The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

‘choosing not the slain’: a reference to Brynhild as Valkyrie.

17  In line 6 ‘thee’ refers to Gunnar; in line 8 ‘you’ is plural and refers to Gunnar and Sigurd.

20  ‘rowel’: a spiked revolving disc at the end of a spur.

29  ‘meted’: allotted, apportioned.

IX DEILD (Strife)

As I have said (p.221), the great lacuna in the Codex Regius caused the loss of all ancient Norse poetry for the central part of the legend of Sigurd. The manuscript does not take up again until near the end of a lay of Sigurd which is known as the Brot (af Sigur?arkvi?u), the ‘Fragment’ (of a lay of Sigurd). Only some 20 stanzas of this poem are preserved, and these come late in the development of the tragedy, after ‘the quarrel of the queens’, as they washed their hair in the waters of the Rhine. My father noted that it can be seen from what is left of the Brot that there has been lost the greater part of ‘an old and very vigorous poem – for example the supreme vigour and economical force of

Mer hefir Sigur?r

selda ei?a,

ei?a selda,

alla logna . . .’

These words of Gunnar’s come almost at the beginning of the preserved part of the Brot, and are closely echoed in the Lay, IX.46.

What was contained in the pages removed from the Codex Regius has been much discussed. An important factor is the existence in the manuscript of a poem named Sigur?arkvi?a en skamma, ‘the Short Lay of Sigurd’; but this is 71 stanzas long – almost the longest of all the heroic lays of the Edda. This title must have been used in contrast to something else, very probably in the same collection. My father’s view of the matter was closely argued but tentatively expressed; as he said, ‘one must remember that all this sort of thing (like the dating of individual poems, on which each scholar with equal certitude seems to give a different opinion) is very “guessy” and dubious.’ He thought it possible that there were three Sigurd lays: Sigur?arkvi?a en skamma, preserved in the Codex Regius; Sigur?arkvi?a en meiri, ‘the Greater (Longer) Lay of Sigurd’, which is totally lost; and ‘an ancient, terse, poem, concentrated chiefly on the Brynhild tragedy’, of which the conclusion is preserved in the Brot. (To his own poem he gave an alternative title, written under the primary title on the first page of the manuscript of the Lay, Sigur?arkvi?a en mesta, ‘the Longest Lay of Sigurd’, for in it the whole history is told.)

However this may be, for almost all the narrative from Sigurd’s coming to the court of the Burgundians (Niflungs, Gjukings) to the beginning of the Brot (Gunnar’s declaration to Hogni that Sigurd had broken his oaths) we are largely dependent on the Volsunga Saga, for Snorri tells the story with great brevity, and the preserved Sigurd lay, Sigur?arkvi?a en skamma, is chiefly concerned with the deaths of Sigurd and Brynhild. In my father’s view, it can be assumed that in so far as the relevant chapters of the Saga had an Eddaic basis they depended on poetry very closely similar to that carried away in the lacuna of the Codex Regius.

Thus, to recapitulate, Eddaic poetry concerning the deaths of Sigurd and Brynhild is preserved, most importantly, in Sigur?arkvi?a en skamma, and in the conclusion (the Brot or Fragment) of another Sigurd lay. They were used, of course, by the writer of the Saga, and my father wove his version from these sources independently.

3–4   At the end of the feast of the bridal of Gunnar and Brynhild, according to the Saga, Sigurd remembered all his oaths to Brynhild, but he made no sign. There is no suggestion in the Saga of what is implied in stanza 3.

6–11   The quarrel between Brynhild and Gudrun when they washed their hair in the river follows the story as told by Snorri Sturluson and in the Saga, except in the matter of the rings that revealed the truth to Brynhild: see the note to 9–10. A long dialogue between Brynhild and Gudrun which follows in the Saga is eliminated in the Lay.

9–10 As I have noted earlier (p.231), in the Saga Sigurd in Gunnar’s form took the ring Andvaranaut from Brynhild and gave her another from Fafnir’s hoard, whereas in the Lay, following Snorri Sturluson, this is reversed. So here, in Snorri’s words: ‘Gudrun laughed, and said: “You think that it was Gunnar who rode through the flickering fire? But I think that he who slept with you was the one who gave me this gold ring; but the gold ring which you wear on your hand and which you received as a wedding gift is called Andvaranaut; and I do not think that Gunnar got it on Gnitahei?i.”’ On Gnitahei?i see V.14.

12–20   Brynhild’s withdrawal to her bedchamber in black silence, lying like one dead, and her words with Gunnar when he came to her, derive in a general way from the Saga; but the long reproach that in the Saga she casts at him differs greatly from the equivalent passage in the Lay (stanzas 15–19). In the Saga she began, when at last prevailed upon by Gunnar to speak, by asking him: ‘What have you done with the ring I gave you, which king Budli gave me at our last parting, when you Gjukings came to him and vowed to harry and burn unless you gained me?’ Then she said that Budli had given her two choices, to wed as he wished, or to lose all her wealth and his favour; and seeing that she could not strive with him she promised to wed the one who would ride through her fire on the horse Grani with Fafnir’s hoard. This further confusion arising from the ‘doubled’ view of Brynhild is once again eliminated in the Lay, as are other details of the story in the Saga: the fettering of Brynhild by Hogni after her threat to kill Gunnar, and her tearing of her tapestry apart.

20  Lines 3–4: In the Saga Brynhild ordered the door of her chamber to be set open so that her lamentations could be heard far off.

21–34   The dialogue between Sigurd and Brynhild derives most of its elements from that in the Saga, but in the Lay it is much more compressed and coherent. In the Saga Brynhild does not curse Gudrun, and Sigurd does not say that he would even be willing to kill Gunnar.

26  In the Saga Brynhild said that she wondered at the man who came into her hall, and she thought that she recognised Sigurd’s eyes, but she could not see clearly because ‘her fortune was veiled’.

27  Lines 7–8: see VIII.33 lines 3–4 and IX.10 lines 5–8.

29  Lines 1, 3: ‘Woe worth’: A curse upon; ‘Woe worth the while’: A curse upon the time. Again in stanzas 37, 50.

30  Lines 7–8: ‘I sat unsmiling, no sign making’: see IX.3–4.

35  Here in the Saga the writer quoted a verse from a poem that he called Sigur?arkvi?a, in which it is said that Sigurd’s grief was so great that the links of his mailshirt snapped. Of this verse my father remarked that he did not believe it to come from the same hand as the