Friday, May 28, 2010

The Heroes, Part Six

The valkyries are also characterized as the Wish Maidens of Odin. They are the physical manifestation of his will, and carry out his desires on the earthly plane. This concept of the godhead sending out his "wish" and his "will" as physical agents can be related to shamanistic practices, as seen with his two ravens.

Swan Maiden by Gertrude Demain Hammond (circa 1909)

Related to the valkyrie and the Wish Maiden is the Swan Maiden, in which the shape-changing ability of Freya remains, but has lost all meaning and power. The mystic women are, at this point, merely objects of desire to the young male heroes who seek to make them into captive wives by stealing their mystic feather-cloaks as the young women are bathing.

It is important to remember that Freya, in addition to being the goddess of love and desire, was the leader of the valkyries. This role is completely missing in the tale of Brynhild, in all its forms. Where is Freya when her lieutenant is banished from the godhead? In the time of the saga, Odin still wanders the world and interacts with humanity, but the other gods and goddesses are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Brynhild, the valkyrie made mortal, stands in relation to early conceptions of Freya in the same way that Sigurd and Beowulf relate to Thor – the god of myth reforged as the hero of legend.

Amulets of women, maybe valkyries (6th century, Sweden)

Brynhild exhibits the complexcharacteristics that are seen in the gods. She represents a full life, from love through battle and wisdom to death. Through the changing portrayal of her character, we can see the changing status of women in Germanic society. In the Saga of the Volsungs, written down in 13th century Iceland, she is a mystic font of wisdom. When Sigurd asks for her to share her wisdom, she fills a goblet, hands it to him, and says, “Beer I give you, battlefield’s ruler” – clearly an earthly incarnation of Valhalla’s valkyries serving ale to the undead warriors. She proceeds to give an Odinnic "ecstatic wisdom performance" of practical advice and runic lore. For a society in which women were spiritual leaders and keepers of arcane knowledge, this is a very smart way for Sigurd to begin a relationship.

In this Icelandic version of the saga, Brynhild retains an explicitly mystical connection to the god Odin. By the time we get to the medieval German Nibelungenlied, written down at roughly the same time as the Saga of the Volsungs, Brunhild is a human woman. It is obvious that the German tale is based on older sources; Brunhild and Siegfried (the German form of Sigurd) clearly know each other when they meet, but their relationship is never explained. The warrior queen has a strength that goes beyond any mortal woman, but there is also no explanation of her abilities. To the modern reader, the explanation is obvious; she is the valkyrie of Northern legend, descended into a human figure in a Christianized retelling that downplays all mystic elements.

The change in women’s status brought about by the advent of Christianity went well beyond women’s status in religion. In the older era, women could inherit property, could divorce themselves from their husbands at will, had power in running the affairs of family and state, and would even pick up sword and join the fighting if they were needed. This power is only dimly reflected in the Nibelungenlied. Brunhild is an anomaly and a foreigner, not a representation of the authoring society’s ideal woman. She is weird – weird in the ancient sense of mystic and strange – but her strangeness is never explained. Like some elements of the Icelandic version, the German text offers further evidence for the existence of a virgin priestess cult.

Siegfried in his invisibility cloak by Joseph Sattler (1904)

In the medieval epic, Brunhild repeatedly declares that she must be physically bested before she will submit ton marriage. In sport, in battle, and finally in the bedroom, she will not agree to King Gunther’s advances unless he can prove himself her superior. He can’t, of course, and Siegfried must help him out through his magic devices and mystic strength. In the end, Siegfried literally subdues Brunhild in her marriage bed on behalf of Gunther. Broken, she submits to the will of her husband, whom she has been tricked into believing had bested her.

