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 Sigurearkviea 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: Sigurearkviea en skamma, preserved in the Codex Regius; Sigurearkviea 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, Sigurearkviea 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, Gjúkings) to the beginning of the Brot (Gunnar’s declaration to H?gni that Sigurd had broken his oaths) we are largely dependent on the V?lsunga Saga, for Snorri tells the story with great brevity, and the preserved Sigurd lay, Sigurearkviea 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 Sigurearkviea 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 Gudrún 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 Gudrún 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 Fáfnir’s hoard, whereas in the Lay, following Snorri Sturluson, this is reversed. So here, in Snorri’s words: ‘Gudrún 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 Gnitaheiei.”’ On Gnitaheiei 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 Gjúkings 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 Fáfnir’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 H?gni 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 Gudrún, 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 Sigurearkviea, 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 Brot, and so attributed it to the otherwise wholly lost ‘Sigurearkviea en meiri’ (see p.234). In the Lay the extravagant idea is characteristically reduced.
39–40 Stanzas 39 lines 5–8 and 40 lines 1–4 echo VIII.30.
39–50 Elements in the arrangement of dialogue are altered in the Lay, and the development set in a clearer light and sharper focus. Brynhild’s lie to Gunnar, that Sigurd had possessed her (43), leads to his words to H?gni (46): ‘oaths he swore me, all belied them’, which are almost the first words of the Brot (see p.233).
51–64 There were two distinct versions of the story of the murder of Sigurd, each represented in poems of the Edda. In the Brot he was slain out of doors, and H?gni had a part in it (despite his perception that Brynhild had lied to Gunnar, which is seen in a verse of the Brot that is echoed in stanza 47 of the Lay); but in Sigurearkviea en skamma and other poems he was slain by Gotthorm in his bed (see further pp.243–44). The compiler of the Codex Regius put in a prose note about this at the end of the Brot:
In this poem is told of the death of Sigurd, and here the story is that they slew him out of doors; but some say that they slew him within doors, in his bed, sleeping. But German men say that they slew him out in the forest; and so also it is told in Guerúnarkviea en forna (the Old Lay of Gudrún) that Sigurd and the sons of Gjúki had ridden to the council place when he was slain. But all are agreed in this, that they broke their troth to him, and fell upon him when he was lying down and unprepared.
The Saga follows the story of his death as he slept in the house, and the Lay likewise adopts this version, but introduces (54–57) a brief episode in which Gotthorm encountered Sigurd as he hunted in the forest, and hailed him abusively – perhaps to give colour to what is said in the Saga, and repeated in stanzas 52–3 – that the diet of wolf and snake on which he was fed made him exceedingly bold and fierce.
51 Grímhild’s offspring: the author of the Saga regarded Gotthorm (Gottormr) as a full brother of Gunnar and H?gni, and had Gunnar say that they should persuade Gotthorm to do the deed, because he was young and had sworn no oath. My father here followed a tradition, found in the poem Hyndluljóe, that Gotthorm was the half-brother of Gunnar and H?gni, being ‘Grímhild’s offspring’; Snorri Sturluson, also, says that Gotthorm was Gjúki’s stepson.
58–59 In the Saga, Gotthorm went twice to Sigurd’s chamber in the morning, but Sigurd looked at him, and Gotthorm dared not attack him on account of his piercing gaze; when he came the third time Sigurd was asleep.
67–69 These stanzas echo the concluding verses of the Brot, which does not extend to the death of Brynhild.
73 In the Saga, following Sigurearkviea en skamma, Brynhild dying foretold all the later history of Gudrún; this has no place in the Lay.
77 Lines 5–7 are an exact repetition of lines 3–5 in III.13, where the ‘son’s son’ is Sinfj?tli, except that the reading there is V?lsung, not V?lsungs. The plural form here is clear, but may nonetheless be erroneous. On the form Valh?llu see the note to III.13.
77–82 The concluding passage is of course peculiar to the Lay. With stanzas 79–81 cf. Upphaf, the opening section of the Lay, stanzas 11, 14–15.
77–78 In a fragmentary poem of the tenth century on the death of the ferocious Eirik Blood-axe, son of King Harold Fairhair and brother of Hákon the Good (see the no