The Norse Myths Read online

  There’s more on Loki and his particular role in the events foreshadowing the end of the world in Chapter 6. In the next chapter we turn to some of the human heroes of Norse legend: the figures celebrated in the heroic poems in the second half of the Codex Regius collection. These are Völsungr, his son Sigmundr and his descendants, worthy inhabitants of Valhöll.

  ÓÐINN AS PATRON

  Of all the gods, it’s Óðinn and Þórr who seem to be most frequently invoked by humans, at least in our surviving texts. Since heroic literature is largely composed for the social elite, it’s not surprising that Óðinn figures in it largely as the ancestor of kings and the patron of heroes. The poem Grímnismál (Grímnir’s Sayings) shows Óðinn delivering a bravura display of wisdom; he is tortured by being placed between two fires with neither food nor drink for eight nights. The king’s son Agnarr offers him a horn of drink, an action that unleashes Óðinn’s revelation of his identity and power. How did Óðinn come to be in this situation in the first place? The (probably much later) prose which prefaces the poem tells how Óðinn and Frigg fostered the two sons of King Hrauðungr. The boys had gone out fishing and drifted out of sight of land. They fetched up near a little farm. Here an old woman looked after Agnarr, the older, and an old man took care of younger Geirrøðr. Now these two figures were the gods in disguise, and come spring, the old man found a boat and sent the lads home, whispering something in Geirrøðr’s ear before they said farewell. When they made land at their father’s home, Geirrøðr was the first to leap ashore, giving the boat with his brother a smart push back out to sea with the words, ‘Go where the troll will have you!’ And out the boat went. Agnarr vanished.

  Frigg and Óðinn sitting in the high seat Hliðskjálf. Frigg scores points over Óðinn by claiming that his protégé, king Geirrøðr, is stingy to his guests. Lorenz Frølich (1895).

  Later when Óðinn and Frigg are sitting in the high seat Hliðskjálf, looking out over the worlds, Óðinn can’t resist some point-scoring. ‘Look!’ he says, ‘there’s your fosterling raising children with an ogress in a cave. And there’s my fosterling, ruling his kingdom.’ Frigg retorts that Geirrøðr is a terrible king; he is so stingy with food that he tortures his guests if he thinks there are too many. This Óðinn must obviously investigate. Frigg sends Fulla, her servant, to Geirrøðr, to warn that a wizard is coming to visit him. Geirrøðr promptly seizes the visitor and has him tortured. At the end of Óðinn’s mighty monologue, he finally reveals his identity:

  The Terrible One will now take

  the weapon-weary slaughtered man;

  I know your life is over;

  the dísir are against you, now you may see Óðinn,

  draw near to me if you can!

  GRÍMNIR’S SAYINGS, V. 53

  In his haste to rescue his guest, Geirrøðr trips and falls onto his sword, and dies. Agnarr, the son named after Geirrøðr’s betrayed brother, takes the throne.

  As god of kingship, Óðinn needs to make sure that rulers fulfil the important obligations of hospitality. Yet his role in this little tale also acknowledges that deception and quick-thinking may be crucial in seizing the throne. Although the author of the prose passage insists that the charge against Geirrøðr was absolutely unjustified, and the god’s ill-treatment was the result of Frigg’s calumny, nevertheless Geirrøðr’s torture of his guest – wizard or not – does call the king’s judgment into question. It seems certain that Geirrøðr’s trick on his brother was motivated by Óðinn, but that fate – or the intervention of the gods, playing their own private game – finally brings a second Agnarr to the throne. This Agnarr enjoys Óðinn’s favour, for his giving of the horn of drink to the god is in effect a sacrifice, a tacit recognition of Óðinn’s status, and Agnarr reigns for a long time after his father.

  THE VÖLSUNG LINE AND THE FATAL SWORD

  The dynasty whose history is this chapter’s concern, the Völsungs, owe their very existence to Óðinn. According to the saga about them (probably composed around 1250), the earliest member of the lineage was a man called Sigi, said to be Óðinn’s son. After murdering a thrall, Sigi was outlawed; Óðinn arranged for him to acquire some warships and Sigi took to raiding. He made his fortune, carved out a kingdom and got married. Eventually his brothers-in-law plotted against Sigi and murdered him while his son Rerir was away. Rerir returned and slew all those implicated in his father’s death. Thus kin-murder and treachery became inscribed in the Völsung lineage from the very first.