This whole series of subjection and taming episodes contrast strongly with the Icelandic version, where Sigurd respectfully sits at the foot of the valkyrie and listens to her wisdom over a glass of beer. However, it does underscore the idea of a Germanic group of virgin priestesses. When the Nibelungenlied Brunhild is deflowered by the duo of Siegfried and Gunther, her strength and power disappear completely from the epic. Combined with the Saga of the Volsungs version, where Odin turns his back on the valkyrie and gives her to a human husband and denying her any further battle-victory, we can see the mythic version of a human virgin priestess leaving the god’s service to become a wife and mother.

At this point in the story, all versions leave the world of myth and enter the realm of heroic legend. The story of Sigurd, Brynhild, and the dire consequences of their meeting for all they come in contact with belongs squarely in the world of saga, and out of the realm of myth. Odin makes no further appearances in the Icelandic tale, and he never appears (or is even mentioned) in the German version. Gods, valkyries, dwarves, and dragons are all, as the anonymous Icelandic writer says of Helgi, “out of the saga.”

Monday, May 24, 2010

The Heroes, Part Five

Sigurd sees Brynhild from afar by H. J. Ford / Lancelot Speed (1890)

As Sigurd rides to Brynhild, “ahead of him on the mountain he saw a great light, as if a fire were burning and the brightness reached up to the heavens. And when he came to it, there stood before him a rampart of shields with a banner above it.” The language here seems to imply that the “fire” is actually the glare of the shields, not a literally burning ring of fire, as is usually portrayed in later retellings of the story. This echoes Snorri’s Eddic description of a party in Asgard, the home of the gods: “in the evening, when they were about to start the drinking, Odin had swords brought into the hall and they were so bright that light shone from them, and no other light was used while they sat drinking.” Coupled with the many instances of gleaming weapons lighting a hall in the mythology are the common poetic references to gold as “fire.” Given this tradition, it is not at all clear that the Brynhild’s fire is not merely metaphorical.

Brynhild by Arthur Rackham (1911)

Behind the shields and beneath a banner Sigurd finds what he takes to be a sleeping man in full armor. He removes the helmet and discovers that the sleeper is, in fact, a woman “in a coat of mail so tight that it seemed to have grown into her flesh.” This is fitting, as Brynhild means “mail coat of battle.”

Brynhild and Sigurd by Willy Pogany (1920)

When he cuts off her armor and wakes her, she asks if “Sigurd the son of Sigmund has come, the one who has the helmet of Fafnir and carries Fafnir’s bane [his sword] in his hand?” She then tells the tale of how she incurred the wrath of Odin when she struck down a hero in battle to whom the god had promised the victory. “Odin stabbed me with a sleeping thorn in revenge,” she says. “He said I should never afterward have the victory. He also said that I must marry. And I made a countervow that I would marry no one who knew fear.”

Odin and Brynhild by Konrad Dielitz (1892)

As with the circle of shields becoming exaggerated into a ring of fire, this scene seems fixed in the historical imagination as a tale of a mystic valkyrie incurring the wrath of Odin. However, the text itself makes no specific mention of valkyries. Before Brynhild tells her story, Sigurd says, “I have heard that you are the daughter of a powerful king.” She is clearly a shield-maiden, a warrior woman who serves Odin, but she appears to be human, unlike the Wish Maiden Hljód, who can turn into a crow and who lives long enough to both enable Volsung's birth and marry him when he reaches adulthood. It is telling that Odin’s punishment for Brynhild is that she “must marry” – more evidence for a cult of virgin priestesses dedicated to the god.

If Brynhild is a valkyrie, her involvement with Sigurd continues the line of couplings between valkyries and heroes of the Volsung clan. They are preceded by Hljód and Volsung, Sigrún and Helgi, Hjördís and Sigmund. This leads to the question: Were Odin’s virgin priestesses married to important leaders when they left godly service? Sigurd obviously values the knowledge Brynhild has learned, possibly in service to the wisdom-seeking god – either as priestess or warrior goddess. His response to her tale is, “Teach me the ways of mighty things.”

