sorceress, and the sorceress slept with Siggeir for three nights in Signy’s form, while Signy slept with her brother. The son born to them was named Sinfj?tli.
33 On lines 5–6 of this stanza see the note to 35–36.
‘bast’: flexible bark, used for making baskets, and for tying.
33–34 In the Saga Sigmund subjected Sinfj?tli to the same test as Siggeir’s sons, and when he came back to the underground house Sinfj?tli had baked the bread, but he said that he thought that there had been something alive in the flour when he started kneading it. Sigmund laughed, and said that Sinfj?tli should not eat the bread he had baked, ‘for you have kneaded in a great venomous snake.’ There is no mention in the Saga of Sinfj?tli’s bringing Sigmund’s sword (see note to 37–39).
35–36 A long passage is devoted in the Saga to the ferocious exploits of Sigmund and Sinfj?tli in the forest, where they became werewolves; and it is an important point that Sigmund thought that Sinfj?tli was the son of Signy and Siggeir (cf. 33 ‘Fair one, thy father / thy face gave not’), possessing the energy and daring of the V?lsungs but the evil heart of his father.
37–39 In the Saga Sigmund and Sinfj?tli entered Siggeir’s hall and hid themselves behind ale barrels in the outer room; but the two young children of Siggeir and Signy were playing with golden toys, bowling them across the floor of the hall and running along with them, and a gold ring rolled into the room where Sigmund and Sinfj?tli sat. One of the children, chasing the ring, ‘saw where two tall, grim men were sitting, with overhanging helms and shining mailcoats’; and he ran back and told his father.
Signy, hearing this, took the children into the outer room and urged Sigmund and Sinfj?tli to kill them, since they had betrayed their hiding-place. Sigmund said that he would not kill her children even if they had given him away, but the terrible Sinfj?tli made light of it, slew both children, and hurled their bodies into the hall. When Sigmund and Sinfj?tli had at last been captured Siggeir had a great burial-mound made of stones and turf; and in the midst of the mound there was set a huge stone slab so that when they were put into it they were separated and could not pass the slab, but could hear each other. But before the mound was covered over Signy threw down a bundle of straw to Sinfj?tli, in which was meat. In the darkness of the mound Sinfj?tli discovered that Sigmund’s sword was thrust into the meat, and with the sword they were able to saw through the stone slab.
I have said that there is no old poetry treating this story save for one half-stanza, and those verses are cited by the author of the Saga at this point:
ristu af magni
mikla hellu,
Sigmundr, hj?rvi,
ok Sinfj?tli.
‘They cut with strength the great slab, Sigmund and Sinfj?tli, with the sword’.
When they got out of the mound it was night, and everyone was asleep; and bringing up wood they set fire to the hall.
40–41 It was now, when Sigmund told Signy to come forth, that in the Saga she revealed the truth about Sinfj?tli – this is no doubt implied in stanza 41 of the Lay, ‘Son Sinfj?tli, Sigmund father!’ In her last words, according to the Saga, before she went back into the fire, she declared that she had worked so mightily to achieve vengeance for V?lsung that it was impossible for her now to live longer.
III DAUDI SINFJ?TLA (The Death of Sinfj?tli)
There intervenes now in the Saga, after the deaths of Signy and Siggeir, the history of Helgi Hundingsbani, an originally independent figure who had been connected to the V?lsung legend by making him the son of Sigmund and Borghild (only referred to as ‘the Queen’ in this section of the Lay). In this the Saga follows the ‘Helgi lays’ of the Edda; but in his poem my father entirely eliminated this accretion, and Helgi is not mentioned.
The sources for this section of the Lay are the Saga and a short prose passage in the Edda entitled Frá dauea Sinfj?tla (Of Sinfj?tli’s death): the compiler of the Codex Regius of the Edda evidently wrote this, in the absence of any verses, in order to conclude the histories of Sigmund and Sinfj?tli. There are no important differences between the Lay and the old narratives.
1–2 In the Saga Sigmund, returning to his own land, drove out a usurper who had established himself there.
3 ‘Grímnir’s gift’: see II.12–13 and note.
4 In Frá dauea Sinfj?tla and in the Saga Sigmund’s queen is named Borghild; in the Lay she is given no name (perhaps because my father regarded the name Borghild as not original in the legend, but entering with the ‘Helgi’ connection). It is not said in the sources that she was taken in war.
