarkviða, seem to have provided him inspiration for both images and metrical structures.