Sigurd and Brynhild by Harry G. Theaker (1916)

The character of Brynhild changes radically from one version of the legend to another, yet she maintains certain core characteristics. Tracing her evolution (or devolution), we can see the parallel descent of the ancient Norse religion as it moved through myth and into legend.

The mythic image of the mystic valkyrie that derived from the actual of the "chooser of the slain" in ancient Germanic societies was, by the time of the sagas, well-established. These warrior-goddesses flew through the skies and over the seas on their magic horses, collecting fallen heroes and bringing them to Valhalla ("hall of the slain"). Once in the hall, the valkyries shed their armor and brought horns of ale to the einherjar ("lone fighters"), the chosen slain who feasted and battled in Asgard throughout the ages, waiting and preparing for the final battle at Ragnarök.

The Wild Hunt by Emil Doepler (1905)

There may be a connection between the einherjar and the Harii, the Germanic tribe that Tactitus described in 98 AD: "They pander to their innate savagery by skill and timing: with black shields and painted bodies, they choose dark nights to fight, and by means of the terror and shadow of a ghostly army they cause panic, since no enemy can bear a sight so unexpected and hellish." These terrifying human warriors can be seen mythically reflected in the host of undead warriors that attend Odin in his hall and that join him as he flies through the skies leading the Raging Host or the Wild Hunt.

Friday, May 21, 2010

The Heroes, Part Four

Regin next tells the tale of his own lost wealth, a story that is connected to the purely mythological world. Odin, Hœnir, and Loki are out for a walk one day and spy an otter half-dozing on a rock after catching a salmon. On impulse, Loki throws a rock and kills the otter, thinking himself clever for having snared both otter and salmon at one throw. In the evening, they arrive at the home of a man named Hreidmar and show him their catch. The man is furious, because the otter was actually his son Ótr, who was such an ardent fisherman that he sometimes turned into his namesake animal to catch his prey. He demands wergild for the killing – enough gold to fill his son’s pelt and completely cover it. Loki is, as per usual, sent off to make up for his troublesome behavior.

Rán and her net by Anker Eli Petersen (2004 stamp, Faroe Islands)

Loki borrows the fishing net of the sea-goddess Rán (“plunder”) and catches a dwarf named Andvari (“careful one”). The dwarf, the owner of a massive hoard of treasure, likes to disguise himself as a pike and hide in a waterfall. Loki demands the treasure as ransom for the dwarf’s life, and the dwarf hands it all over except one gold ring, Andvaranaut (“Andvari’s heirloom”). When Loki forces it from him, the dwarf says that “the gold ring would be the death of whoever owned it, and the same applied to all the gold.”

The gods stuff the otter’s skin and cover it with gold, but Hreidmar sees that one whisker sticks out of the pile and demands that it be covered. Odin places the ring on the whisker, and Loki passes on the curse to Hreidmar and his sons.

Fafnir, son of Hreidmar and brother to Ótr and Regin, kills his father and takes the gold out into the wilds. He is so foul-tempered and greedy that he turns into “the most evil serpent and lies now upon this hoard.” Regin leaves home to become the smith of King Hjalprek.

Sigurd tests sword (12th century, Norway)

The dwarf encourages Sigurd to slay the dragon and claim the treasure for himself, and the young man insists he must be forged a sword equal to the task. The first two swords shatter when the powerful youth strikes them against the anvil, so Sigurd asks his mother for the two pieces of Sigmund’s mystic sword Gram (“wrath” – a fitting name for a sword gifted by Odin / Wotan). At this point, the meaning of his mother’s name becomes clear; Hjördís means “sword goddess,” and she is revealed as another valkyrie who has married a man of the Volsung line.

Regin refashions the weapon, which seems “as if flames were leaping from its edges.” The sword is powerful enough to hew the anvil to its base, and sharp enough to cut a piece of wool in two when Sigurd lets it gently run against the blade in the river’s current.