6 In both sources Sinfj?tli slew Borghild’s brother, not her father; they were suitors for the same woman. In the Saga it is told that Borghild wished to have Sinfj?tli driven out of the land, and though Sigmund would not allow this he offered her great riches in atonement; it was at the funeral-feast for her brother that Sinfj?tli was murdered.
7 It is told in the Saga, at the time of the bread-making incident, when Sinfj?tli kneaded in a poisonous snake (see note to II.33–34), that Sigmund could not be harmed by poison within or without, whereas Sinfj?tli could only withstand poison externally; the same is said in Frá dauea Sinfj?tla and in the Prose Edda.
9–10 In both sources Sigmund said to Sinfj?tli, when Borghild offered him drink for the third time: Láttu gr?n sía, sonr (‘Strain it through your beard, my son’). Sigmund was very drunk by then, says the Saga, ‘and that is why he said it’.
12 The boatman was ódin (the verses describing him here are repeated in varied form in IV.8). This is not said in the old sources. In those texts the boatman offered to ferry Sigmund across the fjord, but the boat was too small to take both Sigmund and the body of Sinfj?tli, so the body was taken first. Sigmund walked along the fjord, but the boat vanished. The Saga tells that Borghild was banished, and died not long after.
13 in Valh?llu: the Norse dative inflexion is retained for metrical reasons.
IV F?DDR SIGURDR (Sigurd born)
After the expulsion of Borghild Sigmund took another wife very much younger than himself (IV.2), and she was the mother of Sigurd. In the Saga and in Fra dauea Sinfj?tla her name was Hj?rdis, the daughter of King Eylimi; whereas in the Lay she is Sigrlinn. This difference depends on the view that a transference of names took place: that originally in the Norse legends Hj?rdis was the mother of Helgi (see the note to III), while Sigrlinn was Sigmund’s wife and Sigurd’s mother. After this transference Sigrlinn became the mother of Helgi (and so appears in the Eddaic poem Helgakviea Hj?rvaressonar, the Lay of Helgi son of Hj?rvare) and Hj?rdis became the mother of Sigurd. In the German poem Nibelungenlied, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, Sieglind (Sigrlinn) was King Siegmund’s queen, the mother of Siegfried (Sigurd).
The narrative in this section of the Lay has been changed and reduced from that in the Saga (to which there is no poetry corresponding in the Edda). In the Saga, King Lyngvi was a rival to Sigmund for the hand of Hj?rdis, but Hj?rdis rejected him; and it was Lyngvi, not the seven suitors, ‘sons of kings’, of the Lay (stanzas 3 and 5), who came with great force against Sigmund in his own land.
Hj?rdis accompanied only by a bondwoman was sent into the forest and remained there during the fierce battle. In the Saga as in the Lay (stanzas 8–9) ódin appeared, and Sigmund’s sword (‘Grímnir’s gift’, 5) broke against the upraised spear of the god, and he was slain (on the significance of ódin’s intervention see the note on the section Upphaf, pp.185–86).
As in the Lay, in the Saga Hj?rdis (Sigrlinn) found Sigmund where he lay mortally wounded on the battlefield, and he spoke to her, saying that there was no hope of healing and he did not wish for it, since ódin had claimed him (stanza 11); he spoke also of Sigurd, her son unborn, and told her to keep the shards of the sword, which should be made anew.
Immediately upon Sigmund’s death, a further fleet came in to the shore, commanded, it is said in the Saga, by Alf son of King Hjálprek of Denmark (stanza 14 of the Lay, where the newcomers are not named). Seeing this Hj?rdis ordered her bondwoman to exchange clothes with her, and to declare that she was the king’s daughter. When Alf returned with the women, still disguised, to his own country the truth of the subterfuge emerged. Alf promised to marry Hj?rdis after her child was born, and so it came about that Sigurd was brought up in King Hjálprek’s household. In the Lay the curious story of the disguising of Sigrlinn (Hj?rdis) is reduced to the words ‘The bride of Sigmund / as a bondwoman / over sounding seas / sadly journeyed’.
11 ‘wanhope’: despair.
13 In the Saga Sigmund named the sword that should be made from the shards Gramr; this appears in the next section of the Lay, V.18.
V REGIN
The sources of the story in this section of the Lay are not only the V?lsunga Saga but als