COMMENTARY
on
VOLSUNGAKVI?A EN NYJA
The subtitle Sigur?arkvi?a en mesta means ‘The Longest Lay of Sigurd’: see p.234.
Throughout the commentary the poem Volsungakvi?a en Nyja is referred to as ‘the Lay’ or occasionally ‘the Lay of the Volsungs’, and the Volsunga Saga as ‘the Saga’. The name ‘Edda’ always refers to the ‘Elder Edda’ or ‘Poetic Edda’; the work of Snorri Sturluson is named the ‘Prose Edda’.
The nine sections of the poem following the Upphaf are referred to by Roman numerals and the stanzas by Arabic numerals: thus ‘VII.6’ refers to stanza 6 in the section ‘Gudrun’. Notes are related to stanzas, not lines; and a general note on the section precedes notes to individual stanzas.
UPPHAF
This prelude to the Lay of the Volsungs echoes and reflects the most famous poem of the Edda, the Voluspa, in which the Volva, the wise woman or sibyl, recounts the origin of the world, the age of the youthful Gods, and the primeval war; prophesies the Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods; and after it the renewal of the Earth, rising again out of deep waters (see the third part of my father’s poem The Prophecy of the Sibyl, given in Appendix B at the end of this book).
But the images of the Voluspa are here ordered to an entirely original theme: for the sibyl declares (stanzas 13–15) that the fate of the world and the outcome of the Last Battle will depend on the presence of ‘one deathless who death hath tasted and dies no more’; and this is Sigurd, ‘the serpent-slayer, seed of Odin’, who is ‘the World’s chosen’ for whom the mailclad warriors wait in Valholl (stanza 20). As is made explicit in my father’s interpretative note (iv) given on p.53–54, it is Odin’s hope that Sigurd will on the Last Day become the slayer of the greatest serpent of all, Mi?gar?sormr (see note to stanza 12 below), and that through Sigurd ‘a new world will be made possible’.
‘This motive of the special function of Sigurd is an invention of the present poet’, my father observed in the same brief text. An association with his own mythology seems to me at least extremely probable: in that Turin Turambar, slayer of the great dragon Glaurung, was also reserved for a special destiny, for at the Last Battle he would himself strike down Morgoth, the Dark Lord, with his black sword. This mysterious conception appeared in the old Tale of Turambar (1919 or earlier), and reappeared as a prophecy in the Silmarillion texts of the 1930s: so in the Quenta Noldorinwa, ‘it shall be the black sword of Turin that deals unto Melko [Morgoth] his death and final end; and so shall the children of Hurin and all Men be avenged.’ Very remarkably a form of this conception is found in a brief essay of my father’s from near the end of his life, in which he wrote that Andreth the Wise-woman of the House of Beor had prophesied that ‘Turin in the Last Battle should return from the Dead, and before he left the Circles of the World for ever should challenge the Great Dragon of Morgoth, Ancalagon the Black, and deal him the death-stroke.’ The extraordinary transformation of Turin is seen also in an entry in The Annals of Aman, where it is said that the great constellation of Menelmakar, the Swordsman of the Sky (Orion), ‘was a sign of Turin Turambar, who should come into the world, and a foreshadowing of the Last Battle that shall be at the end of Days.’*
Beyond this, in the absence (so far as I know) of any other writing of my father’s bearing on his enigmatic conception of Sigurd, I think that speculation on its larger significance would fall outside the editorial limits that I have set for myself in this book.
My father’s Odin does indeed retain his ancient character of gathering his ‘chosen’ to Valholl to be his champions at the Ragnarok, and in the Lay of the Volsungs he appears against Sigmund, Sigurd’s father, and disarms him in his last fight, so that he is slain (IV.8–11). In Norse legend a belief is expressed that Odin, faithless, ambiguous, and sinister, desiring strife among kinsmen, turning against his favourites at the last and felling those whom he has favoured, has reason for his conduct: he needs his own, needs his favourites against the day of the Ragnarok (see the note to IX.77–78).
But from the extraordinary complex of ideas that surround Odin in Northern antiquity – suggesting layer upon layer of shifting belief and symbolism – a God is glimpsed in my father’s work who has retained little of the subtle, sinister, and enigmatic deity of ancient writings: the god of war, lord of the Valkyries; exciter of madness; the initiate, the lord of the gallows, the self-sacrificed, the master of obscene magic, the inspiration of poetry; the shape-changer, the old one-eyed man, the faithless friend, and on the Last Day the victim of the Wolf. ‘Weighed with wisdom woe foreknowing’ (Upphaf 18), and seen by my father, referring to his own poem and to his treatment of the old legend, as symbolizing prudence and wisdom beside the malice and folly of Loki, Odin seems more like Manwe of his own mythology; and he calls them both ‘Lord of Gods and Men’.
I On this stanza see p.246. It echoes the third stanza of the Voluspa; and citing the Norse verse in a lecture my father followed it with this first stanza of the Upphaf, with some differences: ‘shivering waves’, ‘unraised heaven’.
II It is told by Snorri in the Prose Edda that Heimdal (Heimdallr) was the warden or sentinel of the Gods (?sir), dwelling beside Bifrost (‘the quaking path’), the rainbow bridge between Asgard, the realm of the ?sir, and Midgard, the world of Men (see note to 12), which he guards against the rock-giants; but at the Ragnarok (the Doom of the Gods) Bifrost will be crossed by the hosts coming from the fiery land of Muspell, and will break beneath them. The red part of the bow is blazing fire. Heimdal’s horn is the Gjallarhorn, whose blast is heard over all the worlds; and he will blow it at the Ragnarok.
The Ash is Yggdrasill, the World Tree, whose branches stretched out over earth and heaven. The Wolf is Fenrir (named in stanza 13), whom the Gods chained; but at the Ragnarok Fenrir will break his chains and devour Odin.
12 Surt (Surtr): the great demon of fire, at the Ragnarok coming out of Muspell, the land of fire, against the Gods.
