II It is told by Snorri in the Prose Edda that Heimdal (Heimdallr) was the warden or sentinel of the Gods (Æsir), dwelling beside Bifröst (‘the quaking path’), the rainbow bridge between Ásgard, the realm of the Æsir, and Midgard, the world of Men (see note to 12), which he guards against the rock-giants; but at the Ragnarök (the Doom of the Gods) Bifröst will be crossed by the hosts coming from the fiery land of Múspell, and will break beneath them. The red part of the bow is blazing fire. Heimdal’s horn is the Gjallarhorn, whose blast is heard over all the worlds; and he will blow it at the Ragnarök.

  The Ash is Yggdrasill, the World Tree, whose branches stretched out over earth and heaven. The Wolf is Fenrir (named in stanza 13), whom the Gods chained; but at the Ragnarök Fenrir will break his chains and devour Ódin.

  12 Surt (Surtr): the great demon of fire, at the Ragnarök coming out of Múspell, the land of fire, against the Gods.

  The ‘slumbering Serpent’ is Miðsgarðsormr, the Serpent of Midgard, who lay coiled through all the seas encompassing Midgard, the world of Men. The Norse name Miðgarðr corresponds to Old English Middan-geard, Middan-eard, which lie behind the later form Middle-earth.

  The ‘shadowy ship’ is Naglfar, made of dead men’s nails.

  13 Frey (Freyr): the chief god of fertility, of peace and plenty, in Norway and Sweden; Freyja (stanza 17) was his sister.

  The ‘deep Dragon’ is the Serpent of Midgard: see note on stanza 12.

  I ANDVARA-GULL (Andvari’s Gold)

  For the story in §I of the Lay of the Völsungs the sources are the Eddaic poem known as Reginsmál, the Lay of Regin, which is indeed less a poem than fragments of old verse pieced together with prose; a passage in Snorri Sturluson’s version of the Völsung legend in the Prose Edda; and the Völsunga Saga. The few verses in Reginsmál that bear on this part of the narrative (dialogue between Loki and Andvari, and between Loki and Hreidmar after the gold had been paid over) are here and there a model for the Lay, but only lines 5–6 in stanza 8 are a translation (Andvari ek heiti, Óinn hét minn faðir).

  Apart from this, Andvara-gull in the Lay is a new poem. It is very allusive, and deliberately so, and I give here in abbreviated form the course of the story as it is known from the prose narratives: for the most part the two versions differ little.

  It is told that three of the Æsir, Ódin, Hœnir, and Loki, went out into the world, and they came to a waterfall known as the Falls of Andvari, Andvari being the name of a dwarf who fished there in the form of a pike (Snorri says nothing of Andvari at this point). At that place there was an otter that had caught a salmon, and was eating it on the river bank; but Loki hurled a stone at the otter and killed it. Then the Æsir took up the salmon and the otter and went on their way until they came to the house of a certain Hreidmar. Snorri describes him as a farmer, a man of substance, greatly skilled in magic; in the Saga he is simply an important and wealthy man; whereas in the headnote to this section of the Lay he is ‘a demon’.

  The Æsir asked Hreidmar for lodging for the night, saying that they had enough food with them, and they showed Hreidmar their catch; but the otter was Hreidmar’s son Otr, who took the form of an otter when he was fishing (the name Otr and the Norse word otr ‘otter’ being of course the same). Then Hreidmar called out to his other sons, Fáfnir and Regin, and they laid hands on the Æsir and bound them, demanding that they should ransom themselves by filling the otter-skin with gold, and also covering it on the outside with gold so that no part of it could be seen.

  Here the prose versions separate. According to Snorri (who had not previously mentioned Andvari) Ódin now sent Loki to Svartálfaheim, the Land of the Dark Elves; it was there that he found the dwarf Andvari who was ‘as a fish in the water’, and Loki caught him in his hands. In the Saga, on the other hand, Loki’s errand was to seek out Rán, the wife of the sea-god Ægir, and get from her the net with which she drew down men drowning in the sea; and with that net he captured the dwarf Andvari, who was fishing in his falls in the form of a pike. This is the story that my father followed (stanza 7).

  Andvari ransomed himself with his hoard of gold, attempting to keep back a single little gold ring; but Loki saw it and took it from him (stanza 9). In Snorri’s account only, Andvari begged to keep the ring because with it he could multiply wealth for himself, but Loki said that he should not have one penny left.

  Andvari declared that the ring would be the death of any who possessed it, or any of the gold. According to Snorri, ‘Loki said that this seemed very well to him, and he said that this condition should hold good, provided that he himself declared it in the ears of those who should receive the ring.’ Then Loki returned to Hreidmar’s house, and when Ódin saw the ring he desired it, and took it away from the treasure. The otter-skin was filled and covered with the gold of Andvari, but Hreidmar looking at it very closely saw a whisker, and demanded that they should cover that also. Then Ódin drew out Andvari’s ring (Andvaranaut, the possession of Andvari) and covered the hair. But when Ódin had taken up his spear, and Loki his shoes, and they no longer had any need to fear, Loki declared that the curse of Andvari should be fulfilled. And now it has been told (Snorri concludes) why gold is called ‘Otter’s ransom’ (otrgjöld) or ‘forced payment of the Æsir’ (nauðgjald ásanna): see p.36.

