7 It is told in the Saga, at the time of the bread-making incident, when Sinfjötli kneaded in a poisonous snake (see note to II.33–34), that Sigmund could not be harmed by poison within or without, whereas Sinfjötli could only withstand poison externally; the same is said in Frá dauða Sinfjötla and in the Prose Edda.

  9–10 In both sources Sigmund said to Sinfjötli, when Borghild offered him drink for the third time: Láttu grön sía, sonr (‘Strain it through your beard, my son’). Sigmund was very drunk by then, says the Saga, ‘and that is why he said it’.

  12 The boatman was Ódin (the verses describing him here are repeated in varied form in IV.8). This is not said in the old sources. In those texts the boatman offered to ferry Sigmund across the fjord, but the boat was too small to take both Sigmund and the body of Sinfjötli, so the body was taken first. Sigmund walked along the fjord, but the boat vanished. The Saga tells that Borghild was banished, and died not long after.

  13 in Valhöllu: the Norse dative inflexion is retained for metrical reasons.

  IV FŒDDR SIGURÐR (Sigurd born)

  After the expulsion of Borghild Sigmund took another wife very much younger than himself (IV.2), and she was the mother of Sigurd. In the Saga and in Fra dauða Sinfjötla her name was Hjördis, the daughter of King Eylimi; whereas in the Lay she is Sigrlinn. This difference depends on the view that a transference of names took place: that originally in the Norse legends Hjördis was the mother of Helgi (see the note to III), while Sigrlinn was Sigmund’s wife and Sigurd’s mother. After this transference Sigrlinn became the mother of Helgi (and so appears in the Eddaic poem Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar, the Lay of Helgi son of Hjörvarð) and Hjördis became the mother of Sigurd. In the German poem Nibelungenlied, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, Sieglind (Sigrlinn) was King Siegmund’s queen, the mother of Siegfried (Sigurd).

  The narrative in this section of the Lay has been changed and reduced from that in the Saga (to which there is no poetry corresponding in the Edda). In the Saga, King Lyngvi was a rival to Sigmund for the hand of Hjördis, but Hjördis rejected him; and it was Lyngvi, not the seven suitors, ‘sons of kings’, of the Lay (stanzas 3 and 5), who came with great force against Sigmund in his own land.

  Hjördis accompanied only by a bondwoman was sent into the forest and remained there during the fierce battle. In the Saga as in the Lay (stanzas 8–9) Ódin appeared, and Sigmund’s sword (‘Grímnir’s gift’, 5) broke against the upraised spear of the god, and he was slain (on the significance of Ódin’s intervention see the note on the section Upphaf, pp.185–86).

  As in the Lay, in the Saga Hjördis (Sigrlinn) found Sigmund where he lay mortally wounded on the battlefield, and he spoke to her, saying that there was no hope of healing and he did not wish for it, since Ódin had claimed him (stanza 11); he spoke also of Sigurd, her son unborn, and told her to keep the shards of the sword, which should be made anew.

  Immediately upon Sigmund’s death, a further fleet came in to the shore, commanded, it is said in the Saga, by Alf son of King Hjálprek of Denmark (stanza 14 of the Lay, where the newcomers are not named). Seeing this Hjördis ordered her bondwoman to exchange clothes with her, and to declare that she was the king’s daughter. When Alf returned with the women, still disguised, to his own country the truth of the subterfuge emerged. Alf promised to marry Hjördis after her child was born, and so it came about that Sigurd was brought up in King Hjálprek’s household. In the Lay the curious story of the disguising of Sigrlinn (Hjördis) is reduced to the words ‘The bride of Sigmund / as a bondwoman / over sounding seas / sadly journeyed’.

  11 ‘wanhope’: despair.

  13 In the Saga Sigmund named the sword that should be made from the shards Gramr; this appears in the next section of the Lay, V.18.

  V REGIN

  The sources of the story in this section of the Lay are not only the Völsunga Saga but also poems of the Edda on which the Saga drew: the conclusion of Reginsmál (see the note to section I, p.188), and Fáfnismál; the story is also briefly told by Snorri Sturluson in the Prose Edda, whereby he explains why ‘gold’ is called in poetry ‘the abode of Fáfnir’ and ‘Grani’s burden’.

  There is little, in strictly narrative terms, in this part of the Lay that is not found in these sources, and in places (notably in the dialogue between Sigurd and Regin after Fáfnir’s death) the tenor of the verses of Fáfnismál is followed; but only here and there do they correspond at all closely.

