together in secret; in the Lay this is changed to her overhearing what Atli muttered in his sleep.
36 ‘kith’: friends, neighbours, acquaintance (the original sense of the word in the phrase ‘kith and kin’); again in stanza 40.
37–48 The narrative elements of the Hunnish messenger and the ring and runes sent by Gudrun are derived from both Atlakvi?a and Atlamal. The name Vingi is from Atlamal, but ‘Cold fell his cry’ (38) comes from Atlakvi?a, where Atli’s messenger, there called Knefro?r, kalla?i kaldri roddu ‘cried with a cold voice’, which as my father noted bore here a distinct sense, ‘ill-boding, fateful’.
From Atlakvi?a come also the great gifts offered by Atli, and the words of Gunnar and Hogni concerning Atli’s invitation. In Atlakvi?a Gudrun’s warning takes this form, in Hogni’s words:
Har fann ek hei?ingja
ri?it i hring rau?um.
Ylfskr er vegr okkar
at ri?a orindi.
(I found a hair of the heath-roamer / wound in the red ring./ Treacherous as a wolf is the road for you and me / if we ride on this errand.) But in Atlamal the wolf’s hair is eliminated, and Gudrun sent a message in runes, which Vingi altered before he delivered it.
In the Lay of Gudrun both motives are combined (stanzas 44–5), and in this my father was following the Saga and the note entitled Drap Niflunga in the Codex Regius. This latter adds that the ring was Andvaranaut (taken by Sigurd from Brynhild and given to Gudrun: but not so in the Lay of the Volsungs, see the note to IX.9–10).
39 ‘boon’: request, entreaty.
40 ‘dights’: prepares, makes ready.
42–58 I set out here the interweaving of sources in this passage in some detail, since it exhibits very clearly my father’s narrative method in this poem.
In Atlakvi?a, Gunnar asks his brother why they should be tempted by Atli’s bounty when they themselves own such wealth and such arms (see the Lay stanzas 42–3), and Hogni, not replying directly, speaks of the wolf’s hair twisted round Gudrun’s ring. With no further direct indication of Gunnar’s thoughts, he at once makes the decision to go, crying Ulfr mun ra?a arfi Niflunga, the wolf shall possess the heritage of the Niflungs, if he does not return. In Atlamal, on the other hand, neither Gunnar nor Hogni are shown to hesitate at all. The runic message that replaced the wolf’s hair of Atlakvi?a causes them no disquiet. It is only subsequently that Hogni’s wife Kostbera examines the runes and perceives that they have been overlaid on those originally cut; but Hogni dismisses her warning, as he also dismisses her warning dreams. Gunnar’s wife Glaumvor likewise has oppressive dreams, but they too are dismissed by Gunnar; and the brothers set out next morning. Kostbera and Glaumvor appear only in Atlamal and are not taken up into the Lay of Gudrun.
In the Saga a further element is introduced, in that Vingi, seeing that the brothers have become drunk, tells them that Atli, now aged, wishes them to become the rulers of his kingdom while his sons are so young (see stanzas 51–2 in the Lay). It is this that makes Gunnar decide to go, and Hogni reluctantly to agree, before the closer examination of the runes and the telling of the dreams take place.
In the Lay my father has taken elements from both the Eddaic lays and from the Saga, but rearranged the context, so that the implications are somewhat altered. Gunnar’s scorn for Atli’s offer and Hogni’s warning about the wolf’s hair are preserved, but Gunnar is now persuaded to accept the invitation by the ostensible meaning of Gudrun’s runic message (45). It is Grimhild, not Kostbera, who warns that the runes have been tampered with, and that the underlying meaning was quite other – and this leads Gunnar to tell Vingi that he will not now come (49). This is the occasion of Vingi’s final seduction (51–2); and though Hogni remains scornfully unconvinced (53–4), Gunnar, who had ‘deep drunken’, cries out echoing the words of Atlakvi?a: ‘Let wolves then wield wealth of Niflungs!’
The scene ends with a return to the runes: Hogni observing heavily that when Grimhild’s counsel ought to be attended to they dismiss her warning, and Vingi swearing, in an echo of his words in Atlamal, that the runes do not lie. Gunnar’s character is maintained: see p.52(ii).
50 ‘rune-conner’: one who pores over, closely examines, runes.
54 ‘fey saith my thought’: I take, but doubtfully, the word ‘fey’ here to mean ‘with presage of death’.
59 ‘few went with them’: in Atlakvi?a there is no mention of any companions of Gunnar and Hogni; in Atlamal they had three, Hogni’s sons Sn?var (named in stanzas 87–8 of the Lay) and Solar, and his wife’s brother Orkning.
59–63 On their journey to the land of the Huns, as my father wrote of the passage in Atlakvi?a (see p.313), ‘the Niflungs ride fen and forest and plain to Atli’. Stanza 62 is derived from Atlamal, where the furious rowing of Gunnar and Hogni and their companions is described; but in the Lay the localized Scandinavian scene of Atlamal is not intended – they are crossing the Danube.
60 ‘fey’: fated to die.
62 lines 7–8: this also is derived from Atlamal. My father remarked in a lecture that the abandoning of the boat by the Niflungs, since they hoped for no return, seems to be a detail that belongs to the oldest form of the legend as it reached the North, since it is found also in the German Nibelungenlied.
65–67 While the great courts of Atli are obviously quite differently conceived from the farmstead of Atlamal, Hogni’s beating on the doors derives from it, as does the slaying of Vingi – though in Atlamal they struck him to death with axes.
68–92 In Atlakvi?a there is no fighting when Gunnar and Hogni come to Atli’s halls. Gudrun meets her brothers as they enter and tells them that they are betrayed. Gunnar is at once seized and bound (and it is here that he is called vin Borgunda ‘lord of the Burgundians’, the only surviving trace in Old Norse literature of the Burgundian origin of the Gjukings: see p.228, note on VII.15). Hogni slew eight men before he was taken.
In Atlamal, on the other hand, as in the German
