(continuation of former posting on "Borges places Well's novel in a long literary tradition about prophesizing future events. He mentions the biblical Isaiah, Virgil's Aeneas and the seer from the Edda Saemundi, who predicted the return of the gods who, after a cyclical battle in which the Earth disappears, discover their abandoned chess-pieces lying on the lawn of a new prairie.")

Pale Fire: John Shade, lines 816-829
                                                  It did not matter who they were. No sound,
                                                  No furtive light came from their involute
                                                  Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
                                                  Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
                                                  To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;
                                                  Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
                                                  A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
                                                  /.../. Making ornaments
                                                  Of accidents and possibilities.

Charles Kinbote (note to line 130): "As soon as Monsieur Beauchamp had sat down for a game of chess at the bedside of Mr. Campbell and had offered his raised fists to choose from, the young Prince took Oleg to the magical closet."

JM: I tend to read Nabokov while following a kind of "cyclical time" and Nabokov-criticism according to a linear program, instead of returning over and over to certain works as, for example, Priscilla Meyer's "Find What the Sailor Has Hidden." Today I re-discovered the delights of her commentaries while researching about Nabokov and the Eddas, or about chess in PF. Cf P.Meyer's notes on CK's line about Mr.Beauchamp and Mr.Campbell playing chess in connection to Oleg and the magical closet (p.102 and p.203), about the Anglo-Saxons, the Valhalla and how Kinbote, through the Zemblan bird, "connects Zembla to Russia of the time of Igor through the natural sourcfes of dyes" (cf. "sampel" and "nastran" on p. 93).

In the important chapter "Tales of the North," there are developments and links between Pale Fire and the Eddasthat are truly marvellous.* Here, only because we now can access the internet, is what I gleaned from an entry about the Edda and the recovered chess-pieces mentioned by Borges in relation to a particular theme he began to develop through a flower that had been brought back, to conscious reality, from a dream about Paradise:

Snorri provides a fuller picture of Vidar’s role. In his Edda, Vidar appears in Gylfaginning 51 and 53, as well as in Skaldskaparmal. As far as minor gods go, he’s pretty well sourced.

51. "….Thor shall put to death the Midgard Serpent, and shall stride away nine paces from that spot; then shall he fall dead to the earth, because of the venom which the Snake has blown at him. The Wolf shall swallow Odin; that shall be his ending But straight thereafter shall Vídarr stride forth and set one foot upon the lower jaw of the Wolf: on that foot he has the shoe, materials for which have been gathering throughout all time. (They are the scraps of leather which men cut out: of their shoes at toe or heel; therefore he who desires in his heart to come to the Æsir's help should cast those scraps away.) With one hand he shall seize the Wolf's upper jaw and tear his gullet asunder; and that is the death of the Wolf. Loki shall have battle with Heimdallr, and each be the slayer of the other. Then straightway shall Surtr cast fire over the earth and burn all the world; so is said in Völuspá:

53. Then spake Gangleri: "Shall any of the gods live then, or shall there be then any earth or heaven?" Hárr answered: "In that time the earth shall emerge out of the sea, and shall then be green and fair; then shall the fruits of it be brought forth unsown. Vídarr and Váli shall be living, inasmuch as neither sea nor the fire of Surtr shall have harmed them; and they shall dwell at Ida-Plain, where Ásgard was before. And then the sons of Thor, Módi and Magni, shall come there, and they shall have Mjöllnir there. After that Baldr shall come thither, and Hödr, from Hel; then all shall sit down together and hold speech. with one another, and call to mind their secret wisdom, and speak of those happenings which have been before: of the Midgard Serpent and of Fenris-Wolf. Then they shall find in the grass those golden chess-pieces which the Æsir had had. The Poetic Edda: Grímnismál