  The legend of ‘Andvari’s gold’ as told in section I of the Lay does not extend beyond the departure of the Æsir from Hreidmar’s house after the payment of the ransom for his son Otr. In the note to that section (p.190) I have noticed that Snorri Sturluson in his version of the Völsung legend began with ‘Andvari’s gold’, whereas in the Saga it is not introduced until much later, and enters as a story told by Regin himself, son of Hreidmar, to Sigurd before his attack on the dragon. In this section of the Lay we reach that point.

  After telling that Sigurd grew up in the house of King Hjálprek the Saga says no more than that Regin became his fosterfather, and that he taught Sigurd many accomplishments, including a knowledge of runes and many languages (see stanza 2). Snorri, on the other hand, continues the story of Hreidmar and the gold of Andvari beyond the point where my father left it at the end of section I of the Lay.

  ‘What more is to be said of the gold?’ Snorri wrote, and then told this story. Hreidmar took the gold, but his other sons Fáfnir and Regin claimed for themselves some part of the blood-money paid for their brother. Hreidmar would give them nothing (‘Redgolden rings I will rule alone’, I.15); and Fáfnir and Regin slew their father. Then Regin demanded that Fáfnir should share the treasure with him equally, but Fáfnir replied that there was small chance of that, since he had killed his father for the sake of it; and he told Regin to be gone, or else he would suffer the same fate as their father.

  Then Fáfnir took the helm which Hreidmar had owned, and set it upon his head – the helm which is called œgishjálmr, Helm of Terror: all living things fear it. Then Fáfnir going up onto Gnitaheiði made himself a lair; and he turned himself into a dragon, and laid himself down upon the gold (as Glaurung did in Nargothrond). But Regin fled away, and came to King Hjálprek, and became his smith; Sigurd was his fosterson.

  Having already told the story of the origin of the hoard, Snorri continued now with the story of Regin’s dealings with Sigurd and the slaying of Fáfnir. With that story this section of the Lay is concerned; but before reaching it, as noted earlier (see pp.190–91), my father followed the Saga in introducing here the story of Andvari’s gold (or, in the case of the Lay, reintroducing it) as a story told by Regin in answer to Sigurd’s demanding why he egged him on to slay Fáfnir. In this second appearance of the story in the Lay verse-lines are repeated or nearly repeated in a characteristic way (compare I.2–6, 9 with V.7–11), but the Æsir are excluded, and Loki is replaced by a nameless ‘robber roving ruthless-handed’ (8). In V.12–14, however, Regin’s tale now brings in the slaying of Hreidmar (by Fáfnir – that Regin had a part in it is not mentioned, either in the Saga or in the Lay), the strife between the sons, and the transformation of Fáfnir into a dragon ‘on Gnitaheiði’.

  An important element in the story as told in the Saga is entirely absent from this section of the Lay. After the making of the sword Gram and the acquisition of the horse Grani, Sigurd declared to Regin that he would not attack Fáfnir until he had avenged his father; and setting out with a great host and fleet provided by King Hjálprek he achieved this in a bloody battle in which he slew King Lyngvi. But a form of the story of Sigurd’s revenge appears in the Lay at a later point in the narrative (VII.24–29).

  14 Gnitaheiði: this name in Old Norse is Gnitaheiðr, of which the second element is Old Norse heiðr ‘heath’, and it is variously anglicized as ‘Gnitaheid’, ‘Gnitaheith’, or ‘Gnitaheath’. In my father’s poems it appears several times but always in the combination ‘on Gnitaheiði’. This may be a retention of the dative case, or it may be a use of the modern Icelandic form of the word, which is heiði.

  17–18 It was Sigurd who broke the two swords by striking them on an anvil; whereupon, according to the Saga, he went to his mother and asked whether it were true that Sigmund had entrusted to her the fragments of his sword, and she gave them to him. On the name Gram (Gramr) see the note to IV.13.

  20 Both Snorri Sturluson and the Saga know of Sigurd’s testing of the sharpness of Gram by its cutting of the tuft of wool when it drifted in the water onto the sword’s edge; but only in the Lay is the river called the Rhine (Rín in Norse).

  ‘sheer’: clear.

  21 ‘Now rede me’: Now give me counsel.

  22–24 Only in the Saga is this story found of how Sigurd came to possess his grey horse Grani (very frequently named in poems of the Edda). The old man is once again Ódin (with the description here compare II.12, III.12, IV.8).

