Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore, No. 13
The Edda
II
The Heroic Mythology of the North
By
Winifred Faraday, M.A.
Published by David Nutt, at the Sign of the Phoenix, Long Acre, London
1902
Author's Note
The present study forms a sequel to No. 12 (_The Edda: Divine Mythology
of the North_), to which the reader is referred for introductory matter
and for the general Bibliography. Additional bibliographical references
are given, as the need occurs, in the notes to the present number.
Manchester,
July 1902.
The Edda: II. The Heroic Mythology of the North
Sigemund the Waelsing and Fitela, Aetla, Eormanric the Goth and Gifica
of Burgundy, Ongendtheow and Theodric, Heorrenda and the Heodenings,
and Weland the Smith: all these heroes of Germanic legend were known
to the writers of our earliest English literature. But in most cases
the only evidence of this knowledge is a word, a name, here and there,
with no hint of the story attached. For circumstances directed the
poetical gifts of the Saxons in England towards legends of the saints
and Biblical paraphrase, away from the native heroes of the race;
while later events completed the exclusion of Germanic legend from our
literature, by substituting French and Celtic romance. Nevertheless,
these few brief references in _Beowulf_ and in the small group of
heathen English relics give us the right to a peculiar interest in the
hero-poems of the Edda. In studying these heroic poems, therefore,
we are confronted by problems entirely different in character from
those which have to be considered in connexion with the mythical
texts. Those are in the main the product of one, the Northern,
branch of the Germanic race, as we have seen (No. 12 of this series),
and the chief question to be determined is whether they represent,
however altered in form, a mythology common to all the Germans, and
as such necessarily early; or whether they are in substance, as well
as in form, a specific creation of the Scandinavians, and therefore
late and secondary. The heroic poems of the Edda, on the contrary,
with the exception of the Helgi cycle, have very close analogues in
the literatures of the other great branches of the Germanic race,
and these we are able to compare with the Northern versions.
The Edda contains poems belonging to the following heroic cycles:
(_a_) _Weland the Smith_.--Anglo-Saxon literature has several
references to this cycle, which must have been a very popular one;
and there is also a late Continental German version preserved in
an Icelandic translation. But the poem in the Edda is the oldest
connected form of the story.
(_b_) _Sigurd and the Nibelungs_.--Again the oldest reference is in
Anglo-Saxon. There are two well-known Continental German versions
in the _Nibelungen Lied_ and the late Icelandic _Thidreks Saga_,
but the Edda, on the whole, has preserved an earlier form of the
legend. With it is loosely connected
(_c_) _The Ermanric Cycle_.--The oldest references to this are in Latin
and Anglo-Saxon. The Continental German version in the _Thidreks Saga_
is late, and, like that in the Edda, contaminated with the Sigurd
story, with which it had originally nothing to do.
(_d_) _Helgi_.--This cycle, at least in its present form, is peculiar
to the Scandinavian North.
All the above-named poems are contained in Codex Regius of the Elder
Edda. From other sources we may add other poems which are Eddic, not
Skaldic, in style, in which other heroic cycles are represented. The
great majority of the poems deal with the favourite story of the
Volsungs, which threatens to swamp all the rest; for one hero after
another, Burgundian, Hun, Goth, was absorbed into it. The poems in this
part of the MS. differ far more widely in date and style than do the
mythological ones; many of the Volsung-lays are comparatively late, and
lack the fine simplicity which characterises the older popular poetry.
_Völund_.--The lay of Völund, the wonderful smith, the Weland of
the Old English poems and the only Germanic hero who survived for
any considerable time in English popular tradition, stands alone in
its cycle, and is the first heroic poem in the MS. It is in a very
fragmentary state, some of the deficiencies being supplied by short
pieces of prose. There are two motives in the story: the Swan-maids,
and the Vengeance of the Captive Smith. Three brothers, Slagfinn,
Egil and Völund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built
themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, early one
morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, their swancoats lying
beside them. The brothers took them home; but after seven years the
swan-maidens, wearied of their life, flew away to battle, and did
not return.
"Seven years they stayed there, but in the eighth longing seized
them, and in the ninth need parted them." Egil and Slagfinn went to
seek their wives, but Völund stayed where he was and worked at his
forge. There Nithud, King of Sweden, took him captive:
"Men went by night in studded mailcoats; their shields shone by
the waning moon. They dismounted from the saddle at the hall-gable,
and went in along the hall. They saw rings strung on bast which the
hero owned, seven hundred in all; they took them off and put, them on
again, all but one. The keen-eyed archer Völund came in from hunting,
from a far road.... He sat on a bear-skin and counted his rings, and
the prince of the elves missed one; he thought Hlodve's daughter,
the fairy-maid, had come back. He sat so long that he fell asleep,
and awoke powerless: heavy bonds were on his hands, and fetters
clasped on his feet."
They took him away and imprisoned him, ham-strung, on an island to
forge treasures for his captors. Then Völund planned vengeance:
"'I see on Nithud's girdle the sword which I knew keenest and best,
and which I forged with all my skill. The glittering blade is taken
from me for ever; I shall not see it borne to Völund's smithy. Now
Bödvild wears my bride's red ring; I expect no atonement.' He sat
and slept not, but struck with his hammer."
Nithud's children came to see him in his smithy: the two boys he slew,
and made drinking-cups for Nithud from their skulls; and the daughter
Bödvild he beguiled, and having made himself wings he rose into the
air and left her weeping for her lover and Nithud mourning his sons.
