The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

      Signy, hearing this, took the children into the outer room and urged Sigmund and Sinfjotli to kill them, since they had betrayed their hiding-place. Sigmund said that he would not kill her children even if they had given him away, but the terrible Sinfjotli made light of it, slew both children, and hurled their bodies into the hall. When Sigmund and Sinfjotli had at last been captured Siggeir had a great burial-mound made of stones and turf; and in the midst of the mound there was set a huge stone slab so that when they were put into it they were separated and could not pass the slab, but could hear each other. But before the mound was covered over Signy threw down a bundle of straw to Sinfjotli, in which was meat. In the darkness of the mound Sinfjotli discovered that Sigmund’s sword was thrust into the meat, and with the sword they were able to saw through the stone slab.

I have said that there is no old poetry treating this story save for one half-stanza, and those verses are cited by the author of the Saga at this point:

ristu af magni

mikla hellu,

Sigmundr, hjorvi,

ok Sinfjotli.

‘They cut with strength the great slab, Sigmund and Sinfjotli, with the sword’.

      When they got out of the mound it was night, and everyone was asleep; and bringing up wood they set fire to the hall.

40–41   It was now, when Sigmund told Signy to come forth, that in the Saga she revealed the truth about Sinfjotli – this is no doubt implied in stanza 41 of the Lay, ‘Son Sinfjotli, Sigmund father!’ In her last words, according to the Saga, before she went back into the fire, she declared that she had worked so mightily to achieve vengeance for Volsung that it was impossible for her now to live longer.

III

DAU?I SINFJOTLA (The Death of Sinfjotli)

There intervenes now in the Saga, after the deaths of Signy and Siggeir, the history of Helgi Hundingsbani, an originally independent figure who had been connected to the Volsung legend by making him the son of Sigmund and Borghild (only referred to as ‘the Queen’ in this section of the Lay). In this the Saga follows the ‘Helgi lays’ of the Edda; but in his poem my father entirely eliminated this accretion, and Helgi is not mentioned.

The sources for this section of the Lay are the Saga and a short prose passage in the Edda entitled Fra dau?a Sinfjotla (Of Sinfjotli’s death): the compiler of the Codex Regius of the Edda evidently wrote this, in the absence of any verses, in order to conclude the histories of Sigmund and Sinfjotli. There are no important differences between the Lay and the old narratives.

1–2   In the Saga Sigmund, returning to his own land, drove out a usurper who had established himself there.

3    ‘Grimnir’s gift’: see II.12–13 and note.

4    In Fra dau?a Sinfjotla and in the Saga Sigmund’s queen is named Borghild; in the Lay she is given no name (perhaps because my father regarded the name Borghild as not original in the legend, but entering with the ‘Helgi’ connection). It is not said in the sources that she was taken in war.

6    In both sources Sinfjotli slew Borghild’s brother, not her father; they were suitors for the same woman. In the Saga it is told that Borghild wished to have Sinfjotli driven out of the land, and though Sigmund would not allow this he offered her great riches in atonement; it was at the funeral-feast for her brother that Sinfjotli was murdered.

7    It is told in the Saga, at the time of the bread-making incident, when Sinfjotli kneaded in a poisonous snake (see note to II.33–34), that Sigmund could not be harmed by poison within or without, whereas Sinfjotli could only withstand poison externally; the same is said in Fra dau?a Sinfjotla and in the Prose Edda.

9–10   In both sources Sigmund said to Sinfjotli, when Borghild offered him drink for the third time: Lattu gron sia, sonr (‘Strain it through your beard, my son’). Sigmund was very drunk by then, says the Saga, ‘and that is why he said it’.

12  The boatman was Odin (the verses describing him here are repeated in varied form in IV.8). This is not said in the old sources. In those texts the boatman offered to ferry Sigmund across the fjord, but the boat was too small to take both Sigmund and the body of Sinfjotli, so the body was taken first. Sigmund walked along the fjord, but the boat vanished. The Saga tells that Borghild was banished, and died not long after.

13  in Valhollu: the Norse dative inflexion is retained for metrical reasons.

IV F?DDR SIGUR?R (Sigurd born)

After the expulsion of Borghild Sigmund took another wife very much younger than himself (IV.2), and she was the mother of Sigurd. In the Saga and in Fra dau?a Sinfjotla her name was Hjordis, the daughter of King Eylimi; whereas in the Lay she is Sigrlinn. This difference depends on the view that a transference of names took place: that originally in the Norse legends Hjordis was the mother of Helgi (see the note to III), while Sigrlinn was Sigmund’s wife and Sigurd’s mother. After this transference Sigrlinn became the mother of Helgi (and so appears in the Eddaic poem Helgakvi?a Hjorvar?ssonar, the Lay of Helgi son of Hjorvar?) and Hjordis became the mother of Sigurd. In the German poem Nibelungenlied, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, Sieglind (Sigrlinn) was King Siegmund’s queen, the mother of Siegfried (Sigurd).

The narrative in this section of the Lay has been changed and reduced from that in the Saga (to which there is no poetry corresponding in the Edda). In the Saga, King Lyngvi was a rival to Sigmund for the hand of Hjordis, but Hjordis rejected him; and it was Lyngvi, not the seven suitors, ‘sons of kings’, of the Lay (stanzas 3 and 5), who came with great force against Sigmund in his own land.

Hjordis accompanied only by a bondwoman was sent into the forest and remained there during the fierce battle. In the Saga as in the Lay (stanzas 8–9) Odin appeared, and Sigmund’s sword (‘Grimnir’s gift’, 5) broke against the upraised spear of the god, and he was slain (on the significance of Odin’s intervention see the note on the section Upphaf, pp.185–86).

As in the Lay, in the Saga Hjordis (Sigrlinn) found Sigmund where he lay mortally wounded on the battlefield, and he spoke to her, saying that there was no hope of healing and he did not wish for it, since Odin had claimed him (stanza 11); he spoke also of Sigurd, her son unborn, and told her to keep the shards of the sword, which should be made anew.

Immediately upon Sigmund’s death, a further fleet came in to the shore, commanded, it is said in the Saga, by Alf son of King Hjalprek of Denmark (stanza 14 of the Lay, where the newcomers are not named). Seeing this