The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

(6)  To do this she lies terribly against Sigurd and herself. She accuses him of broken faith when he lay in her bed after the riding of the flame. This was her only means of getting Gunnar to slay him [see stanzas IX. 43, 46, and 49 of the Lay]. Later she reveals the truth [stanza 68, lines 5–8].

That is why Aslaug is such a fatal addition in the Saga, even if she was begotten upon the mountain-top, not at the second riding of the flame (see p.232).

I think that we should accept (he wrote) such a conception for the poem, of which the twenty stanzas of the Brot are all that are left, and for one of the oldest lines of tradition. The resolution of the Brynhild-Valkyrie difficulty does not lie in the assumption that one was mortal (Brynhild) and the other a Valkyrie from an older ‘myth’, which later became confused. The solution, I think, is that the Valkyrie is the one essential part of the whole story, which is always present. [In a separate note my father wrote: ‘Brynhild cannot be a “human” character mythicized (or confused with a Valkyrie Sigrdrifa). She is a Valkyrie humanized.’]

But she was treated in at least two different ways. There was the mountain-top awakening of the Odin- enchanted Valkyrie (perhaps the more specifically Scandinavian conception and therefore the later, since the story was not originally Scandinavian). There was also the proud princess tricked by her own stratagem (when Sigurd rode the fire but in the form of Gunnar) – the more southern one. That the lost poem that ends in the Brot represented this older ‘more southern version’ is probably borne out by the important point in which it does agree with the non-Scandinavian versions, namely that Sigurd was murdered out of doors in a wood and that Hogni had a part in it (in the Brot itself Gudrun is shown standing at the doors of the hall as the brothers ride back).

It is significant that the compiler of the Codex Regius entered a note about this since it clearly puzzled him and his contemporaries (see p.238, note to stanzas 51–64). He notes that the Old Lay of Gudrun says the same – in this case, that Sigurd was slain at the Thing (the council place); and he is aware that this is the ‘southern’ version (?y?vestur menn, German men). The other story, the slaying of Sigurd in bed in Gudrun’s arms, in keeping with the Norse tendency to the personal, and to the concentration of action in time and place, is represented in Sigur?arkvi?a en skamma, the extant Sigurd lay (see p.234), and this is the version followed (without comment) in the Saga, and in the Lay (see p.238).

My father did not discuss in these notes the development, in incompatible ways, seen in the Volsunga Saga, of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild in the Norse tradition. But his opinion on the cardinal question seems clear from a passing observation elsewhere that, in his view, the drink of forgetfulness given to Sigurd was ‘invented by the author of the lost Sigur?arkvi?a en meiri [see p.234] to account for the difficulties raised by the previous betrothal of Sigurd and Brynhild.’

In conclusion, he wrote: There is nothing left for us now, therefore, but to express surprise that the author of the Saga, who could so decisively and unhesitatingly adopt one of the conflicting accounts of the murder, could not adopt a single view of Brynhild. Since the adoption of a single view of the murder must be due to artistic preference, one is perhaps only being just to the author of the Saga in assuming that the vagueness and uncertainty of Brynhild’s position was not pure bungling on his part. He wanted a complex of conflicting motives and emotions for the central tragedy – to have these he was content to leave the previous relations of Brynhild and Sigurd confused. He had to, since each theory contributed to her motives.

In the Saga Brynhild’s passion of rage and grief is in part due to pride – she has not wedded the supreme hero (and hates Gudrun on that account); but also, she has been wedded by a trick (and hates Gunnar and Sigurd on that account). Her oath has been broken and she hates herself. She really loves Sigurd alone: her heart’s desire is frustrated, and she would kill what she loves rather than let a rival share it. Her betrothal to Sigurd has been broken by both of them – both by fate and by magic. She is wroth with Sigurd (and herself) on this account – and will not in any case endure her marriage to Gunnar longer. Behind all hangs Odin, and his doom, and the vanity of her vows – he doomed her to wed. Inextricably interwoven is the curse on the gold.

Truly complicated! And though in building up largely a product of accident, its retention is due perhaps to taste. We may accept this, even if we are still on safe ground in affirming that a better artist could have retained all that was necessary of the two divergent Brynhild-heroines and not made them so obscure and indeed contradictory and unintelligible.

Earlier Workings of

Volsungakvi?a en nyja

The earlier manuscript material of the Upphaf is not easy to interpret. There are two versions, which are readily placed in sequence: these I will call for ease of reference text A and text B. The first, or text A, with the title Upphaf, has almost as many stanzas as the final form, but not all in the same order, and the wording constantly differing, if for the most part only slightly. The opening stanza is among those that underwent the most change to reach the final form:

Ere the years there yawned

yearless ages,

without sand or sea

silent, empty;

Earth was not moulded

nor arched Heaven:

an abyss gaping

without blade of grass.

Stanza 4 (‘Unmarred their mirth. . .’) was not present. Stanza 13 (in text A stanza 12) reads:

The wolf for O?inn

at the world’s ending (> waits unsleeping),

for Frey the fair

flames of Surtur;

the doom of Thor

the Dragon beareth:

all shall be ended

and Earth perish.

Though not so marked in the manuscript, the words of the Sibyl clearly end here, and stanzas 14–15, in which the Sibyl speaks of the role of Sigurd at the Ragnarok, are here absent. Then follow in A stanzas 16–20 of the final text, the conclusion of the Upphaf, in which the Gods prepare for the Last Battle according to the prophecy, and ending with the words ‘for one they waited, / the World’s chosen’. In A at this point