In the Old English poems allusion is made only to the second part
of the story; there is no reference to the legend of the enchanted
brides, which is indeed distinct in origin, being identical with
the common tale of the fairy wife who is obliged to return to animal
shape through some breach of agreement by her mortal husband. This
incident of the compact (_i.e._, to hide the swan-coat, to refrain
from asking the wife's name, or whatever it may have been) has been
lost in the Völund tale. The Continental version is told in the late
Icelandic _Thidreks Saga_, where it is brought into connexion with
the Volsung story; in this the story of the second brother, Egil the
archer, is also given, and its antiquity is supported by the pictures
on the Anglo-Saxon carved whale-bone box known as the Franks Casket,
dated by Professor Napier at about 700 A.D. The adventures of the
third brother, Slagfinn, have not survived. The Anglo-Saxon gives
Völund and Bödvild a son, Widia or Wudga, the Wittich who appears as
a follower of Dietrich's in the Continental German sources.
_The Volsungs_.--No story better illustrates the growth of heroic
legend than the Volsung cycle. It is composite, four or five mythical
motives combining to form the nucleus; and as it took possession
more and more strongly of the imagination of the early Germans, and
still more of the Scandinavians, other heroic cycles were brought
into dependence on it. None of the Eddic poems on the subject are
quite equal in poetic value to the Helgi lays; many are fragmentary,
several late, and only one attempts a review of the whole story. The
outline is as follows: Sigurd the Volsung, son of Sigmund and brother
of Sinfjötli, slays the dragon who guards the Nibelungs' hoard on
the Glittering Heath, and thus inherits the curse which accompanies
the treasure; he finds and wakens Brynhild the Valkyrie, lying in
an enchanted sleep guarded by a ring of fire, loves her and plights
troth with her; Grimhild, wife of the Burgundian Giuki, by enchantment
causes him to forget the Valkyrie, to love her own daughter Gudrun,
and, since he alone can cross the fire, to win Brynhild for her son
Gunnar. After the marriage, Brynhild discovers the trick, and incites
her husband and his brothers to kill Sigurd.
The series begins with a prose piece on the Death of Sinfjötli,
which says that after Sinfjötli, son of Sigmund, Volsung's son (which
should be Valsi's son, Volsung being a tribal, not a personal, name),
had been poisoned by his stepmother Borghild, Sigmund married Hjördis,
Eylimi's daughter, had a son Sigurd, and fell in battle against the
race of Hunding. Sigmund, as in all other Norse sources, is said to be
king in Frankland, which, like the Niderlant of the _Nibelungen Lied_,
means the low lands on the Rhine. The scene of the story is always
near that river: Sigurd was slain by the Rhine, and the treasure of
the Rhine is quoted as proverbial in the Völund lay.
_Gripisspa_ (the Prophecy of Gripi), which follows, is appropriately
placed first of the Volsung poems, since it gives a summary of the
whole story. Sigurd rides to see his mother's brother, Gripi, the
wisest of men, to ask about his destiny, and the soothsayer prophesies
his adventures and early death. This poem makes clear some original
features of the legend which are obscured elsewhere, especially in the
Gudrun set; Grimhild's treachery, and Sigurd's unintentional breach
of faith to Brynhild. In the speeches of both Gripi and Sigurd, the
poet shows clearly that Brynhild had the first right to Sigurd's faith,
while the seer repeatedly protests his innocence in breaking it: "Thou
shalt never be blamed though thou didst betray the royal maid.... No
better man shall come on earth beneath the sun than thou, Sigurd." On
the other hand, the poet gives no indication that Brynhild and the
sleeping Valkyrie are the same, which is a sign of confusion. Like
all poems in this form, _Gripisspa_ is a late composition embodying
earlier tradition.
The other poems are mostly episodical, though arranged so as to form
a continued narrative. _Gripisspa_ is followed by a compilation from
two or more poems in different metres, generally divided into three
parts in the editions: _Reginsmal_ gives the early history of the
treasure and the dragon, and Sigurd's battle with Hunding's sons;
_Fafnismal_, the slaying of the dragon and the advice of the talking
birds; _Sigrdrifumal_, the awakening of the Valkyrie. Then follows
a fragment on the death of Sigurd. All the rest, except the poem
generally called the _Third_, or _Short, Sigurd Lay_ (which tells of
the marriage with Gudrun and Sigurd's wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar)
continue the story after Sigurd's death, taking up the death of
Brynhild, Gudrun's mourning, and the fates of the other heroes who
became connected with the legend of the treasure.
In addition to the poems in the Elder Edda, an account of the story
is given by Snorri in _Skaldskaparmal_, but it is founded almost
entirely on the surviving lays. _Völsunga Saga_ is also a paraphrase,
but more valuable, since parts of it are founded on lost poems, and
it therefore, to some extent, represents independent tradition. It
was, unfortunately from a literary point of view, compiled after the
great saga-time was over, in the decadent fourteenth century, when
material of all kinds, classical, biblical, romantic, mythological,
was hastily cast into saga-form. It is not, like the _Nibelungen
Lied_, a work of art, but it has what in this case is perhaps of
greater importance, the one great virtue of fidelity. The compiler
did not, like the author of the German masterpiece, boldly recast
his material in the spirit of his own time; he clung closely to his
originals, only trying with hesitating hand to copy the favourite
literary form of the Icelander. As a saga, therefore, _Völsunga_
is far behind not only such great works as _Njala_, but also many of
the smaller sagas. It lacks form, and is marred by inconsistencies;
it is often careless in grammar and diction; it is full of traces
of the decadent romantic age. Sigurd, in the true spirit of romance,
is endowed with magic weapons and supernatural powers, which are no
improvement on the heroic tradition, "Courage is better than a good
sword." At every turn, Odin is at hand to help him, which tends to
efface the older and truer picture of the hero with all the fates
against him; such heroes, found again and again in the historic
sagas, more truly represent the heathen heroic age and that belief
in the selfishness and caprice of the Gods on which the whole idea
of sacrifice rests. There is also the inevitable deterioration in the
character of Brynhild, without the compensating elevation in that of
her rival by which the _Nibelungen Lied_ places Chriemhild on a height
as lofty and unapproachable as that occupied by the Norse Valkyrie;
the Brynhild of _Völsunga Saga_ is something of a virago, the Gudrun
is jealous and shrewish. But for actual material, the compiler is
absolutely to be trusted; and _Völsunga Saga_ is therefore, in spite
of artistic faults, a priceless treasure-house for the real features
of the legend.