  The name Busiltarn is derived from the Saga; the Norse form is Busiltjörn, which was the form first written by my father in the manuscript of the Lay, later corrected in pencil. The English word tarn, a small lake, is derived from the Norse word; but in the Saga the Busiltarn is said to be a river, as it clearly is also in the Lay.

  Sleipnir was the name of Ódin’s eight-legged horse.

  25 Gand: Regin’s horse is not named elsewhere, but this must be the Old Norse word gandr (contained in ‘Gandalf’). Its original or primary meaning is uncertain, but it has reference to sorcery and magic, both beings and things, and especially to the staff used in witchcraft; it is also use of wolves. The word gandreið is used of the witches’ nocturnal ride.

  In a lecture on the text of Fáfnismál my father remarked on the huge height of the cliff from which Fáfnir drank as a good detail in the Saga absent from the poem, since Sigurd thus ‘first got a notion of what he was in for.’

  26 ‘long there lurked he’: i.e. Sigurd. In the prose preamble to Fáfnismál in the Codex Regius, as also in the Saga and in Snorri Sturluson’s brief account, Sigurd dug a pit in the path which the dragon took when he crawled to the water (the ‘hollow’ of stanzas 26–27, 29, which is not said to have been made by Sigurd); in the Saga an old man (Ódin) came to Sigurd while he was digging it and advised him to dig other trenches to carry off the dragon’s blood. On this matter my father noted in a lecture:

  Ódin and his advice, however, do not appear very intelligible, and the intrusion of Ódin has perhaps been imitated from other places (e.g. the choosing of Grani). The several pits do not seem of much use, for in any case Sigurd has got to be in one, and it is only in the one in which he is (immediately under the wound) that the blood is likely to pour down. The Saga version is due to harping on Ódin, and to an appreciation that the inherited plot did not paint Sigurd’s dragon-slaying (which is later referred to as his great title to fame) in the best light. It could not be altered in manner, and therefore the dragon and his poisonousness must be magnified; but it is not successfully done.

  His view was that the original significance of the pit was to enable Sigurd to escape the blast of flame which passed over his head (cf. 27, lines 1–3).

  30 In Fáfnismál, repeated in the Saga, Sigurd, in answer to Fáfnir’s question, replies that he is called göfugt dýr, that is ‘noble beast’; and a prose note at this point in the Codex Regius explains that ‘Sigurd concealed his name, because it was believed in ancient times that the word of a dying man might have great power if he cursed his foe by his name.’ My father observed that this note was ‘doubtless perfectly correct for the original writer of the poem, whose audience were probably sufficiently of the “ancient times” not to need the explanation!’ He said also that ‘the mysterious words göfugt dýr are probably meant to be obscure, even nonsensical’, though they might be ‘a riddling way of saying “man”.’

  33 ‘glamoured’: enchanted.

  34 Sigurd’s words in this stanza refer to the œgishjálmr ‘Helm of Terror’ which Heidmar possessed and which Fáfnir took to wear himself: see p.205, and stanza 14. At the words ‘hell now seize him!’ Fáfnir died.

  36–41 My father declared the ‘undermeaning’ of Regin’s ‘dark words’ in his preamble to this section of the Lay; and in notes for a lecture (written in pencil at great speed and now not entirely legible) he discussed in detail the relationship in this episode between the Saga and Fáfnismál, seeking to determine not only how the writer of the Saga compressed and modified the verses but why he did so. I give here, with some slight editing, a part of this discussion, since it well illustrates his critical treatment of such problems in the Edda.

  He begins with a summary of the dialogue of Regin and Sigurd after the death of Fáfnir in the Saga (I give references to the stanzas and lines of the Lay in brackets).

  After the death of Fáfnir Regin came to Sigurd and said: ‘You have won a great victory: your glory from it will be eternal’ [35, 1–4]. Then Regin is suddenly or affects to be suddenly stricken with disquiet – ‘he looks upon the ground for a long while’ and says with great emotion ‘it is my brother you have killed and I cannot be accounted innocent of this’ [36, 5–8]. Sigurd dries his sword on the grass, and simply replies ‘you were a long way off at the time when I tested the sword’ (implying therefore ‘innocent enough!’) [37, 1–4].

  Regin counters with the fact that he made the sword [37, 5]; Sigurd counters with ‘brave heart is better than sharp sword in battle’ [38, 3–4].