  The Magic Apple

  Dynasties depend on reproductive success, and the wife of Rerir, Sigi’s son, bore him no child. Frigg asked Óðinn to help them and he sent a valkyrie with a magic apple, immediately devoured by Rerir and (presumably) the queen. She became pregnant, but this state lasted for six years! The queen died, giving birth to a good-sized son by Caesarean section. This was Völsungr, who grew up to marry the very valkyrie who had overseen his conception. And Hljóð the valkyrie gave him no fewer than ten sons and a daughter. The youngest of the siblings were twins: a boy named Sigmundr and a girl, Signý.

  Óðinn plunges the sword into the tree Barnstokkr in Völsungr’s hall. Emil Doepler (1905).

  The Sword in the Tree

  We recognize the mysterious stranger who plunges the sword into the tree in Völsungr’s hall as Óðinn. He is bestowing a gift on the next generation of his descendants, to put a positive spin on this action. Or else he has come to sow trouble, to find out which of the ten sons of Völsungr is the one who is fit to carry forward the lineage. The tree’s centrality reminds us of the World-Tree Yggdrasill, growing up through the centre of the worlds as Barnstokkr grows up through Völsungr’s hall. Its name, meaning ‘Child-stock’, underlines this part of the saga’s interest in genealogy, in the dynasty’s progression from short-tempered arrogant Sigi to Völsungr and his sons, from heroes who are born of gods and valkyries through magic to more human champions, though still conceived by somewhat aberrant means.

  Once his daughter Signý has grown up, Völsungr arranges a marriage for her with King Siggeirr of Gautland in southern Sweden. During the wedding-feast an elderly one-eyed man with a hat pulled down low over his eyes enters Völsungr’s hall with a drawn sword in his hand. This he plunges into the great tree, Barnstokkr, which grows up in the middle of the hall, and the sword sinks in up to the hilt. The man announces that he who can pull the sword from the trunk may have it: no better sword will ever come into his hand.

  Like the Sword in the Stone of Arthurian myth, this sword can only be pulled out by Óðinn’s chosen; this proves to be Signý’s brother Sigmundr. His new brother-in-law Siggeirr offers three times the sword’s weight in gold for it, but Sigmundr refuses: if the sword were meant for Siggeirr it would have yielded to his tugging. Siggeirr lets this pass for now, but we sense trouble ahead. Not long afterwards comes a return invitation for Völsungr and his sons to visit Siggeirr and Signý in Gautland, but it’s a trap. Siggeirr attacks his wife’s kinsmen; Völsungr is killed and the brothers captured.

  Desperately seeking a means to forestall her husband’s execution of her brothers, Signý begs that they be placed in stocks and left out in the forest, while she tries to come up with a rescue plan. But on each successive night a huge she-wolf (some said Siggeirr’s witch-mother transformed) comes and devours one of the brothers, until only Sigmundr is left. By now Signý has worked out what to do. She sends a servant to give her twin some honey; he smears this all over his face and waits for the she-wolf. Instead of savaging him, she begins to lick the honey from his face. Sigmundr seizes his chance; he opens his mouth and bites into the wolf’s tongue, clamping on so firmly that the tongue is torn out. Writhing in agony, the she-wolf tears the stocks apart; as she dies, Sigmundr escapes into the depths of the forest.

  Sigmundr, bound, bites the she-wolf’s tongue. Willy Pogany (1920).

  VENGEANCE, INCEST AND WEREWOLVES

  As one man ranged against all Siggeirr’s warriors, Sigmundr had no chance of ta
king vengeance. Signý had two sons by her hated husband, but her test of their mettle proved that they were too feeble to ally with their uncle and they were killed. Signý despaired of producing an adequate avenger. Exchanging her appearance with a wandering sorceress, she visited Sigmundr in his underground hideout and slept with him, while the sorceress remained with Siggeirr. Thus Signý gave birth to a child who was doubly a Völsung: Sinfjötli. He passed his mother and uncle’s tests with ease and went to live with Sigmundr. So tough was Sinfjötli that he and his father even spent a period as werewolves, after finding some shape-changing skins in the woods. But the pair fought in wolf-form and Sigmundr bit right through his son’s throat. Had it not been for a magic leaf, brought to the sorrowing wolf-Sigmundr by a (doubtless Odinic) raven, that revived the dead Sinfjötli, the vengeance plan would have come to nothing.

