The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

words well-graven

B

on wood to read

E

fast bids us fare

C

to feast gladly

In the variations on the ‘basic patterns’ (‘overweighting’, ‘extension’, etc.) described in my father’s account there are indeed differences in Old Norse from Old English, tending to greater brevity; but I will enter only into the most radical and important difference between the verse-forms, namely, that all Norse poetry is ‘strophic’, or ‘stanzaic’, that is, composed in strophes or stanzas. This is in the most marked contrast to Old English, where any such arrangements were altogether avoided; and my father wrote of it (see p.7): ‘In Old English breadth, fullness, reflection, elegiac effect, were aimed at. Old Norse aims at seizing a situation, striking a blow that will be remembered, illuminating a moment with a flash of lightning – and tends to concision, weighty packing of the language in sense and form, and gradually to greater regularity of form of verse.’

‘The norm of the strophe (for fornyr?islag),’ he said, ‘is four lines (eight half-lines) with a complete pause at the end, and also a pause (not necessarily so marked) at the end of the fourth half-line. But, at least as preserved, the texts in the manuscripts do not work out regularly on this plan, and great shufflement and lacuna-making has gone on among editors (so that one can never tell to a strophe or two what references refer to in different editions).’

Noting that this variability in the length of the strophes occurs in some of the earlier and least corrupt texts, and that ‘Volundarkvi?a, undoubtedly an ancient poem, is particularly irregular and particularly plagued by editors (who are much more daring and wilful in Old Norse than in Old English)’, he accepted the view that, in the main, this freedom should be seen as an archaic feature. ‘The strict strophe had not fully developed, any more than the strict line limited syllabically’; in other words, the strophic form was a Norse innovation, and developed only gradually.

In my father’s Lays the strophic form is entirely regular, and the half-line tends to brevity and limitation of syllables.

Alliteration

Old Norse poetry follows precisely the same principles in the matter of ‘alliteration’ as does Old English poetry. Those principles were formulated thus by my father in his account of Old English metre cited earlier.

One full lift in each half-line must alliterate. The ‘key alliteration’ was borne by the first lift in the second half. (This sound was called by Snorri Sturluson hofu?stafr, whence the term ‘head-stave’ used in English books.) With the head-stave the stronger lift in the first half-line must alliterate, and both lifts may do so. In the second half-line the second lift must not alliterate.

Thus, in the opening section of the Lay of the Volsungs, Upphaf, in the thirteenth stanza, lines 5–6, the deep Dragon / shall be doom of Thor, the d of doom is the head-stave, while in Snorri’s terminology the d of deep and Dragon are the stu?lar, the props or supports. The Th of Thor, the second lift of the second half-line, does not alliterate. It will be seen that in Upphaf both lifts of the first half do in fact alliterate with the head-stave in the majority of cases.

It is important to recognize that in Germanic verse ‘alliteration’ refers, not to letters, but to sounds; it is the agreement of the stressed elements beginning with the same consonant, or with no consonant: all vowels ‘alliterate’ with one another, as in the opening line of Upphaf, Of old was an age / when was emptiness. In English the phonetic agreement is often disguised to the eye by the spelling: thus in the same stanza, where lines 5–6 alliterate on ‘r’, unwrought was Earth, / unroofed was Heaven; or in stanza 8 of section IV of the Lay of the Volsungs, where lines 1–2 alliterate on the sound ‘w’: A warrior strange, / one-eyed, awful.

The consonant-combinations sk, sp, and st will usually only alliterate with themselves; thus in the Lay of the Volsungs section IV, stanza 9, lines 3–4, the sword of Grimnir /singing splintered does not show alliteration on both lifts of the second half-line, nor does section V, stanza 24, line 3–4, was sired this horse, / swiftest, strongest.

§6

NOTES ON THE POEMS

, BY THE AUTHOR

Together with the manuscript of the New Lays were placed some small slips of paper on which my father made some interpretative remarks about them. They were written very rapidly in ink or in pencil, and in the case of (iv) in pencil overwritten and added to in ink, clearly at the same time. It seems impossible to put any even relative date on them; a sense of distance and detachment may be artificial.

(i)

After the mythical introduction and the account of the Hoard, the Lay turns to the Volsung-family, and traces the history of Volsung, Sigmund, and Sigurd. The chief part is the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, which is of interest for itself; but the whole is given unity as a study of the way in which a wilful deed of Loki, the purposeless slaying of Otr, and his ruthless method of extricating Odin and himself from the peril into which this deed has brought them sets in motion a curse that at the last brings Sigurd to his death.

The full working of this curse is only hastened by Odin’s own interventions – to provide Sigurd with horse and weapon fit for his task, and to provide him with a fit bride, the fairest of all Odin’s Valkyries, Brynhild. (It appears that Odin purposes through Sigurd to punish the family of Hreidmar (Fafnir and Regin) for the exaction of the ransom of Otr.) In the story of Sigurd

Here this text breaks off.

(ii)

Grimhild, wife of Gjuki King of the Burgundians (or Niflungs), is the chief agent of evil, not because of any farsighted plans of wickedness: she is rather an example of that wickedness that looks only to each situation as it occurs, and sticks at nothing to gain from it what seems immediately profitable. She is ‘grey with wisdom’ being a witch in lore and still more skilled in the reading of minds and hearts to use their weaknesses and follies. Her will dominates her daughter Gudrun and her oldest son Gunnar.