Regin now demands that Sigurd face the dragon Fafnir, but the youth insists he must first avenge his father. He is given a force by Hjalprek and Alf, and sets off in ships to face the sons of Hunding. When they pass a rockyheadland, Odin appears and asks to be taken aboard. The powerful storm that had troubled them immediately subsides and they sail peacefully until they reach the land of their enemies, at which point Odin disappears. Sigmund and his forces attack the sons of Hunding, including Lyngvi, the one who led the attack on Sigmund. Sigurd personally kills every remaining son of Hunding and heads back to Regin, saying he is now ready to face the dragon.

Sigurd kills Fafnir (12th century, Norway)

Sigurd and Regin ride to the dragon’s heath and onto the path that Fafnir takes when he goes to drink water. The dwarf advises the young hero to dig a ditch, lay in it, and stab up into the dragon’s heart when he passes over. Regin then runs off in cowardly terror, and Odin appears while Sigurd is digging the ditch. The god advises that he dig secondary ditches for the blood to run into, so that he doesn’t drown in the flood that will pour out of the dying serpent.

The plan works, and the mortally-wounded dragon tells Sigurd that the treasure will be the cause of his own death, but also reveals that the hoard contains an Ægishjálmr (“helm of terror”), a magical helmet that gives him dominion over others.

Sigurd roasts heart (12th century, Norway)

Regin reappears after the battle, drinks his dragon brother’s blood, and asks Sigurd to roast the monster’s heart so he can eat it. While roasting the heart, Sigurd pokes it and licks his finger to see if it’s ready to eat. He immediately understands the speech of the birds perched in the tree above him. They tell him that he can gain wisdom by eating the heart himself and warn him that Regin is going to betray him. They advise him to kill his foster father, take the treasure, and ride to Hindarfell (“hind mountain”) to seek the wisdom of the sleeping Brynhild. Sigurd follows all of their advice.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The Heroes, Part Three

Sigmund returns to rule his hereditary lands, marries a woman named Borghild, and has two sons. When his son Helgi is born, Norns come and “set his destiny, saying that he would become the most famous of all kings.” At age fifteen, he goes off with Sinfjotli to lead troops in war.

While viking, Helgi kills a king named Hunding in battle. Hunding’s sons, predictably, raise an army of revenge but themselves fall at Helgi’s hands. After the battle, Helgi discovers a group of women at the edge of a forest, including a princess named Sigrún. Her father, King Hogni, has promised her to a man named Hodbrodd, and she implores Helgi to save her: “Fight him with your army and take me away, because there is no king with whom I would rather dwell than with you.”

After an exchange of ritual insults between Sinfjotli and a brother of Hodbrodd, a battle begins between the parties of the rival suitors. In the midst of the slaying, “they saw a large band of shield-maidens – it was like looking into a fire; Sigrún the king’s daughter had arrived.” Sigrún appears to be a valkyrie; in the light of Brynhild’s later recitation of runic wisdom, it is significant that Sigrún’s name means “victory-rune.” Helgi and Sigrún marry, and, as the writer says, “he is out of the saga.”

Sinfjotli goes off viking again, and, in contest over a woman, slays the brother of Borghild, Sigmund’s wife. When Sinfjotli returns home, Borghild prepares a funeral banquet for her dead brother and offers her son-in-law a drinking horn. He realizes that the drink is poisoned, and Sigmund takes it from him and drinks it down, as he is “so hardy that he could eat poison with no ill effect.” This happens two more times. The last time, Sigmund is drunk, and says, “Filter it through your moustache, son.” Sinfjotli drinks, and is killed instantly.

Sigmund carries his son into the woods and to a fjord. A man in a small boat offers passage for the body across the fjord. Sigmund loads the body into the boat and walks alongside, but the boat and its ferryman quickly disappear before his eyes. The mysterious man is, again, Odin – this time in his aspect as the ferryman who brings the dead to the afterlife.

