and Brynhild (stanza 19), which is found in the Saga immediately after a prose paraphrase of the counsels, derived from the lost conclusion of the Sigrdrífumál.
20–23 The Saga, after the words ‘and this they swore to each other with oaths’, continues at once ‘Now Sigurd rides away’. The conclusion of this section of the Lay, referred to in the prose preamble that precedes it (‘They depart together, but the pride of Brynhild causes her to bid Sigurd depart and come back to her only when he has won all men’s honour, and a kingdom’), is a development altogether peculiar to the Lay.
VII GUDRúN
When in the Lay Sigurd parted from Brynhild his journey took him by intention to the land of the Gjúkings, as is seen from the words (VI.23) ‘green ran the roads / that Grani strode’ together with those of the Finch (V.51) ‘Green run the roads / to Gjúki’s land’. So it is also in Snorri’s greatly condensed account.
In the Saga, on the other hand, he rode from Hindarfell until he came to the house of a great lord named Heimir. He was married to Brynhild’s sister Bekkhild, who stayed at home and did fine needlework, whereas Brynhild wore helmet and hauberk and went to battle (hence their names, Norse bekkr ‘bench’, of the long seats in an old Scandinavian hall, and brynja ‘hauberk, coat of mail’). Sigurd stayed in that house for a long time in high honour.
We are then told that Brynhild was Heimir’s foster-daughter, and that she had come back to his house and was living apart and working on a tapestry that showed the deeds of Sigurd, the slaying of the dragon, and the taking of the treasure. One day Sigurd’s hawk flew up to a high tower and settled by a window. Sigurd climbed up after it, and saw within a woman of great beauty working on a tapestry of his deeds, and he knew that it was Brynhild.
On the next day he went to her, and at the end of a strange conversation she said to him: ‘It is not fated that we should dwell together; I am a shield-maiden and I wear a helmet among the warrior-kings. To them I give aid in battle; and battle is not hateful to me.’ But when Sigurd said that if this were so ‘the pain that lies therein is harder to bear than a sharp sword’ Brynhild replied that she would muster men for battle, ‘but you will wed Gudrún, Gjúki’s daughter.’ ‘No king’s daughter shall beguile me,’ said Sigurd; ‘I am not double-hearted; and I swear by the gods that I shall have you or no woman else.’ Then Brynhild spoke in the same way; and Sigurd gave her a gold ring, ok sv?reu nú eiea af nyju, ‘and they renewed their oaths’. Then Sigurd left her, and the chapter in the Saga ends.
Brynhild is here the daughter of King Budli (Bueli) and the sister of Atli (Attila), and Snorri says the same.
Of this extraordinary development in the story of Sigurd and Brynhild there is no trace in the Lay; but I postpone discussion of the treatment of this part of the legend by the author of the Saga to the end of my commentary on the Lay (Note on Brynhild, p.241).
The Saga now turns to the kingdom of Gjúki, which lay ‘south of the Rhine’, to his wife Grímhild (described as a sorceress, and of a grim disposition), his three sons Gunnar, H?gni, and Gotthorm, and his daughter Gudrún (Guerún). It is told that one day Gudrún spoke to one of her waiting-women and told her that she was downcast because of a dream.
With Gudrún’s dream the Lay takes up at the beginning of section VII, but my father treated this episode very differently from the form it has in the Saga. In the latter, Gudrún dreamt that she had in her hand a marvellous hawk with golden feathers: she cared for nothing more than that hawk, and she would rather lose all her wealth than lose it. The woman interpreted the dream to mean that some king’s son would come to ask for Gudrún; he would be a fine man and she would greatly love him. Then Gudrún said: ‘It grieves me that I do not know who he is; but let us go to seek Brynhild, for she will know.’
