of Earth’s most mighty,
of ancient kings.
138 A huge adder
hideous gleaming
from stony hiding
was stealing slow.
Huns still heard him
his harp thrilling,
and doom of Hunland
dreadly chanting.
139 An ancient adder
evil-swollen,
to breast it bent
and bitter stung him.
Loud cried Gunnar
life forsaking;
harp fell silent,
and heart was still.
140 To the queen that cry came
clear and piercing;
aghast she sat
in guarded bower.
Erp and Eitill
eager called she:
dark their locks were,
dark their glances.
*
141 Pyres they builded
proud and stately;
Hunland’s champions
there high upraised.
A pyre they builded
on the plain standing;
there naked lay
the Niflung lords.
142 Flames were mounting,
fire was roaring,
reek was swirling
ringed with tumult.
Smoke was fading,
sunk was burning;
windblown ashes
were wafted cold.
143 A hall was thronging,
Huns were drinking
the funeral feast
of fallen men.
Foes were vanquished,
fire had burned them;
now Atli was lord
of East and West.
144 Wealth he dealt there,
wounds requiting,
worthy weregild
of warriors slain.
Loud they praised him;
long the drinking,
wild grew the words
of the wine-bemused.
145 Gudrún came forth
goblets bearing:
Gudrún ‘Hail, O Hun-king,
health I bring thee!’
Deep drank Atli,
drained them laughing:
though gold he missed,
yet was Gunnar dead.
Gudrún 146 ‘Hail, O Hun-king,
hear me speaking:
My brethren are slain
that I begged of thee.
Erp and Eitill
dost thou ask to look on?
Ask no longer –
their end hath come!
147 Their hearts thou tastest
with honey mingled,
their blood was blent
in the bowls I gave;
those bowls their skulls
bound with silver,
their bones thy hounds
have burst with teeth.’
148 There awful cries
of anguish woke;
their heads men hid
their horror shrouding.
Pale grew Atli,
as one poison-sick,
on his face crashed he
fallen swooning.
149 To bed they brought him
in bower empty,
laid him and left him
to loathsome dream.
Women were wailing,
wolves were howling,
hounds were baying
the hornéd moon.
150 In came Gudrún
with ghastly eyes,
darkly mantled,
dire of purpose.
Gudrún ‘Wake thou, woeful!
Wake from dreaming!’
In his breast the knife
she bitter drave it.
Atli 151 ‘Grímhild’s daughter
ghastly-handed,
hounds should tear thee
and to hell send thee!
Stoned and branded
at the stake living
thou shouldst burn and wither
thou born of witch!’
152 Gudrún mocked him,
gasping left him.
Gudrún ‘The doom of burning
is dight for thee!
On pyre the corpse is,
prepared the faggot!
so Atli passeth
earth forsaking.’
153 Fires she kindled,
flames she brandished;
the house was roaring,
hounds were yelping.
Timbers crumbled,
trees and rafters;
there sank and died
slaves and maidens.
154 Smoke was swirling
over sleeping town,
light was lifted
over land and tree.
Women were weeping,
wolves were yammering,
hounds were howling
in the Hun-kingdom.
155 Thus Atli ended
earth forsaking,
to the Niflungs’ bane
the night was come;
of V?lsung, Niflung,
of vows broken,
of woe and valour
are the words ended.
*
156 While world lasteth
shall the words linger,
while men are mindful
of the mighty days.
The woe of Gudrún
while world lasteth
till end of days
all shall hearken.
157 Her mind wavered,
her mood grew cold;
her heart withered
and hate sickened.
Life she hated,
yet life took not,
witless wandering
in the woods alone.
158 Over wan rivers,
over woods and forests,
over rocks she roamed
to the roaring sea.
In the waves she cast her,
the waves spurned her;
by the waves sitting
she woe bemoaned.
Gudrún 159 ‘Of gold were the days,
gleaming silver,
silver gleaming
ere Sigurd came.
A maid was I then,
a maiden fair;
only dreams vexed me,
dreams of evil.
160 Fell sorrows five
hath fate sent me:
they slew Sigurd,
my sorrow greatest.
In evil loathing
to Atli me gave:
too long lasting
my life’s disease.
161 The heart of H?gni
they hewed living:
my heart it hardened,
my hardest woe.
Gunnar heard I
in the grave crying:
my grief most grim
was that ghastly voice.
162 My sons I slew
seared with madness:
keen it bites me
most clinging woe.
There sits beside me
son nor daughter;
the world is empty,
the waves are cold.
163 They slew Sigurd:
my sorrow deepest,
my life’s loathing,
my life’s disease.
Sigurd, Sigurd,
on swift Grani
lay saddle and bridle
and seek for me!
164 Rememberest thou
what on marriage-bed
in love we pledged,
as we laid us down? –
the light I would leave
to look for thee,
from hell thou wouldst ride
and haste to me!’
165 In the waves she cast her,
the waves took her;
in the wan water
her woe was drowned.
While the world lasteth
woe of Gudrún
till the end of days
all shall hearken.
*
166 Thus glory endeth,
and gold fadeth,
on noise and clamours
the night falleth.
Lift up your hearts,
lords and maidens
for the song of sorrow
that was sung of old.
COMMENTARY
on
GUDRúNARKVIDA EN NYJA
COMMENTARY
on
GUDRúNARKVIDA EN NYJA
In this commentary Guerúnarkviea en Nyja is referred to as ‘the Lay of Gudrún’, or where no confusion is possible as ‘the Lay’, and V?lsungakviea en Nyja as ‘the Lay of the V?lsungs’. As there are no sections in this poem, references are made simply by the numbers of the stanzas.
The subordinate title Dráp Niflunga means ‘The Slaying of the Niflungs’: on this name see the Lay of the V?lsungs, VII.8 and note.
The relation of the Lay of Gudrún to its ancient sources is not essentially different from that of the Lay of the V?lsungs, but in this case the sources are very largely extant in the poems of the Edda, and the V?lsunga Saga is of far less importance. In its content the Lay of Gudrún is essentially a complex interweaving of the Eddaic poems Atlakviea and Atlamál, together with some wholly independent developments.
My father devoted much time and thought to Atlakviea, and prepared a very detailed commentary (the basis for lectures and seminars) on this extraordinarily difficult text. It is a poem that he much admired. Despite its condition, ‘we are in the presence (he wrote) of great poetry that can still move us as poetry. Its style is universally and rightly praised: rapid, terse, vigorous – while maintaining, within its narrow limits, characterization. The poet who wrote it knew how to produce the grim and deadly atmosphere his theme demanded. It lives in the memory as one of the things in the Edda most instinct with that demonic energy and force which one finds in Old Norse verse.’
But the text as it stands in the Codex Regius, with its clearly corrupt, defective or unintelligible lines or stanzas, its incompatible additions, its strange variations in metre, has inevitably given rise over many years to a great deal of discordant critical analysis. Here I need say no more, however, than that my father tentatively interpreted the state of Atlakviea as the reworking of an earlier poem, a reworking that had then itself undergone ‘improvements’, additions, losses, and disarrangements.
Following Atlakviea in the Codex Regius is Atlamál, the longest of all the heroic poems of the Edda. Whether or not the author of this poem was familiar with Atlakviea (my father thought it improbable) it is decidedly later, and if it tells the same story and keeps the old names, it