There are two main elements in the Volsung story: the slaying of the
dragon, and the awakening and desertion of Brynhild. The latter is
brought into close connexion with the former, which becomes the real
centre of the action. In the Anglo-Saxon reference, the fragment in
_Beowulf_, the second episode does not appear.
In this, the oldest version of the story, which, except for a vague
reference to early feats by Sigmund and Sinfjötli, consists solely
of the dragon adventure, the hero is not Sigurd, but Sigemund the
Waelsing. All that it tells is that Sigemund, Fitela (Sinfjötli)
not being with him, killed the dragon, the guardian of the hoard, and
loaded a ship with the treasure. The few preceding lines only mention
the war which Sigmund and Sinfjötli waged on their foes. They are there
uncle and nephew, and there is no suggestion of the closer relationship
assigned to them by _Völsunga Saga_, which tells their story in full.
Sigmund, one of the ten sons of Volsung (who is himself of
miraculous birth) and the Wishmaiden Hlod, is one of the chosen
heroes of Odin. His twin-sister Signy is married against her will to
Siggeir, an hereditary enemy, and at the wedding-feast Odin enters
and thrusts a sword up to the hilt into the tree growing in the
middle of the hall. All try to draw it, but only the chosen Sigmund
succeeds. Siggeir, on returning to his own home with his unwilling
bride, invites her father and brothers to a feast. Though suspecting
treachery, they come, and are killed one after another, except Sigmund
who is secretly saved by his sister and hidden in the wood. She
meditates revenge, and as her two sons grow up to the age of ten,
she tests their courage, and finding it wanting makes Sigmund kill
both: the expected hero must be a Volsung through both parents. She
therefore visits Sigmund in disguise, and her third son, Sinfjötli,
is the child of the Volsung pair. At ten years old, she sends him to
live in the wood with Sigmund, who only knows him as Signy's son. For
years they live as wer-wolves in the wood, till the time comes for
vengeance. They set fire to Siggeir's hall; and Signy, after revealing
Sinfjötli's real parentage, goes back into the fire and dies there,
her vengeance achieved:
"I killed my children, because I thought them too weak to avenge our
father; Sinfjötli has a warrior's might because he is both son's son
and daughter's son to King Volsung. I have laboured to this end,
that King Siggeir should meet his death; I have so toiled for the
achieving of revenge that I am now on no condition fit for life. As
I lived by force with King Siggeir, of free will shall I die with him."
Though no poem survives on this subject, the story is certainly
primitive; its savage character vouches for its antiquity. _Völsunga_
then reproduces the substance of the prose _Death of Sinfjötli_
mentioned above, the object of which, as a part of the cycle, seems
to be to remove Sinfjötli and leave the field clear for Sigurd. It
preserves a touch which may be original in Sinfjötli's burial, which
resembles that of Scyld in _Beowulf_: his father lays him in a boat
steered by an old man, which immediately disappears.
Sigmund and Sinfjötli are always close comrades, "need-companions"
as the Anglo-Saxon calls them. They are indivisible and form one
story. Sigurd, on the other hand, is only born after his father
Sigmund's death. _Völsunga_ says that Sigmund fell in battle against
Hunding, through the interference of Odin, who, justifying Loki's taunt
that he "knew not how to give the victory fairly," shattered with his
spear the sword he had given to the Volsung. For this again we have
to depend entirely on the prose, except for one line in _Hyndluljod_:
"The Father of Hosts gives gold to his followers;... he gave Sigmund
a sword." And from the poems too, Sigurd's fatherless childhood is
only to be inferred from an isolated reference, where giving himself
a false name he says to Fafni: "I came a motherless child; I have no
father like the sons of men." Sigmund, dying, left the fragments of
the sword to be given to his unborn son, and Sigurd's fosterfather
Regin forged them anew for the future dragon-slayer. But Sigurd's
first deed was to avenge on Hunding's race the death of his father
and his mother's father. _Völsunga_ tells this story first of Helgi
and Sinfjötli, then of Sigurd, to whom the poems also attribute the
deed. It is followed by the dragon-slaying.
Up to this point, the story of Sigurd consists roughly of the same
features which mark that of Sigmund and Sinfjötli. Both are probably,
like Helgi, versions of a race-hero myth. In each case there is
the usual irregular birth, in different forms, both familiar; a
third type, the miraculous or supernatural birth, is attributed by
_Völsunga_ to Sigmund's father Volsung. Each story again includes
a deed of vengeance, and a dragon and treasure. The sword which the
hero alone could draw, and the wer-wolf, appear only in the Sigmund
and Sinfjötli version. Among those Germanic races which brought the
legend to full perfection, Sigurd's version soon became the sole one,
and Sigmund and Sinfjötli practically drop out.
