The Edda, Volume 2 | Page 9

the two poems of Helgi Hundingsbane; but essentially the stories are the same.
In _Helyi Hj?rvardsson_, Helgi, son of Hj?rvard 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, H?gni's daughter, protected him, and challenged him to fight H?dbrodd to whom her father had plighted her. She protected his ships in the storm which overtook them as they sailed to meet H?dbrodd, 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 H?gni'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 H?dbrodd, 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 Hj?rvardsson'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 Sinfj?tli; his first fight, like Sigurd's, is against the race of Hunding; his rival, H?dbrodd, 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 _Sinfj?tli's Death_ also makes Helgi half-brother to Sinfj?tli; it is followed in this by _V?lsunga 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 Sinfj?tli. 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,