The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

also called Niflungs’. In this commentary, conceived fairly strictly as an elucidation of the treatment of the Norse Volsung legend in my father’s Lay, it is unnecessary to enter even cursorily into the deep matter of origins that lies behind the name Niflungs (German Nibelungen, Nibelungs); but something is said of this in Appendix A, pp.356–63.

14  Mirkwood: Not occurring in the Saga, the Norse name Myrkvi?r, Anglicized as ‘Mirkwood’, was used of a dark boundary-forest, separating peoples, and is found in poems of the Edda in different applications; but it seems probable that in its origin it represented a memory in heroic legend of the great forest that divided the land of the Goths from the land of the Huns far off in the south and east. This is what the name means in the Eddaic poem Atlakvi?a, the Lay of Atli (Attila), whence its appearance here in the Lay.

      Danpar: Like Mirkwood, this name is not found in the Saga, but occurs in Atlakvi?a and elsewhere in Old Norse poetry (see further the note to stanza 86 in the Lay of Gudrun). It is a survival of the Gothic name of the Russian river Dnieper.

15  ‘Borgund lords’: This expression occurs again in stanza 20. My father derived it from the notable words in a verse of the Atlakvi?a, where Gunnar is called vin Borgunda, lord of the Burgundians. Nowhere else in Norse is Gunnar recognised as a Burgundian, nor is the word found as the name of a people; but very remarkably the same expression is found in one of the fragments of the Old English poem Waldere, where Gu?here is called wine Burgenda. Both the Old Norse Gunnarr and the Old English Gu?here are descended from the name of the historical Burgundian king Gundahari, who was killed by the Huns in the year 437. For an account of the historical origins of the Gjukings see Appendix A.

      Budli’s brother: in the Saga the killing of the brother of King Budli, father of Atli and Brynhild, by the Gjukings is mentioned at a later point in the narrative.

28  ‘and blind his eye’: Odin had only one eye: according to the myth that he gave up one of his eyes as a pledge in order to gain a drink from the spring of Mimir, the water of wisdom at the root of the Tree of the World.

38  It is not said in the Lay as it is in the Saga that after drinking Grimhild’s potion Sigurd lost all memory of Brynhild: ‘he drained it laughing, / then sat unsmiling’; but the meaning is clear from IX.4.

39  ‘glamoured’: a word used in V.33 and 47: ‘enchanted’, in the sense of being brought under a spell.

VIII SVIKIN BRYNHILDR (Brynhild Betrayed)

In the Saga the wedding of Sigurd to Gudrun follows, and the swearing of brotherhood between Sigurd and the sons of Gjuki (stanzas 7–10 in the Lay); it is said that by this time he had dwelt among the Gjukings for two and a half years. After they were wedded Sigurd gave Gudrun some of Fafnir’s heart to eat: see the note to V.46–48. They had a son named Sigmund.

The coming of Odin to Brynhild among the suitor kings (2–5) is peculiar to the Lay. It seems (stanza 6) that it was only after his coming that the fire rose about her hall, and that Brynhild conceived it as a barrier against all comers save Sigurd. The description of the fire in the Lay resembles that in VI.2, when on Hindarfell Sigurd saw Brynhild’s fire as a ‘fence of lightning’ that ‘high to heavenward / hissed and wavered’.

In the Saga there follows Grimhild’s counselling of Gunnar to woo Brynhild (stanzas 12–17 in the Lay); and Sigurd is said to have been as eager for the match as were Gjuki and his sons. But they rode first to King Budli, Brynhild’s father, to gain his assent before they went to the hall of Heimir, Brynhild’s fosterfather (see p.223). Heimir said that her hall was not far off, and that he thought that she would only marry the man who would ride through the fire that blazed about it. In the Lay Budli and Heimir are of course eliminated.

The story in the Saga of the refusal of Gunnar’s horse to enter the fire, the loan of Grani, the refusal of Grani to bear Gunnar, and the shape-changing taught them by Grimhild, is followed in the Lay; the Saga here quotes two stanzas from an unknown poem concerning the sudden roaring of the fire and the trembling of the earth as Sigurd entered it, and its sinking down again (followed in stanzas 25–26 in the Lay).

The substance of the dialogue between Sigurd and Brynhild (28–31) is mostly derived from the Saga: her doubt as to how to answer, his promise of a great bride-price, her demand that he slay all who had been her suitors (stanza 30, lines 3–4), and his reminder of her oath. It is strongly implied in stanza 31 that Brynhild had vowed to wed none but the man who dared to pass through the fire, and at this point in the Saga Sigurd explicitly reminds her that she has sworn to go with the man who should do so. With this is to be compared Brynhild’s words to Sigurd on Hindarfell (VI.8):

An oath I uttered

for ever lasting,

to wed but one,

the World’s chosen.

We must understand that in Brynhild’s thought the one who rides the fire must be ‘the World’s chosen’, and that is Sigurd; but it is Gunnar, and she is ‘sore troubled’, and in her doubt likened to a swan ‘on swaying seas’.

In the Saga Sigurd in Gunnar’s form remained three nights with Brynhild, and they slept in the same bed; but he laid the sword Gram between them, and when she asked him why he did so, he replied that it was fated that he should hold his bridal thus, or else get his death.

An important distinction between the Saga and the Lay lies in what is said of the exchange of rings. In the Saga it was told (see p.223) that at their meeting in Heimir’s halls ‘Sigurd gave her a gold ring’, though nothing more is said of it, and now it is said that at his departure ‘he took from her the ring Andvaranaut that he had given her, and gave her another ring from Fafnir’s hoard’. In the Lay (33), on the other hand, he took from her while she slept the ring that she wore on her finger and put Andvaranaut in its place. In this the Lay follows Snorri’s account: ‘in the morning he gave Brynhild as bridal gift the same gold ring which Loki had taken from Andvari, and took another ring from her hand for remembrance’. See further IX.9–10 and note.

After this, in the Saga, Sigurd rode back through the fire, and he and Gunnar changed into their own semblances; but Brynhild went back to her fosterfather Heimir and told him what had happened, and of her doubt: ‘He rode through my flickering fire . . . and he said that he was named Gunnar; but I said that only Sigurd would do that, to whom I swore faith on the mountain.’ Heimir said that things must rest as they were; and she said ‘Aslaug, Sigurd’s daughter and mine, shall be brought up here with you’. My father regarded the introduction of Aslaug as a ‘grievous damage’ to the story (and see p.242, (6)). It was unquestionably an invention made in order to link together Sigurd and Brynhild and the most celebrated viking of legend, Ragnar Lo?brok: in the largely fabulous Ragnars Saga Aslaug is said to be one of his wives and the mother of several of his numerous viking sons.

4 ‘dreed’ : submitted to, endured.