The Dragon legend of the Edda is much fuller and more elaborate than
that of any other mythology. As a rule tradition is satisfied with
the existence of the monster "old and proud of his treasure," but
here we are told its full previous history, certain features of which
(such as the shape-shifting) are signs of antiquity, whether it was
originally connected with the Volsungs or not.
As usual, _Völsunga_ gives the fullest account, in the form of a
story told by Regin to his foster-son Sigurd, to incite him to slay
the dragon. Regin was one of three brothers, the sons of Hreidmar;
one of the three, Otr, while in the water in otter's shape, was seen by
three of the Aesir, Odin, Loki and Hoeni, and killed by Loki. Hreidmar
demanded as wergild enough gold to fill the otter's skin, and Loki
obtained it by catching the dwarf Andvari, who lived in a waterfall
in the form of a fish, and allowing him to ransom his head by giving
up his wealth. One ring the dwarf tried to keep back, but in vain;
and thereupon he laid a curse upon it: that the ring with the rest
of the gold should be the death of whoever should get possession of
it. In giving the gold to Hreidmar, Odin also tried to keep back the
ring, but had to give it up to cover the last hair. Then Fafni, one of
the two remaining sons, killed his father, first victim of the curse,
for the sake of the gold. He carried it away and lay guarding it in
the shape of a snake. But Regin the smith did not give up his hopes of
possessing the hoard: he adopted as his foster-son Sigurd the Volsung,
thus getting into his power the hero fated to slay the dragon.
The curse thus becomes the centre of the action, and the link between
the two parts of the story, since it directly accounts for Sigurd's
unconscious treachery and his separation from Brynhild, and absolves
the hero from blame by making him a victim of fate. It destroys in turn
Hreidmar, the Dragon, his brother Regin, the dragon-slayer himself,
Brynhild (to whom he gave the ring), and the Giukings, who claimed
inheritance after Sigurd's death. Later writers carried its effects
still further.
This narrative is also told in the pieces of prose interspersed through
_Reginsmal_. The verse consists only of scraps of dialogue. The first
of these comprises question and answer between Loki and the dwarf
Andvari in the form of the old riddle-poems, and seems to result
from the confusion of two ideas: the question-and-answer wager, and
the captive's ransom by treasure. Then follows the curse, in less
general terms than in the prose: "My gold shall be the death of two
brothers, and cause strife among eight kings; no one shall rejoice in
the possession of my treasure." Next comes a short dialogue between
Loki and Hreidmar, in which the former warns his host of the risk he
runs in taking the hoard. In the next fragment Hreidmar calls on his
daughters to avenge him; Lyngheid replies that they cannot do so on
their own brother, and her father bids her bear a daughter whose son
may avenge him. This has given rise to a suggestion that Hjördis,
Sigurd's mother, was daughter to Lyngheid, but if that is intended,
it may only be due to the Norse passion for genealogy. The next
fragment brings Regin and Sigurd together, and the smith takes the
young Volsung for his foster-son. A speech of Sigurd's follows, in
which he refuses to seek the treasure till he has avenged his father
on Hunding's sons. The rest of the poem is concerned with the battle
with Hunding's race, and Sigurd's meeting with Odin by the way.
The fight with Fafni is not described in verse, very little of this
poetry being in narrative form; but _Fafnismal_ gives a dialogue
between the wounded dragon and his slayer. Fafni warns the Volsung
against the hoard: "The ringing gold and the glowing treasure, the
rings shall be thy death." Sigurd disregards the warning with the maxim
"Every man must die some time," and asks questions of the dragon in the
manner of _Vafthrudnismal_. Fafni, after repeating his warning, speaks
of his brother's intended treachery: "Regin betrayed me, he will betray
thee; he will be the death of both of us," and dies. Regin returning
bids Sigurd roast Fafni's heart, while he sleeps. A prose-piece tells
that Sigurd burnt his fingers by touching the heart, put them in
his mouth, and understood the speech of birds. The advice given him
by the birds is taken from two different poems, and partly repeats
itself; the substance is a warning to Sigurd against the treachery
plotted by Regin, and a counsel to prevent it by killing him, and so
become sole owner of the hoard. Sigurd takes advantage of the warning:
"Fate shall not be so strong that Regin shall give my death-sentence:
both brothers shall go quickly hence to Hel." Regin's enjoyment of
the hoard is therefore short. The second half of the story begins
when one of the birds, after a reference to Gudrun, guides Sigurd to
the sleeping Valkyrie:
"Bind up the red rings, Sigurd; it is not kingly to fear. I know a
maid, fairest of all, decked with gold, if thou couldst get her. Green
roads lead to Giuki's, fate guides the wanderer forward. There a
mighty king has a daughter; Sigurd will buy her with a dowry. There
is a hall high on Hindarfell; all without it is swept with fire.... I
know a battle-maid who sleeps on the fell, and the flame plays over
her; Odin touched the maid with a thorn, because she laid low others
than those he wished to fall. Thou shalt see, boy, the helmed maid who
rode Vingskorni from the fight; Sigrdrifa's sleep cannot be broken,
son of heroes, by the Norns' decrees."