  Regin does not rebut this, but repeats again ‘with great emotion’ almost his exact words ‘You slew my brother, &c.’ Then Regin cut out the dragon’s heart, drank the dragon’s blood, and asked Sigurd as a sole boon (no sort of reason for which is given) to roast the heart for him.

  The repetition by Regin of the words ‘You killed my brother and I can hardly be accounted innocent’ is not a feature of Fáfnismál. Does it serve an artistic purpose – or is it just accidental, due to some confusion in the saga-writer’s source, or in the handing down of the saga? It is probably intentional, and perhaps not bad. The saga-writer has constructed a picture of Regin, already plotting Sigurd’s removal, and trying as it were to justify himself to himself. Scornfully relieved of any share of responsibility by Sigurd, he contents himself with mere repetition – he adheres to his remorse, and to his ‘You slew my brother’ ( i.e. his vengeance).

  After such words Sigurd should have needed no igður [the birds whose voices he could understand, see 41, 8 and 43, 1–3]. That the brother of one you had slain was unsafe was learnt almost at the mother’s knee, certainly on the father’s lap, in Scandinavia – especially when he went out of his way to point it out to you.

  There is a curious absence of explanation of the reason why Sigurd must roast the heart. The real reason is of course that Sigurd must cook the heart so as to hear the birds. Fáfnismál supplies a not overwhelming but sufficient reason – ek mun sofa ganga [I shall go to sleep] (we may presume, after the potent draught of dragon’s blood) [39, 5–8, and 40]. Whether there ever was a better reason – connected with this remnant of very ancient belief, the eating of flesh and drinking of blood (of foes especially) to obtain their wisdom and power [40, 5–8; 46, 1–4] we perhaps can no longer say.

  It may be noted that Snorri Sturluson says that Regin expressly proposed to Sigurd as terms of reconciliation for the slaying of Fáfnir, that he roast the heart for him.

  39 Ridil: Old Norse Riðill, Regin’s sword; Snorri names it Refill.

  42–44 In Fáfnismál there are seven stanzas ascribed (in a prose linking-passage) to the words of the birds (of a kind called igður, of uncertain meaning) chattering in the thicket, whose voices Sigurd could at once understand after the blood from the dragon’s heart touched his tongue; but these stanzas are in two different metres. The poem Fáfnismál is not in the verse-form fornyrðislag in which the greater number of the poems of the Edda are written, but in ljóðaháttr. In this metre the stanza falls into two halves of three lines each, of which the third line in each half usually has three stressed elements and double (or treble) alliteration within itself. Only three of the ‘bird-verses’ are in ljóðaháttr, the others being in fornyrðislag; and my father argued forcefully and in detail that the fornyrðislag verses come from another poem (see further the note to 49–54).

  The three ljóðaháttr verses, he held, are spoken by two birds, with two main motives selected : gold, fear of treachery, and gold repeated. This is the basis for these three stanzas in the Lay (though the suggestion in 42, 5–6 that Sigurd should eat Fáfnir’s heart himself is introduced from one of the other verses); but – rather oddly – they are cast in ljóðaháttr, thus apparently marking them out as intrusive, since the Lay is in fornyrðislag.

  To illustrate the form as it appears in Old Norse I give here the first of the three ljóðaháttr verses with a close translation:

  Höfði skemra láti hann inn hára þul

  Fara til heljar heðan!

  Öllu gulli þá kná hann einn ráða,

  fjölð, því er und Fáfni lá.

  (Shorter by a head, / let him send the grey-haired wizard / hence to hell! All the gold / then can he possess alone, / the wealth, that under Fáfnir lay.)

  46–48 In the Saga Sigurd ate some only of the dragon’s heart, and some he set aside. The purpose of this is seen later in the saga, where it is told that at some time after the wedding of Sigurd and Gudrún ‘Sigurd gave Gudrún some of Fáfnir’s heart to eat, and thereafter she was far more grim than before, and wiser also.’ This element is excluded from the Lay; my father considered it ‘a late piece of machinery to explain Gudrún’s tangled psychology.’

  These verses derive from a prose passage in Fáfnismál, closely similar to that in the Saga, which tells that after the death of Regin Sigurd rode on Grani following the tracks of Fáfnir to his lair, which was standing open. The doors and door-posts were of iron, as were all the beams of the house, which was dug down into the earth (46). Sigurd found there a vast store of gold and filled two great chests with it; he took the Helm of Terror and a golden mailcoat and many other precious things, and he loaded them onto Grani; but the horse would not move until Sigurd leaped upon his back.