Sigmund returns home and drives his wife out. She dies shortly thereafter, another murderous queen who kills kin for revenge. He goes to woo Hjördís, the young daughter of King Eylimi. She is also being pursued by King Lyngvi, the son of King Hunding, the man killed by Helgi. Hjördís chooses Sigmund, and Lyngvi and his brothers raise an army of revenge. The bride hides with her treasure and a slave-girl in the forest as the battle begins. Sigmund is protected by spádísir, valkyrie-like female spirits. After the battle rages for a time, Odin appears on the field and faces Sigmund with raised spear. Sigmund swings his sword, and it splinters in two on the spear. The tide of the battle turns, and Sigmund and Eylimi both fall.

The night after the battle, Hjördís finds the dying Sigmund and says, “I would lack nothing, if you were healed and took revenge for my father.” He tells her that she is carrying a child, and gives her the broken pieces of the sword that will eventually be reforged into a new weapon: “Our son will bear it and with it accomplish many great deeds, which will never be forgotten. And his name will endure while the world remains.”

After Sigmund dies, Hjördís spots a fleet of vikings landing at the edge of the battlefield. She exchanges clothes with her slave-girl and heads for the woods. In a direct echo of the meeting of Helgi and Sigrún, they are spied out by the viking leader Alf, son of King Hjalprek of Denmark. The slave-girl plays the part of the princess and describes the events of the battle. Alf asks her to lead his men to the king’s treasure, which he then loads up on to his ships. Now a rich king, he returns to his lands with the two women. He eventually discovers the disguised princess and marries her.

Hjördís gives birth to Sigurd, who is her son by the deceased Sigmund. The boy is raised under King Hjalprek, but is fostered to a man (or, more likely, a dwarf) named Regin. “Fosterage,” according to Jesse L. Byock, “was a Norse custom of having a child raised in another household in order to extend kinship bonds or to form political alliances.” What the advantage is in being linked to the bitter and dispossessed Regin is unclear.

Regin teaches young Sigurd “sports, chess, and runes.” He goads the young boy into finding a horse for himself and, when Sigurd wanders into the forest, he meets Odin. The god asks him his business and advises him to chase a group of horses into the river. Only one horse is strong enough to brave the deepest part of the river and is chosen by Sigurd. Odin reveals that the horse is a descendant of Sleipnir, his own mystic horse.

Monday, May 10, 2010

The Heroes, Part Two

When he reaches adulthood, Volsung marries Hljód (“howling”), the very same Wish Maiden who brought the apple that enabled his birth. They have ten sons and one daughter; the oldest son is Sigmund, and the daughter is Signy. Volsung builds a hall around a huge oak tree that forms that center structure and reaches up through the roof.

A certain King Siggeir arrives to marry Signy, and the wedding banquet is interrupted by Odin, who arrives in the aspect of the cloaked and hooded Wanderer. He produces a sword and sinks it up to the hilt in the tree that forms the center of the hall and declares, “He who draws this sword out of the trunk shall receive it from me as a gift, and he himself shall prove that he has never carried a better sword than this one.” He leaves the hall, and all contend for the sword. None can budge it but young Sigmund, for whom it slides out like nothing. The visiting Siggeir offers to buy it from the youngster, who raises th deadly ire of the king when he refuses to part with the weapon.

Siggeir departs with the unwilling Signy but requests that his new kinsmen visit him in three months. When they arrive for the visit, Signy tries to warn Volsung and his sons of the deadly betrayal that is coming, but they insist they will not run from a fight. Volsung falls in the ensuing battle, and his sons are taken captive. When Siggeir marks them all for death, Signy pleads that, instead of a quick death, they be taken to the forest and put in stocks.