  An important difference between the two prose versions is that Snorri began his account of the Völsung legend with ‘Andvari’s Gold’, whereas in the Saga this story is introduced much later, and becomes a story told by Regin (son of Hreidmar) to Sigurd before his attack on the dragon. But although my father followed Snorri in this, he nonetheless followed the Saga in giving a brief retelling of ‘Andvari’s Gold’ by Regin to Sigurd in the fifth section of the poem, with a number of verse-lines repeated from their first occurrence (see V.7–11).

  1 Of all the Northern divinities Loki is the most enigmatic; ancient Norse literature is full of references to him and stories about him, and it is not possible to characterize him in a short space. But since Loki only appears here in these poems, and in my father’s words concerning him given on p.54, it seems both suitable and sufficient to quote Snorri Sturluson’s description in the Prose Edda:

  ‘Also counted among the Æsir is Loki, whom some call the mischief-maker of the Æsir, the first father of lies, and the blemish of all gods and men. Loki is handsome and fair of face but evil in his disposition and fickle in his conduct. He excels all others in that cleverness which is called cunning, and he has wiles for every circumstance. Over and over again he has brought the gods into great trouble, but often got them out of it by his guile.’

  In this stanza he is called ‘lightfooted Loki’, and in Snorri’s version of the story of Andvari’s Gold it is said, as already noted, that after the payment of the ransom to Hreidmar Ódin took up his spear ‘and Loki his shoes’. Elsewhere Snorri wrote of ‘those shoes with which Loki ran through air and over water’.

  Of the god Hoenir no more is said in the Lay than that while Loki went on the left side of Ódin, Hœnir went on his right. In my father’s somewhat mysterious interpretation given on p.54 (iv) he calls the companion of Ódin who walks on his right hand ‘a nameless shadow’, but this must surely be Hœnir, or at least derived from him. However, if there is no end to what is told of Loki in the Norse mythological narratives, very little can now be said of Hœnir; and to my understanding, there is nothing in the vestiges that remain that casts light on the ‘nameless shadow’ that walks beside Ódin.

  6 Ásgard is the realm of the Gods (Æsir).

  7 Rán: the wife of the sea-god Ægir; see p.189.

  8 ‘I bid thee’: I offer thee.

  13–15 In these concluding stanzas the references to the hope of Ódin, and Ódin’s choice, have of course no counterparts in the Norse texts.

  II SIGNÝ

  This is a rendering in verse of elements of the narrative of the earlier chapters of the Völsunga Saga. No old poetry recounting or referring to this story exists apart from a single half-stanza (see the note to stanzas 37–39), but this section of the Lay of the Völsungs can be seen as an imagination of it. It is a selection of moments of dramatic force, and many elements of the prose Saga are omitted; in particular the most savage features of the story are eliminated (see notes to stanzas 30–32, 37–39).

  The Gauts of the headnote to this section are the Gautar of Old Norse, dwelling in Gautland, a region of what is now southern Sweden, south of the great lakes. The name Gautar is historically identical with the Old English Geatas, who were Beowulf’s people.

  1–2 These two stanzas are an extreme reduction of the opening chapters of the Saga which tell of Völsung’s immediate ancestry in a prosaic fashion: my father clearly found this unsuited to his purpose.

  2 ‘child of longing’: Rerir’s wife was for long barren.

  4 In the Saga the tree in the midst of King Völsung’s hall is named the Barnstock, and is said to have been an apple-tree.

  7 ‘Birds sang blithely’: the birds were sitting in the boughs of the great tree that upheld the hall; so again in stanza 11, and see III.2.

  10 King Siggeir and many other guests came to the wedding feast held in King Völsung’s hall.

  12–13 In the Saga the old man is described in terms that make it plain that he was Ódin, but he is not named. Here in the Lay he is Grímnir ‘the Masked’, a name of Ódin that does not appear at all in the Saga but is derived from the Eddaic poem Grímnismál.

  The ‘standing stem’ in 13 line 3 is the trunk of the Barnstock, into which Ódin thrust the sword.

  14 ‘Gaut and Völsung’: Völsung’s children and race are often called Völsungar, Völsungs, as in the name of the Saga, and in the head-note to this section.

  16 This was the beginning of hatred and the motive for Siggeir’s attack on Völsung and his sons when they came to Gautland as his guests (21–23); Siggeir was enraged at Sigmund’s answer, but (in the words of the Saga) ‘he was a very wily man, and he behaved as if he were indifferent’.