Sigrdrifa (dispenser of victory) is, of course, Brynhild; the name may
have been originally an epithet of the Valkyrie, and it was probably
such passages as this that misled the author of _Gripisspa_ into
differentiating the Valkyrie and Brynhild. The last lines have been
differently interpreted as a warning to Sigurd not to seek Brynhild and
an attempt to incite him to do so by emphasising the difficulty of the
deed; they may merely mean that her sleep cannot be broken except by
one, namely, the one who knows no fear. Brynhild's supernatural origin
is clearly shown here, and also in the prose in _Sigrdrifumal. Völsunga
Saga_, though it paraphrases in full the passages relating to the magic
sleep, removes much of the mystery surrounding her by providing her
with a genealogy and family connections; while the _Nibelungen Lied_
goes further still in the same direction by leaving out the magic
sleep. The change is a natural result of Christian ideas, to which
Odin's Wishmaidens would become incomprehensible.
Thus far the story is that of the release of the enchanted princess,
popularly most familiar in the nursery tale of the Sleeping
Beauty. After her broken questions to her deliverer, "What cut my
mail? How have I broken from sleep? Who has flung from me the dark
spells?" and his answer, "Sigmund's son and Sigurd's sword," she
bursts into the famous "Greeting to the World":
"Long have I slept, long was I sunk in sleep, long are men's
misfortunes. It was Odin's doing that I could not break the runes of
sleep. Hail, day! hail, sons of day! hail, night! Look on us two with
gracious eyes, and give victory to us who sit here. Hail, Aesir! hail,
Asynjor! hail, Earth, mother of all! give eloquence and wisdom to us
the wonderful pair, and hands of healing while we live."
She then becomes Sigurd's guardian and protectress and the source of
his wisdom, as she speaks the runes and counsels which are to help him
in all difficulties; and from this point corresponds to the maiden who
is the hero's benefactress, but whom he deserts through sorcery: the
"Mastermaid" of the fairy-tales, the Medeia of Greek myth. Gudrun is
always an innocent instrument in drawing Sigurd away from his real
bride, the actual agent being her witch-mother Grimhild. This part
of the story is summarised in _Gripisspa_, except that the writer
seems unaware that the Wishmaiden who teaches Sigurd "every mystery
that men would know" and the princess he betrays are the same:
"A king's daughter bright in mail sleeps on the fell; thou shalt hew
with thy sharp sword, and cut the mail with Fafni's slayer.... She
will teach thee every mystery that men would know, and to speak in
every man's tongue.... Thou shalt visit Heimi's dwelling and be the
great king's joyous guest.... There is a maid fair to see at Heimi's;
men call her Brynhild, Budli's daughter, but the great king Heimi
fosters the proud maid.... Heimi's fair foster-daughter will rob
thee of all joy; thou shalt sleep no sleep, and judge no cause,
and care for no man unless thou see the maiden. ... Ye shall swear
all binding oaths but keep few when thou hast been one night Giuki's
guest, thou shalt not remember Heimi's brave foster-daughter.... Thou
shalt suffer treachery from another and pay the price of Grimhild's
plots. The bright-haired lady will offer thee her daughter."
_Völsunga_ gives additional details: Brynhild knows her deliverer
to be Sigurd Sigmundsson and the slayer of Fafni, and they swear
oaths to each other. The description of their second meeting, when
he finds her among her maidens, and she prophesies that he will marry
Giuki's daughter, and also the meeting between her and Gudrun before
the latter's marriage, represent a later development of the story,
inconsistent with the older conception of the Shield-maiden. Sigurd
gives Brynhild the ring Andvaranaut, which belonged to the hoard,
as a pledge, and takes it from her again later when he woos her in
Gunnar's form. It is the sight of the ring afterwards on Gudrun's
hand which reveals to her the deception; but the episode has also
a deeper significance, since it brings her into connection with the
central action by passing the curse on to her. According to Snorri's
paraphrase, Sigurd gives the ring to Brynhild when he goes to her in
Gunnar's form.
For the rest of the story we must depend chiefly on _Gripisspa_ and
_Völsunga_. The latter tells that Grimhild, the mother of the Giukings,
gave Sigurd a magic drink by which he forgot Brynhild and fell in love
with Giuki's daughter. Gudrun's brothers swore oaths of friendship
with him, and he agreed to ride through the waverlowe, or ring of
fire, disguised and win Brynhild for the eldest brother Gunnar. After
the two bridals, he remembered his first passing through the flame,
and his love for Brynhild returned. The Shield-maiden too remembered,
but thinking that Gunnar had fairly won her, accepted her fate until
Gudrun in spite and jealousy revealed the trick that had been played
on her. Of the treachery of the Giukings Brynhild takes little heed;
but death alone can pay for Sigurd's unconscious betrayal. She tells
Gunnar that Sigurd has broken faith with him, and the Giukings with
some reluctance murder their sister's husband. Brynhild springs on to
the funeral pyre, and dies with Sigurd. _Völsunga_ makes the murder
take place in Sigurd's chamber, and one poem, the _Short Sigurd Lay_,
agrees. The fragment which follows _Sigrdrifumal_, on the other hand,
places the scene in the open air:
"Sigurd was slain south of the Rhine; a raven on a tree called aloud:
'On you will Atli redden the sword; your broken oaths shall destroy
you.' Gudrun Giuki's daughter stood without, and these were the first
words she spoke: 'Where is now Sigurd, the lord of men, that my kinsmen
ride first?' Högni alone made answer: 'We have hewn Sigurd asunder
with the sword; the grey horse still stoops over his dead lord.'"
This agrees with the _Old Gudrun Lay_ and with the Continental German
version, as a prose epilogue points out.
Of the Giuking brothers, Gunnar appears only in a contemptible light:
he gains his bride by treachery, and keeps his oath to Sigurd by a
quibble. Högni, who has little but his name in common with Hagen von
Tronje of the _Nibelungen Lied_, advises Gunnar against breaking his
oath, but it is he who taunts Gudrun afterwards. The later poems of
the cycle try to make heroes out of both; the same discrepancy exists
between the first and second halves of the _Nibelungen Lied_. Their
half-brother, Gutthorm, plays no part in the story except as the
actual murderer of Sigurd.