Sigmund and the wolf by Willy Pogany (1920)

Each night at midnight, a large she-wolf arrives and eats one of the sons. Each morning, Signy’s servant checks in and reports back to her what has happened. When only Sigmund is left, Signy gives some honey to her servant and tells him to smear it on her brother’s face and in his mouth. The wolf shows up and begins licking the honey off his face. When she sticks her tongue in his mouth, he bites it and doesn’t let go. In her struggles, she puts her feet against the stock and pulls back, splitting the wood. She dies when her tongue is pulled out, and Sigmund is free.

Signy secretly brings supplies to Sigmund, who lives in a dugout earth house in the forest. When her oldest son is ten years old, she sends him to Sigmund to see if he is strong enough to help avenge the death of Volsung. Sigmund hands the boy a bag of flour and tells him to make bread while he goes to gather firewood. Upon his return, the child tells him that he was scared to touch the sack, since there appeared to be something alive in it. When Sigmund tells his sister that the boy is “not so stouthearted that he would want the lad with him,” she tells him to kill her child. He obliges. A year later, Signy sends her younger son to be tested, with the same bloody result. The idea of the vengeful woman killing her own children as she plots vengeance against her husband recurs and is amplified later in the saga.

Signy then changes shapes with a sorceress and goes to visit Sigmund. He is smitten, and they spend three nights together. She subsequently gives birth to a son named Sinfjotli and, after ten years, sends him to be tested by Sigmund. Undismayed by the thing in the flour sack, he makes a loaf of bread after kneading in the squirming creature. Sigmund laughingly reveals that it was an incredibly poisonous snake and decides to train the boy for vengeance by taking him in the summertime to kill men “for booty” in the forest.

Werewolves by John Charles Dollman (circa 1909)

One day, they find a house in the forest that contains two sleeping men who are sons of kings. The men have been bewitched into werewolves; they wear wolf skins that they can only take off on every tenth day. Sigmund and Sinfjotli put on the skins and discover that they cannot take them off. They go off on a killing spree, end up fighting with each other, and Sigmund gravely wounds Sinfjotli by biting him in the windpipe. He later sees a weasel bite another in the windpipe and run off into the woods. The animal returns with a leaf which, when laid on the wound, heals it instantly. Sigmund goes out in search of the herb, only to see a raven flying overhead with the leaf he is seeking. It brings the leaf to him, and he is able to heal Sinfjotli. The raven, of course, is the mystic messenger of Odin, who has again intervened.

The two werewolves (“man-wolves”) burn the cursed wolfskins and, when Sinfjotli is fully grown, head to Siggeir’s estate to enact their revenge. As they hide behind ale casks in the hall, Signy’s two young children by Siggeir discover them by accident and report back to their father. Signy brings the children to Sigmund and Sinfjotli and advises them to kill them. Sigmund hesitates, but Sinfjotli kills them both and throws their bodies at the feet of their father.

After a long battle, the two Volsungs are captured are buried alive in a cairn with a large stone slab between them, “because [Siggeir] thought it worse for them not to be together, yet be able to hear each other.” As the mound is being covered with dirt, Signy secretly throws down both food and Sigmund’s Odinnic sword. The two men use the sword to slice through the slab and free themselves. They return to the hall in the middle of the night and set it aflame. Signy comes out to them and reveals that Sinfjotli is, in fact, the child of both the son and the daughter of Volsung. She says, “I have worked so hard to bring about vengeance that I am by no means fit to live,” and she goes back in to the hall to die in the flames with Siggeir and his retainers.

Monday, May 3, 2010

The Heroes, Part One

The legend of the hero Sigurd is recorded in many different forms, across great distances of time and space. Many writers have tried to make sense of the convoluted tale, including Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century, Richard Wagner in the 19th, and J.R.R. Tolkien in the 20th. There are fundamental discrepancies and contradictions in every version, back to the earliest surviving fragments, and no writer has fully succeeded in creating a coherent whole out of the disparate parts.