  ‘bade’: offered (so also ‘I bid thee’ in I.8); ‘boon’: request.

  17–22 It is told in the Saga that on the day following the night of the wedding feast (‘last night I lay / where loath me was’, 19) Siggeir left very abruptly and returned with Signý to Gautland, having invited Völsung and his sons to come as his guests to Gautland three months later (21). Signý met them when they landed to warn them of what Siggeir had prepared for them (22), but (according to the Saga) Völsung would not listen to Signý’s entreaty that he return at once to his own land, nor to her request that she should be allowed to stay with her own people and not return to Siggeir.

  20 ‘toft’: homestead.

  29 In the Saga the sons of Völsung were set in stocks in the forest to await the old she-wolf who came each night. Signý, on the tenth day, sent her trusted servant to Sigmund, who alone survived, to smear honey over his face and to put some in his mouth. When the wolf came she licked his face and thrust her tongue into his mouth; at which he bit into it. Then the wolf started back violently, pressing her feet against the stocks in which Sigmund was set, so that they were split open; but he held on to the wolf’s tongue so that it was torn out by the roots, and she died. ‘Some men say,’ according to the Saga, ‘that the wolf was King Siggeir’s mother, who had changed herself into this shape by witchcraft.’

  While in the Saga the stocks are an important element in the story at this point, in the Lay there is no suggestion of stocks, but only of fetters and shackles; the wolf is ‘torn and tongueless’, but ‘by the tree riven’. See the note on stanzas 30-32.

  30–32 This passage is very greatly condensed, and elements in the Saga essential to the narrative are passed over. Thus in the Saga, Signý found Sigmund in the woods, and it is explicit that they decided that he should make a house for himself under the ground, where Signý would provide for his needs. There is nothing in the Saga to explain Signý’s words in the Lay ‘Dwarvish master, thy doors open!’ In the opening prose passage of this section (p.72) it is said that ‘Sigmund dwelt in a cave in the guise of a dwarvish smith.’

  In this connection it is curious, if nothing more, to observe that in William Morris’ poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung Sigmund’s dwelling is explicitly ‘a stony cave’ that was once ‘a house of the Dwarfs’. It is also said in that poem (see the note to stanza 29) that by Siggeir’s orders the men who led the sons of Völsung into the forest cut down the greatest oak-tree that they could find and bound them to it ‘with bonds of iron’; and when the wolf came for Sigmund he ‘burst his bonds’ and slew it with his hands.

  Signý had two sons by Siggeir, and when the elder was ten years old she sent him out to Sigmund in the forest to be a help to him should he attempt to avenge Völsung; but the boy, told by Sigmund to make the bread while he himself went out for firewood, was frightened to touch the bag of flour because there was something alive in it. When Sigmund told Signý about this she told him to kill the boy, since he had no heart; and Sigmund did so. The next year Signý sent her second son by Siggeir out into the woods, and things went in the same way.

  After that Signý changed shapes with a sorceress, and the sorceress slept with Siggeir for three nights in Signý’s form, while Signý slept with her brother. The son born to them was named Sinfjötli.

  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 Sinfjötli to the same test as Siggeir’s sons, and when he came back to the underground house Sinfjötli 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 Sinfjötli 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 Sinfjötli’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 Sinfjötli in the forest, where they became werewolves; and it is an important point that Sigmund thought that Sinfjötli was the son of Signý and Siggeir (cf. 33 ‘Fair one, thy father / thy face gave not’), possessing the energy and daring of the Völsungs but the evil heart of his father.

  37–39 In the Saga Sigmund and Sinfjötli entered Siggeir’s hall and hid themselves behind ale barrels in the outer room; but the two young children of Siggeir and Signý 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 Sinfjötli 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.

  Signý, hearing this, took the children into the outer room and urged Sigmund and Sinfjötli 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 Sinfjötli made light of it, slew both children, and hurled their bodies into the hall. When Sigmund and Sinfjötli 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 Signý threw down a bundle of straw to Sinfjötli, in which was meat. In the darkness of the mound Sinfjötli 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, hjörvi,

  ok Sinfjötli.

  ‘They cut with strength the great slab, Sigmund and Sinfjötli, 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 Signý to come forth, that in the Saga she revealed the truth about Sinfjötli – this is no doubt implied in stanza 41 of the Lay, ‘Son Sinfjötli, 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 Völsung that it was impossible for her now to live longer.

  III

  DAUÐI SINFJÖTLA (The Death of Sinfjötli)

  There intervenes now in the Saga, after the deaths of Signý and Siggeir, the history of Helgi Hundingsbani, an originally independent figure who had been connected to the Völsung 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 dauða Sinfjötla (Of Sinfjötli’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 Sinfjötli. 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 dauða Sinfjötla 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 Sinfjötli 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 Sinfjötli 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 Sinfjötli was murdered.