The chief effect of the influences of Christianity and Romance on
the legend is a loss of sympathy with the heroic type of Brynhild,
and an attempt to give more dignity to the figure of Gudrun. The
Shield-maiden of divine origin and unearthly wisdom, with her
unrelenting vengeance on her beloved, and her contempt for her
slighter rival ("Fitter would it be for Gudrun to die with Sigurd,
if she had a soul like mine"), is a figure out of harmony with the new
religion, and beyond the comprehension of a time coloured by romance;
while both the sentiment and the morality of the age would be on the
side of Gudrun as the formally wedded wife. So the poem known as the
_Short Sigurd Lay_, which has many marks of lateness, such as the
elaborate description of the funeral pyre and the exaggeration of
the signs of mourning, says nothing of Sigurd's love for Brynhild,
nor do his last words to Gudrun give any hint of it. The _Nibelungen
Lied_ suppresses Sigurd's love to Brynhild, and the magic drink, and
altogether lowers Brynhild, but elevates Gudrun (under her mother's
name); her slow but terrible vengeance, and absolute forgetfulness
of the ties of blood in pursuit of it, are equal to anything in the
original version. The later heroic poems of the Edda make a less
successful attempt to create sympathy for Gudrun; some, such as the
so-called _First Gudrun Lay_, which is entirely romantic in character,
try to make her pathetic by the abundance of tears she sheds; others,
to make her heroic, though the result is only a spurious savagery.
The remaining poems of the cycle, all late in style and tone, deal
with the fates of Gudrun and her brothers, and owe their existence
to a narrator's unwillingness to let a favourite story end. The
curse makes continuation easy, since the Giukings inherit it with the
hoard. Gudrun was married at the wish of her kinsmen to Atli the Hun,
said to be Brynhild's brother. He invited Gunnar and Högni to his
court and killed them for the sake of the treasure, in vengeance for
which Gudrun killed her own two sons and Atli; this latter incident
being possibly an imitation of Signy. If we may believe that Gudrun,
like Chriemhild in the _Nibelungen Lied_, married Atli in order to
gain vengeance for Sigurd, we might suppose that there was confusion
here: that she herself incited the murder of her brothers, and killed
Atli when he had served his purpose. This would strengthen the part
of Gudrun, who as the tale stands is rather a futile character. But
in all probability the episode is due to a confusion of Signy's story
with that of the German Chriemhild and Etzel.
One point has still to be considered: the place of the Nibelungs in the
story. In the Edda, the Hniflungs are always the Giukings, Gunnar and
Högni, and Snorri gives it as the name of an heroic family. The title
of the first _aventiure_ of the _Nibelungen Lied_ also apparently uses
the word of the Burgundians. Yet the treasure is always the Nibelungs'
hoard, which clearly means that they were the original owners; and when
Hagen von Tronje tells the story later in the poem, he speaks of the
Nibelungs correctly as the dwarfs from whom Siegfried won it. On this
point, therefore, the German preserves the older tradition: the Norse
Andvari, the river-dwarf, is the German Alberich the Nibelung. In
the _Nibelungen Lied_ the winning of the treasure forms no part of
the action: it is merely narrated by Hagen. This accounts for the
shortening of the episode and the omission of the intermediate steps:
the robbing of the dwarf, the curse, and the dragon-slaying.
* * * * *
_Ermanric.--_The two poems of _Gudrun's Lament_ and _Hamthismal_,
in the Edda attached to the Volsung cycle, belong correctly to
that of the Gothic hero Ermanric. According to these poems, Gudrun,
Giuki's daughter, married a third time, and had three sons, Sörli,
Hamthi and Erp. She married Svanhild, her own and Sigurd's daughter,
to Jörmunrek, king of the Goths; but Svanhild was slandered, and her
husband had her trodden to death by horses' hoofs. The description
of Svanhild is a good example of the style of the romantic poems:
"The bondmaids sat round Svanhild, dearest of my children; Svanhild
was like a glorious sunbeam in my hall. I dowered her with gold
and goodly fabrics when I married her into Gothland. That was the
hardest of my griefs, when they trod Svanhild's fair hair into the
dust beneath the horses' hoofs."
Gudrun sent her three sons to avenge their sister; two of them
slew Erp by the way, and were killed themselves in their attack on
Jörmunrek for want of his help. So died, as Snorri says, all who were
of Giuking descent; and only Aslaug, daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild,
survived. _Heimskringla_, a thirteenth century history of the royal
races of Scandinavia, traces the descent of the Norse kings from her.
This Ermanric story, which belongs to legendary history rather than
myth, is in reality quite independent of the Volsung or Nibelung
cycle. The connection is loose and inartistic, the legend being
probably linked to Gudrun's name because she had become a favourite
character and Icelandic narrators were unwilling to let her die. The
historic Ermanric was conquered by the Huns in 374; the sixth century
historian Jornandes is the earliest authority for the tradition that he
was murdered by Sarus and Ammius in revenge for their sister's death
by wild horses. Saxo also tells the story, with greater similarity
of names. It seems hardly necessary to assume, with many scholars,
the existence of two heroes of the name Ermanric, an historic and
a mythical one. A simpler explanation is that a legendary story
became connected with the name of a real personage. The slaying of
Erp introduces a common folk-tale incident, familiar in stories like
the _Golden Bird_, told by both Asbjörnsen and Grimm.