  Now the father and son felt ready for revenge and made their way to Siggeirr’s hall. They hid behind some ale-barrels in an outer room, but one of Signý’s two little children spotted them lurking there. Signý urged that they should be killed lest they give the game away; while tender-hearted Sigmundr couldn’t bring himself to kill his sister’s children, Sinfjötli had no such compunction. He killed both the little ones and threw them provocatively in front of Siggeirr. Captured and entombed in a huge mound, the two men broke out once again with Signý’s help, and they promptly set Siggeirr’s hall on fire. Signý revealed the truth of Sinfjötli’s parentage, kissed her brother and son, and walked back into the fire. Her life’s work, vengeance for her father and brothers, was complete, and she could not survive the stigma of her incest.

  The Testing of Sinfjötli

  Before sending Sinfjötli to Sigmundr, Signý sewed him into his shirt, passing the needle through flesh and linen. Then she ripped the clothing from him and asked if it hurt. ‘Grandfather Völsungr would not have thought that painful,’ the boy proudly replied. Encouraged, Signý dispatched him to Sigmundr in his forest lair. Sigmundr handed him a bag of flour and asked him to make bread while he went out. On his return, Sinfjötli offered Sigmundr the loaf. Sigmundr refused to eat it, for there had been a poisonous snake within the bag. Sinfjötli had, so he said, noticed something moving but he had just kneaded it to death as he prepared the dough. While Signý’s children by Siggeirr had taken fright at the wriggling object in the bag and failed to make any bread, Sinfjötli was clearly fierce enough to take on the vengeance for his murdered uncles and grandfather.

  Finally Sigmundr returned to his ancestral lands with his strangely begotten son, where he married and had two further sons. Their history is related below. Sinfjötli makes a loyal companion and brother to his father’s heir, but he eventually dies through his stepmother’s treachery.

  Sinfjötli’s Death

  Borghildr, Sigmundr’s new wife, has a brother and he and Sinfjötli compete for the same woman. There’s a duel in which Borghildr’s brother is killed. Borghildr prepares a drinking-horn containing poison and offers it to her stepson. Sinfjötli is wary, for the drink looks odd and twice he voices his suspicions to his father. Sigmundr is so tough that no poison can harm him. Impatiently he takes the horn and drinks it off, suffering no ill effects. When a third horn is offered, Sinfjötli repeats his doubts: ‘This drink is cloudy, Dad!’ Sigmundr retorts, ‘Strain it through your moustache, son!’ And Sinfjötli drinks – and dies. Grief-stricken Sigmundr carries his body away until he comes to a fjord. A boatsman appears and offers passage across, but there is only room for the corpse on board. The boatsman announces that Sigmundr must walk round the fjord, pushes off and disappears for ever. This time the boatsman needn’t be described as aged and one-eyed for us to recognize Óðinn, come to take Sinfjötli home to Valhöll.

  Sigmundr hands the corpse of his son Sinfjötli over to the mysterious boatsman. Johannes Gehrts (1901).

  The valkyries, from an 1896 production of Richard Wagner’s opera, Die Walküre.

  HELGI THE SACRED HERO

  Embedded in the Saga of the Völsungs, and retold in two eddic poems, is the tale of Helgi, Sigmundr’s son by Borghildr. Helgi’s name means ‘the sacred one’, and he belongs to a recurrent legendary type: the hero who is the lover of a valkyrie (see page 33). This tale has been grafted onto the Völsung cycle, for the sacred hero must be fathered by someone and Sigmundr is as good a parent as anyone. Helgi is, like Váli, Óðinn’s son, precocious:

  The son of Sigmundr stands in his mail-coat,

  one day old; now day has dawned!

  Sharp his eyes like fighters;

  he’s the friend of wolves, we should be cheerful.

  FIRST POEM OF HELGI, SLAYER OF HUNDINGR, V. 6

  The Beasts of Battle

  The beasts of battle are the raven, the eagle and the wolf. In Germanic tradition they have foreknowledge of when battles are in the offing and they make their way to the field of slaughter, greedily anticipating their gobbling up of the carrion. There’s no higher praise in Old Norse poetry than to say of a king that he frequently gave the wolf breakfast.

  So observes one raven to another, gleefully anticipating the corpses that this prodigious child will provide for the beasts of battle to feast on.

  Helgi makes his name by killing a certain King Hundingr and many of his sons when he is only fifteen years old. On the way back from this victory, Helgi meets Sigrún, the beautiful valkyrie who loves him; she requests his help in dealing with Höðbroddr, the suitor to whom her father wishes to marry her: ‘But, Helgi, I call Höðbroddr / a king as impressive as the kitten of a cat!’, she adds. Helgi promises his aid, and despite dangerous seas described in stirring poetry, he makes land where Höðbroddr and his allies are waiting for him:

  There was the splash of oars and the clash of iron,

  shield smashed against shield, the Vikings rowed on;

  hurtling beneath the nobles

  surged the leader’s ship far from the land.