And so they did. Gudrún and her attendants came to Brynhild’s hall, which was all adorned with gold and stood on a hill. There Gudrún related to Brynhild her dream: but not the dream that she had spoken about before, for now she told of the great stag with golden hair which appears in the Lay. But in his poem (VII.1–5) my father combined and interwove the two episodes, rejecting the dream of the hawk; and the interpreter of Gudrún’s dream(s) is neither the waiting-woman nor Brynhild, but Grímhild, her mother. The dream of the stag in the Lay (VII.2–4) derives in content from the Saga, but there is an important difference. In the Saga Gudrún says to Brynhild that it was ‘you’ who shot down the stag at her feet, and it was ‘you’ who gave her a wolf-cub which spattered her with her brothers’ blood; whereas in the Lay it is ‘a woman wildly / on the wind riding’ who brought down the golden hart, and it was an unidentified ‘they’ who gave her the wolf.
In the Saga, when Gudrún has recounted her dream, Brynhild says to her: ‘I will explain it as it will come to pass. Sigurd, whom I chose to be my husband, will come to you. Grímhild will give him mead that is drugged, which will bring great affliction to us all. You will have him, but you will soon lose him; then you will be wedded to King Atli. You will lose your brothers, and then you will slay Atli.’ Then Gudrún expressed her sense of ‘overwhelming sorrow’ to know such things, and returned to her father’s house.
It may be that this episode was derived by the writer of the Saga from a poem in which the substance of the story was told prophetically, as is seen elsewhere in the Edda; but as a simple element in the narrative, recording Brynhild’s power of foretelling, it is grotesque. As my father observed, ‘Foreknowledge is a dangerous element in a tale.’ In the Lay he of course got rid in its entirety of Gudrún’s visit to Brynhild, and Grímhild offers no interpretation of the dream, but tries to calm her with soothing words about the weather (as does the waiting-woman in the Saga) and the idea that ‘dreams oft token / the dark by light, / good by evil’. Gone too are Brynhild’s sister Bekkhild; Atli son of Budli likewise disappears as Brynhild’s brother. Where Brynhild dwelt after she parted from Sigurd we are not told: ‘to her land she turned / lonely shining’, ‘to her land she came, / long the waiting’ (VI.23). At the beginning of VIII she is seen in her courts of ‘wealth and splendour’, awaiting Sigurd (1–2).
In the Saga, as in the Lay, Sigurd now arrives at King Gjúki’s halls, riding on Grani with his treasure. He was received with honour; and he rode abroad with Gunnar and H?gni and was foremost among them. Grímhild observed how deeply he loved Brynhild, and how much he spoke of her, but she thought how fine a thing it would be if he, with his great qualities and his vast riches, should marry Gudrún and remain among them. She prepared therefore a potion and gave it to Sigurd to drink; and with that drink he lost all memory of Brynhild.
In the Lay, at the feast held on his arrival, a new element enters in the songs sung to the harp by Gunnar (of war between the Goths and the Huns, 14–15), and by Sigurd (of Fáfnir and the golden hoard, and of Brynhild on Hindarfell, 16–18); and there is an account of a campaign led by Sigurd to the old land of the V?lsungs in vengeance for the death of Sigmund (24–29). In the Saga this took place far earlier, and was carried out with the aid of King Hjálprek (see pp.205–6), whereas in the Lay he was aided by the Gjúkings. ódin appears here in the Lay as he does in the Saga, but his r?le is altogether different. In the Saga (deriving from verses of Reginsmál) the ships were caught in a great storm, but ódin stood on a headland and called to them, and when they took him on board the storm abated. In the Lay (28–29) he appears at the end of the fighting, accosting Sigurd at the old house of V?lsung, now roofless and the great tree that upheld it dead, to warn him that his fate does not lie in the land of his ancestors; but ódin says ‘Now king thou art / of kings begotten, / a bride calls thee / over billowing seas’, and after his return Sigurd recalls the words of Brynhild, ‘a queen was I once, / and a king shall wed’ (VI.22, VII.35).
8 ‘Niflung land, Niflung lord’, and 12 ‘Niflungs’: on the name Niflungar Snorri Sturluson was specific: Gjúkingar, teir eru ok kallaeir Niflungar, ‘ the Gjúkings, who are also called Niflungs’. In this commentary, conceived fairly strictly as an elucidation of the treatment of the Norse V?lsung 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 Myrkvier, Anglicized as ‘Mirkwood’, was used of a dark boundary-forest, separating peopl