* * * * *
_Helgi._--The Helgi-lays, three in number, are the best of the
heroic poems. Nominally they tell two stories, Helgi Hjörvardsson
being sandwiched between the two poems of Helgi Hundingsbane; but
essentially the stories are the same.
In _Helyi Hjörvardsson_, Helgi, son of Hjörvard and Sigrlinn, was dumb
and nameless until a certain day when, while sitting on a howe, he
saw a troop of nine Valkyries. The fairest, Svava, Eylimi's daughter,
named him, and bidding him avenge his grandfather on Hrodmar (a former
wooer of Sigrlinn's, and her father's slayer), sent him to find a
magic sword. Helgi slew Hrodmar and married Svava, having escaped
from the sea-giantess Hrimgerd through the protection of his Valkyrie
bride and the wit of a faithful servant. His brother Hedin, through
the spells of a troll-wife, swore to wed Helgi's bride. Repenting, he
told his brother, who, dying in a fight with Hrodmar's son, charged
Svava to marry Hedin. A note by the collector adds "Helgi and Svava
are said to have been born again."
In _Helgi Hundingsbane I_., Helgi is the son of Sigmund and
Borghild. He fought and slew Hunding, and afterwards met in battle
Hunding's sons at Logafell, where the Valkyrie Sigrun, Högni's
daughter, protected him, and challenged him to fight Hödbrodd to whom
her father had plighted her. She protected his ships in the storm which
overtook them as they sailed to meet Hödbrodd, and watched over him in
the battle, in which he slew his rival and was greeted as victor by
Sigrun: "Hail, hero of Yngvi's race ... thou shalt have both the red
rings and the mighty maid: thine are Högni's daughter and Hringstad,
the victory and the land."
_Helgi Hundingsbane II_., besides giving additional details of the
hero's early life, completes the story. In the battle with Hödbrodd,
Helgi killed all Sigrun's kinsmen except one brother, Dag, who slew
him later in vengeance. But Helgi returned from the grave, awakened by
Sigrun's weeping, and she went into the howe with him. The collector
again adds a note: "Helgi and Sigrun are said to have been born again:
he was then called Helgi Haddingjaskati, and she Kara Halfdan's
daughter, as it is told in the Kara-ljod, and she was a Valkyrie."
This third Helgi legend does not survive in verse, the _Kara-ljod_
having perished. It is told in prose in the late saga of Hromund
Gripsson, according to which Kara was a Valkyrie and swan-maid: while
she was hovering over Helgi, he killed her accidentally in swinging
his sword.
There can be little doubt that these three are merely variants of the
same story; the foundation is the same, though incidents and names
differ. The three Helgis are one hero, and the three versions of his
legend probably come from different localities. The collector could
not but feel their identity, and the similarity was too fundamental
to be overlooked; he therefore accounted for it by the old idea of
re-birth, and thus linked the three together. In each Helgi has an
hereditary foe (Hrodmar, Hunding, or Hadding); in each his bride is a
Valkyrie, who protects him and gives him victory; each ends in tragedy,
though differently.
The two variants in the Poetic Edda have evident marks
of contamination with the Volsung cycle, and some points of
superficial resemblance. Helgi Hjörvardsson's mother is Sigrlinn,
Helgi Hundings-bane's father is Sigmund, as in the _Nibelungen Lied_
Siegfried is the son of Sigemunt and Sigelint. Helgi Hundingsbane is
a Volsung and Wolfing (Ylfing), and brother to Sinfjötli; his first
fight, like Sigurd's, is against the race of Hunding; his rival,
Hödbrodd, is a Hniflung; he first meets the Valkyrie on Loga-fell
(Flame-hill); he is killed by his brother-in-law, who has sworn
friendship. But there is no parallel to the essential features of the
Volsung cycle, and such likenesses between the two stories as are not
accidental are due to the influence of the more favoured legend; this
is especially true of the names. The prose-piece _Sinfjötli's Death_
also makes Helgi half-brother to Sinfjötli; it is followed in this
by _Völsunga Saga_, which devotes a chapter to Helgi, paraphrasing
_Helyi Hundingsbane I_. There is, of course, confusion over the
Hunding episode; the saga is obliged to reconcile its conflicting
authorities by making Helgi kill Hunding and some of his sons, and
Sigurd kill the rest.
If the theory stated below as to the original Helgi legend be correct,
the feud with Hunding's race, as told in these poems, must be
extraneous. I conjecture that it belonged originally to the Volsung
cycle, and to the wer-wolf Sinfjötli. It must not be forgotten that,
though he passes out of the Volsung story altogether in the later
versions, both Scandinavian and German, he is in the main action
in the earliest one (that in _Beowulf_), where even Sigurd does not
appear. The feud might easily have been transferred from him to Helgi
as well as to Sigurd, for invention is limited as regards episodes,
and a narrator who wishes to elaborate the story of a favourite hero
is often forced to borrow adventures. In the original story, Helgi's
blood-feud was probably with the kindred of Sigrun or Svava.
The origin of the Helgi legend must be sought outside of the Volsung
cycle. Some writers are of opinion that the name should be Holgi,
and there are two stories in which a hero Holgi appears. With
the legend of Thorgerd Holgabrud, told by Saxo, who identified it
with that of Helgi Hundingsbane, it has nothing in common; and the
connection which has been sought with the legend of Holger Danske is
equally difficult to establish. The essence of this latter story is
the hero's disappearance into fairyland, and the expectation of his
return sometime in the future: a motive which has been very fruitful
in Irish romance, and in the traditions of Arthur, Tryggvason, and
Barbarossa, among countless others. But it is absent from the Helgi
poems; and the "old wives' tales" of Helgi's re-birth have nothing
to do with his legend, but are merely a bookman's attempt to connect
stories which he felt to be the same though different.