  Helgi ordered the high sail to be set,

  his crew did not cringe at the meeting of the waves,

  when Ægir’s terrible daughter

  wanted to capsize the stay-bridled wave-horse.

  FIRST POEM OF HELGI, VV. 27, 29

  A Viking-Age ship depicted on a picture-stone from Tjängvide, Gotland.

  Ægir’s terrible daughter is a wave, and the ‘stay-bridled wave-horse’, Helgi’s longship. The battle ends with victory for Helgi and he embraces an ecstatic Sigrún. The First Poem of Helgi ends here; in the Second Poem, which relates the earlier part of the tale in more detail, Sigrún seems more human. The valkyrie who rejoices in slaughter recoils in horror when she learns that her father, and all but one brother, have died so that she may choose her own husband. Helgi makes peace with the surviving brother Dagr, but soon Dagr sacrifices to Óðinn for vengeance; the god gives him a spear with which he kills Helgi.

  Helgi is not yet quite done with this life; a serving-maid reports seeing the dead Helgi and his retinue riding into their burial-mound. Sigrún is as overjoyed ‘as the greedy hawks of Óðinn / when they know of slaughter, steaming flesh’, just like the ravens who praised Helgi’s prowess at his birth. Sigrún does not quail from spending a final passionate night with her dead husband in the mound, kissing his bloody mouth and drinking fine liquors with him. Helgi reveals that her tears are disturbing him; her excessive grief is preventing his moving on into the next world. Come the dawn, Helgi and his men ride away to Valhöll, never to return. Sigrún may have learned to let her husband go, but sorrow and grief cause her death soon afterwards.

  THE DRAGON-SLAYER SIGURÐR

  Sinfjötli’s death and the consequent breach with Borghildr leaves Sigmundr without an heir. Now well advanced in years he asks for the hand of Hjördís, the daughter of King Eylimi. A rival suitor, King Lyngvi, son of the Hundingr killed by Helgi, also presents himself. Offered a choice, Hjördís opts for the older and more renowned Sigmundr, and the marriage goes ahead. Lyngvi’s response is to launch an invasion. Pregnant Hjördís and h
er servant take refuge in the woods as Sigmundr and her father join battle against the invaders. Despite his age, Sigmundr is undefeated until a one-eyed man in a broad-brimmed hat and dark cloak appears before him. He blocks Sigmundr’s sword-stroke with his spear and the sword shatters. The tide of battle changes; Sigmundr and his father-in-law Eylimi fall.

  Hjördís retrieves the sword-fragments from her dying husband and she is rescued from the battlefield by her husband’s ally King Álfr. At his court she gives birth to Sigurðr, who is fostered by Reginn the smith. Reginn’s covert aim is to use the young hero to retrieve the treasure guarded by Reginn’s brother, Fáfnir the dragon. Sigurðr has his own set of priorities, however. His stepfather allows him to choose a horse from his stud; there Sigurðr meets a bearded man who advises him, and then reveals that the chosen horse Grani was sired by no less a beast than Óðinn’s own Sleipnir. It’s not long before Sigurðr emerges into heroic manhood. Reginn reforges Sigmundr’s sword Gramr for him and Sigurðr mounts a naval expedition against Lyngvi in vengeance for his father. The campaign against Lyngvi is a great success and brings Sigurðr much renown. Now, at last, it’s time for him to prove his mettle against the dragon.

  Kirsten Flagstad as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walküre, 1938.

  Wagner’s Version

  In Wagner’s Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the second opera of the Ring Cycle, Siegmund and his sister Sieglinde have long been separated and she is unhappily wed to Hunding. When Siegmund, escaping his enemies, takes refuge in the couple’s home, the brother and sister fall in love, even though they realize their relationship, and they make love. Next day, Siegmund must fight with Hunding and Wotan decrees that Siegmund will lose. Brünnhilde, Wotan’s valkyrie daughter, is sent to make sure that this happens. But Brünnhilde takes pity on Siegmund and he is close to victory when Wotan suddenly appears and shatters his sword, Nothung, with a blow from his spear. Siegmund falls dead at Hunding’s hands. Brünnhilde gathers the sword-fragments and Sieglinde to her and flees. Wotan punishes his errant daughter by stripping her of her divinity and decreeing that she must marry. Sieglinde, pregnant with the hero, Siegfried, takes refuge in the forest.