Sigurd comic book cover (1958, Germany)

A long series of poems in the Codex Regius, the manuscript source of the Poetic Edda, deals with a succession of heroes, heroines, valkyries, and villains. In the 1270s, the anonymous Icelandic writer who compiled the poems and wrote them down attempted to connect originally independent heroic cycles into a single narrative structure, much in the same way that Snorri sought to connect divergent god-myths into a single mythological timeline. He included prose interpolations, at times lengthy, to bridge the individual poems and to provide a sense that they all hung together into a single, extended cycle. Snorri was evidently familiar with the source poems of the Codex Regius, and his Edda of 1220 contains a prose summary of the events of the legend.

Roughly contemporaneous is the Saga of Thidrek, a mid-13th century Norwegian compilation of legends from northern and western Germany surrounding Thidrek and his various heroic companions, including Sigurd. Thidrek was a historical figure known as King Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and later called Dietrich of Berne (454 -526 AD). The lengthy saga includes the Sigurd legend, but it differs from the Icelandic sources in fundamental ways. It is much closer to the German epic of the Nibelungenlied, written around 1200.

Theodoric on coin (circa 493-526 CE)

The best-known version of the epic is the Saga of the Volsungs, written down in Iceland at some point between 1200 and 1270. It contains the most detailed account of the legend and brings together all the threads into a continuous (if not altogether convincing) narrative. Written in prose, but containing several excerpts that directly quote Eddic poetry, this version retains elements of greater age than are present in other renderings. Odin is very present in the tale, turning up at key moments to encourage, admonish, or punish the human protagonists of various generations; there is still a sense that gods walk among us – a sense that is completely lacking in the German Nibelungenlied. Valkyries and werewolves interact with human characters in a work that is somewhere between the age of myth and the age of history.

As the Sigurd legend is embedded in the Thidrek saga, it is included in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, composed centuries earlier, in approximately 800 AD. It is also represented pictorially in the Ramsund carvings in Sweden, dated to 1000 AD. All told, the legend is found in various forms in what we now call England, Germany, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. It seems to have been already an old story in the year 800, as it is cited in Beowulf as a tale that had already long ago passed into legend.

The Saga of the Volsungs begins with Sigi, a son of the god Odin. Many of the male descendents of Sigi that populate the saga have names containing the prefix Sig (“victory”), tying them to Odin in his aspect of Sigtýr (“victory-god”). In a fit of jealousy over hunting prowess, Sigi kills a slave belonging to another man and hides the body in a snowdrift. Killing, in the Norse conception, could be atoned for by the paying of weregild (“man-money”). Murder, defined as a killing done in stealth or secrecy, made the perpetrator a morðvargr (“killer wolf”) – the origin of the modern word “murderer.” The criminal was considered an outlaw, meaning that he was outside of the world of legal relationships, and was banished from society.

Odin, in his first of many interventions in the saga, guides Sigi out of his homeland and introduces him to some vikings. With these new companions, Sigi amasses wealth and, eventually, a kingdom. His wife’s brothers conspire against him, attacking and killing Sigi and all his men – a betrayal by in-laws that is a theme throughout the epic. His son Rerir grows up and avenges his father by slaying all of his uncles, but is unable to produce an heir with his wife.

Frigg and her servants by Carl Emil Doepler (1880)

Rerir prays to the goddess Frigg, who asks Odin for help. He gives an apple to one of his Wish Maidens, who takes the form of a crow and flies it to Rerir. He eats the apple, evidently one of the mystic fruit associated with the fertility goddess Idunn, and his wife becomes quickly pregnant. He dies while out on a fighting campaign, and his wife remains unable to push the baby out for six years. Recognizing that she is nearing death, she asks for the child to be cut out of her. He is, naturally, already a youth when he enters the world, and is called Volsung. In the Beowulf version of the story, Rerir appears as Waels. His son is therefore Waelsing, an Anglo-Saxon name meaning “son of Waels,” and the character appears in the Icelandic version as Volsung.
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