The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

ljo?ahattr verses with a close translation:

Hof?i skemra      lati hann inn hara ?ul

Fara til heljar he?an!

Ollu gulli      ?a kna hann einn ra?a,

fjol?, ?vi er und Fafni la.

      (Shorter by a head, / let him send the grey-haired wizard / hence to hell! All the gold / then can he possess alone, / the wealth, that under Fafnir lay.)

46–48   In the Saga Sigurd ate some only of the dragon’s heart, and some he set aside. The purpose of this is seen later in the saga, where it is told that at some time after the wedding of Sigurd and Gudrun ‘Sigurd gave Gudrun some of Fafnir’s heart to eat, and thereafter she was far more grim than before, and wiser also.’ This element is excluded from the Lay; my father considered it ‘a late piece of machinery to explain Gudrun’s tangled psychology.’

      These verses derive from a prose passage in Fafnismal, closely similar to that in the Saga, which tells that after the death of Regin Sigurd rode on Grani following the tracks of Fafnir to his lair, which was standing open. The doors and door-posts were of iron, as were all the beams of the house, which was dug down into the earth (46). Sigurd found there a vast store of gold and filled two great chests with it; he took the Helm of Terror and a golden mailcoat and many other precious things, and he loaded them onto Grani; but the horse would not move until Sigurd leaped upon his back.

49  ‘their wit he knew not’: this very unusual use of the word ‘wit’ seems in the context to be equivalent to ‘meaning’, ‘signification’.

49–54   In Fafnismal, after Sigurd has slain Regin and eaten the dragon’s heart he hears the ig?ur again; and these five verses are again in fornyr?islag (see the note to 42–44). There is no indication of how many birds spoke, but the first two verses concern Gudrun, and the last three concern a Valkyrie on the mount of Hindarfell, surrounded by fire, sleeping: Odin stabbed her with the thorn, for she had felled a warrior against his command. See the note on 54 below.

      My father held that these verses, like the previous ‘bird-verses’ in fornyr?islag, came from a poem ‘which enlarged on the situation, and probably attempted through the bird-tradition to tell more of the tale’- a trace of a poem that attempted ‘to compress a great deal of the story into one situation.’ While accepting that ‘it is useless to discuss which bird says what’, he thought the guess that one bird speaks the verses concerning Gudrun and a second those about the Valkyrie ‘as good as any’.

      In the Lay he did however retain this second group of ‘bird-verses’ (or more accurately, composed verses that echo their meaning), and gave them to a raven (those about the Valkyrie) and a finch (those about Gudrun), and interlaced them. But he displaced them to follow Sigurd’s entry into Fafnir’s lair and his loading Grani with the treasure that he found there, so that these birds are speaking of things that may lie ahead for Sigurd as he rides away from Gnitahei?i; whereas in Fafnismal the prose passage cited in the note to 46–48 follows the second group of ‘bird-verses’.

54  ‘her power wielding, / victory swaying as Valkyrie’. In northern legend and poetry the course and outcome of battles was governed by Valkyries, demonic warrior-women sent out as emissaries of Odin.

      The word Valkyrja means ‘chooser of the slain’: it is given to them to determine who is to die, and to award victory. Perhaps the most striking example of this conception is found in the Hakonarmal, a poem composed in the tenth century on the death of King Hakon the Good of Norway, son of King Harald Fairhair. The poem opens thus:

Gondul and Skogul Gautatyr sent

to choose who of kings of Yngvi’s race

should go to Odin and dwell in Valholl.

Gondul and Skogul are Valkyries; Gautatyr is a name of Odin. In the poem King Hakon is pictured sitting on the ground with his shield rent and his mailshirt gashed, listening to the words of the Valkyries.

Then said Gondul, as she leant on the shaft of her spear,

‘Now will the might of the Gods grow greater,

since they have summoned Hakon with a great host

      to their dwellings.’

The king heard what the Valkyries were saying

as they sat on their horses, thoughtful their

      countenance,

with helms on their heads and their shields held

      before them.

Then Hakon speaks to the Valkyrie named Skogul:

‘Why have you decided the battle thus, Geirskogul?

We have deserved victory of the Gods.’

‘We have brought it about,’ said Skogul, ‘that you

      have held the field, and your foes have fled

      away.

Now we must ride to the green homes of the Gods, to tell to Odin that a mighty king is coming to him.’

VI BRYNHILDR

In the note to V. 46–48 I have given the content of the prose passage provided in the Codex Regius describing how Sigurd entered Fafnir’s lair and took from it the great treasure of gold, which he loaded in chests on his horse Grani. This passage is treated in editions of the Edda as the conclusion of the poem Fafnismal; but in fact it continues without break or new title into the story of Sigurd’s encounter with the Valkyrie asleep on Hindarfell, and this part is treated as the prose introduction to a strange work to which the name Sigrdrifumal is given.

This latter part of the prose passage, which is found in closely similar form in the Saga, tells that Sigurd rode up