The Edda, Volume 2 | Page 7

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