The essential feature of the story told in these poems is the motive
familiar in that class of ballads of which the _Douglas Tragedy_ is a
type: the hero loves the daughter of his enemy's house, her kinsmen
kill him, and she dies of grief. This is the story told in both the
lays of _Helgi Hundingsbane_, complete in one, unfinished in the
other. No single poem preserves all the incidents of the legend; some
survive in one version, some in another, as usual in ballad literature.
Like Sinfjötli and Sigurd, Helgi is brought up in obscurity. He spends
his childhood disguised in his enemy's household, and on leaving it,
sends a message to tell his foes whom they have fostered. They pursue
him, and he is obliged, like Gude Wallace in the Scottish ballad,
to disguise himself in a bondmaid's dress:
"Piercing are the eyes of Hagal's bondmaid; it is no peasant's kin who
stands at the mill: the stones are split, the bin springs in two. It
is a hard fate for a warrior to grind the barley; the sword-hilt is
better fitted for those hands than the mill-handle."
Sigrun is present at the battle, in which, as in the English and
Scottish ballads, Helgi slays all her kindred except one brother. He
tells her the fortunes of the fight, and she chooses between lover
and kinsmen:
_Helgi_. "Good luck is not granted thee, maid, in all things,
though the Norns are partly to blame. Bragi and Högni fell to-day
at Frekastein, and I was their slayer;... most of thy kindred lie
low. Thou couldst not hinder the battle: it was thy fate to be a cause
of strife to heroes. Weep not, Sigrun, thou hast been Hild to us;
heroes must meet their fate."
_Sigrun_. "I could wish those alive who are fallen, and yet rest in
thy arms."
The surviving brother, Dag, swears oaths of reconciliation to Helgi,
but remembers the feud. The end comes, as in the Norse Sigmund tale,
through Odin's interference: he lends his spear to Dag, who stabs Helgi
in a grove, and rides home to tell his sister. Sigrun is inconsolable,
and curses the murderer with a rare power and directness:
"May the oaths pierce thee that thou hast sworn to Helgi.... May the
ship sail not that sails under thee, though a fair wind lie behind. May
the horse run not that runs under thee, though thou art fleeing from
thy foes. May the sword bite not that thou drawest, unless it sing
round thine own head. If thou wert an outlaw in the woods, Helgi's
death were avenged.... Never again while I live, by night or day,
shall I sit happy at Sevafell, if I see not the light play on my hero's
company, nor the gold-bitted War-breeze run thither with the warrior."
But Helgi returns from the grave, unable to rest because of Sigrun's
weeping, and she goes down into the howe with him:
_Sigrun_. "Thy hair is covered with frost, Helgi; thou art drenched
with deadly dew, thy hands are cold and wet. How shall I get thee help,
my hero?"
_Helgi_. "Thou alone hast caused it, Sigrun from Sevafell, that Helgi
is drenched with deadly dew. Thou weepest bitter tears before thou
goest to sleep, gold-decked, sunbright, Southern maid; each one falls
on my breast, bloody, cold and wet, cruel, heavy with grief...."
_Sigrun_. "I have made thee here a painless bed, Helgi, son of the
Wolfings. I will sleep in thy arms, my warrior, as if thou wert alive."
_Helgi_. "There shall be no stranger thing at Sevafell, early or late,
than that thou, king-born, Högni's fair daughter, shouldst be alive
in the grave and sleep in a dead man's arms."
The lay of Helgi Hjörvardsson is furthest from the original, for there
is no feud with Svava's kindred, nor does Helgi die at their hands;
but it preserves a feature omitted elsewhere, in his leaving his bride
to his brother's protection. Like the wife in the English ballad of
_Earl Brand_, and the heroine of the Danish _Ribold and Guldborg_,
Svava refuses, but Hedin's last words seem to imply that he is to
return and marry her after avenging Helgi. This would be contrary to
all parallels, according to which Svava should die with Helgi.
The alternative ending of the _Helgi and Kara_ version is interesting
as providing the possible source of another Scottish ballad dealing
with the same type of story. In _The Cruel Knight_, as here, the
hero slays his bride, who is of a hostile family, by mistake. One
passage of _Helgi Hundingsbane II._ describes Helgi's entrance into
Valhalla, which, taken with the incident of Sigrun's joining him
in the howe, supplies an instance of the survival side by side of
inconsistent notions as to the state of the dead. The lover's return
from the grave is the subject of _Clerk Saunders_ (the second part)
and several other Scottish ballads.
_The Song of the Mill_.--The magic mill is best known in the folk-tale,
"Why the sea is salt"; but this is not the oldest part of the story,
though it took most hold of the popular imagination which loves
legendary explanations of natural phenomena. The hero, Frodi, a
mythical Danish king, is the northern Croesus. His reign was marked
by a world-peace, and the peace, the wealth, the liberality of Frodi
became proverbial. The motive of his tale is again the curse that
follows gold. It is told by Snorri, in whose work _Grottasöngr_
is embodied.
Frodi possessed two magic quern-stones, from which the grinder could
grind out whatever he wished; but he had no one strong enough to turn
them until he bought in Sweden two bondmaids of giant-race, Menja and
Fenja. He set them to grind at the quern by day, and by night when
all slept, and as they ground him gold, and peace, and prosperity,
they sang: