Chapter XXVI: The Sigurd Saga (2)

Although haunted by a vague dread that he had forgotten something important, Sigurd asked for and obtained Gudrun’s hand, and celebrated his wedding amid the rejoicings of the people, who loved him very dearly. He gave his bride some of Fafnir’s heart to eat, and the moment she had tasted it her nature was changed, and she began to grow cold and silent to all except him. Sigurd further cemented his alliance with the eldest two Giukings (as the sons of Giuki were called) by stepping down into the doom ring with them, cutting out a sod which was placed upon a shield, beneath which they stood while they bared and slightly cut their right arms, and allowing their blood to mingle in the fresh earth, over which the sod was again laid after they had sworn eternal friendship.

But although Sigurd loved his wife and felt true brotherly affection for her brothers, he could not get rid of his haunting sense of oppression, and was seldom seen to smile as radiantly as of old. Giuki having died, Grimhild besought Gunnar, his successor, to take a wife, suggesting that none seemed more worthy to become Queen of the Niblungs than Brunhild, who, it was reported, sat in a golden hall surrounded by flames, whence she had declared she would issue only to marry the warrior who would dare pass through the fire to her side.

[Sidenote: Gunnar’s stratagem.]

Gunnar immediately prepared to seek this bride, and strengthened by one of his mother’s magic potions, and encouraged by Sigurd, who accompanied him, he felt very confident of success. But when he would daringly have ridden straight into the fire, his steed drew back affrighted and he could not induce him to advance a step. Seeing that Greyfell did not flinch, he asked him of Sigurd; but although the steed allowed Gunnar to mount, he would not stir unless his master were on his back. Gunnar, disappointed, sprang to earth and accepted Sigurd’s proposal to assume his face and form, ride through the flames, and woo the bride by proxy. This deception could easily be carried out, thanks to the Helmet of Dread, and to a magic potion which Grimhild had given Gunnar.

The transformation having been brought about, Greyfell bounded through the flames with his master, and bore him to the palace door, where he dismounted, and entering the large hall came into the presence of Brunhild, whom he failed to recognize, owing to Grimhild’s spell. Brunhild started back in dismay when she saw the dark-haired knight, for she had deemed it utterly impossible for any but Sigurd to cross the flames, and she, too, did not know her lover in his altered guise.

Reluctantly she rose from her seat to receive him, and as she had bound herself by a solemn oath to accept as husband the man who braved the flames, she allowed him to take his lawful place by her side. Sigurd silently approached, carefully laid his drawn sword between them, and satisfied Brunhild’s curiosity concerning this singular behavior by telling her that the gods had bidden him celebrate his wedding thus.

“There they went in one bed together; but the foster-brother laid
’Twixt him and the body of Brynhild his bright blue battle-blade,
And she looked and heeded it nothing; but, e’en as the dead folk lie,
With folded hands she lay there, and let the night go by:
And as still lay that image of Gunnar as the dead of life forlorn,
And hand on hand he folded as he waited for the morn.
So oft in the moonlit minster your fathers may ye see
By the side of the ancient mothers await the day to be.”

Three days passed thus, and when the fourth morning dawned, Sigurd drew the ring Andvaranaut from Brunhild’s hand, replaced it by another, and received her solemn promise that in ten days’ time she would appear at the Niblung court to take up her duties as queen and be a faithful wife.

“I thank thee, King, for thy goodwill, and thy pledge of love I take.
Depart with my troth to thy people: but ere full ten days are o’er
I shall come to the Sons of the Niblungs, and then shall we
part no more
Till the day of the change of our life-days, when Odin and Freya
shall call.”

Then Sigurd again passed out of the palace through the ashes lying white and cold, and joined Gunnar, with whom he hastened to exchange forms once more, after he had reported the success of his venture. The warriors rode homeward together, and Sigurd revealed only to Gudrun the secret of her brother’s wooing, giving her the fatal ring, which he little suspected would be the cause of many woes.

True to her promise, Brunhild appeared ten days later, solemnly blessed the house she was about to enter, greeted Gunnar kindly, and allowed him to conduct her to the great hall, where she saw Sigurd seated beside Gudrun. He looked up at the selfsame moment, and as he encountered Brunhild’s reproachful glance Grimhild’s spell was broken and he was struck by an anguished recollection of the happy past. It was too late, however: they were both in honor bound, he to Gudrun and she to Gunnar, whom she passively followed to the high seat, where she sat beside him listening to the songs of the bards.

But, although apparently calm, Brunhild’s heart was hot with anger, and she silently nursed her wrath, often stealing out of her husband’s palace to wander alone in the forest, where she could give vent to her grief.

In the mean while, Gunnar, seeing his wife so coldly indifferent to all his protestations of affection, began to have jealous suspicions and wondered whether Sigurd had honestly told the whole story of the wooing, and whether he had not taken advantage of his position to win Brunhild’s love. Sigurd alone continued the even tenor of his way, doing good to all, fighting none but tyrants and oppressors, and cheering all he met by his kindly words and smile.

[Sidenote: Quarrel of the queens.]

One day the queens went down to the Rhine to bathe, and as they were entering the water Gudrun claimed precedence by right of her husband’s courage. Brunhild refused to yield what she deemed her right, and a quarrel ensued, in the course of which Gudrun accused her sister-in-law of infidelity, producing the ring Andvaranaut in support of her charge. Crushed by this revelation, Brunhild hastened homeward, and lay on her bed in speechless grief day after day, until all thought she would die. In vain did Gunnar and all the members of the royal family seek her in turn and implore her to speak; she would not utter a word until Sigurd came and inquired the cause of her great grief. Like a long-pent-up stream, her love and anger now burst forth, and she overwhelmed the hero with reproaches, until his heart swelled with grief for her sorrow and burst the tight bands of his strong armor.

“Out went Sigurd
From that interview
Into the hall of kings,
Writhing with anguish;
So that began to start
The ardent warrior’s
Iron-woven sark
Off from his sides.”

SÆMUND’S EDDA (Thorpe’s tr.).

But although he even offered to repudiate Gudrun to reinstate her in her former rights, she refused to listen to his words, and dismissed him, saying that she must never prove faithless to Gunnar. Her pride was such, however, that she could not endure the thought that two living men had called her wife, and the next time her husband sought her presence she implored him to put Sigurd to death, thus increasing his jealousy and suspicions. He refused to grant this prayer because he had sworn good fellowship with Sigurd, and she prevailed upon Högni to work her will. As he, too, did not wish to violate his oath, he induced Guttorm, by means of much persuasion and one of Grimhild’s potions, to do the dastardly deed.

[Sidenote: Death of Sigurd.]

In the dead of night, Guttorm stole into Sigurd’s chamber, sword in hand; but as he bent over the bed he saw Sigurd’s bright eyes fixed upon him, and fled precipitately. Later on he returned and the same scene was repeated; but towards morning, when he stole in for the third time, he found the hero asleep and traitorously drove his spear through his back.

Mortally wounded, Sigurd raised himself in bed, grasped his wonderful sword hanging beside him, flung it full at the flying murderer, and cut him in two just as he reached the door. His last remaining strength thus exhausted, Sigurd sank back, whispered a last farewell to the terrified Gudrun, and breathed his last.

“‘Mourn not, O Gudrun, this stroke is the last of ill;
Fear leaveth the house of the Niblungs on this breaking of the morn;
Mayest thou live, O woman belovèd, unforsaken, unforlorn!
It is Brynhild’s deed,’ he murmured, ‘and the woman that loves me well;
Naught now is left to repent of, and the tale abides to tell.
I have done many deeds in my life-days; and all these, and my
love they lie
In the hollow hand of Odin till the day of the world go by.
I have done and I may not undo, I have given and I take not again:
Art thou other than I, Allfather, wilt thou gather my glory in vain?’”

Sigurd’s infant son was also slain, and poor Gudrun mourned over her dead in speechless, tearless grief; while Brunhild laughed aloud, thereby incurring the wrath of Gunnar, who repented now, but too late, of his share in the dastardly crime.

While the assembled people were erecting a mighty funeral pyre--which they decorated with precious hangings, fresh flowers, and glittering arms, as was the custom for the burial of a prince--Gudrun was surrounded by women, who, seeing her tearless anguish, and fearing lest her heart would break if her tears did not flow, began to recount the bitterest sorrows they had known, one even telling of the loss of all she held dear. But their attempts to make her weep were utterly vain, until they laid her husband’s head in her lap, bidding her kiss him as if he were still alive; then her tears began to flow in torrents.

The reaction soon set in for Brunhild also; her resentment was all forgotten when she saw Sigurd laid on the pyre in all his martial array, with the burnished armor, the Helmet of Dread, and the trappings of his horse, which was to be burned with him, as well as several of his faithful servants who could not survive his loss. She withdrew to her apartment, distributed all her wealth among her handmaidens, donned her richest array, and stretching herself out upon her bed stabbed herself.

In dying accents she then bade Gunnar lay her beside the hero she loved, with the glittering, unsheathed sword between them, as it had lain when he had wooed her by proxy. When she had breathed her last, these orders were punctually executed, and both bodies were burned amid the lamentations of all the Niblungs.

“They are gone--the lovely, the mighty, the hope of the ancient Earth:
It shall labor and bear the burden as before that day of their birth:
It shall groan in its blind abiding for the day that Sigurd hath sped,
And the hour that Brynhild hath hastened, and the dawn that
waketh the dead:
It shall yearn, and be oft-times holpen, and forget their deeds no
more,
Till the new sun beams on Balder and the happy sealess shore.”

According to another version of the story, Sigurd was treacherously slain by the Giukings while hunting in the forest, and his body was borne home by the hunters and laid at his wife’s feet.

Gudrun, still inconsolable, and loathing the kindred who had thus treacherously robbed her of all her joy, fled from her father’s house and took refuge with Elf, Sigurd’s foster father, who, after Hiordis’s death, had married Thora, the daughter of King Hakon. The two women became great friends, and here Gudrun tarried several years, working tapestry in which she embroidered the great deeds of Sigurd, and watching over her little daughter Swanhild, whose bright eyes reminded her so vividly of the husband whom she had lost.

[Sidenote: Atli, King of the Huns.]

In the mean while, Atli, Brunhild’s brother, who was now King of the Huns, had sent to Gunnar to demand atonement for his sister’s death; and to satisfy these claims Gunnar had promised that in due time he would give him Gudrun’s hand in marriage. Time passed, and when at last Atli clamored for the fulfillment of his promise, the Niblung brothers, with their mother Grimhild, went to seek the long-absent Gudrun, and by their persuasions and the magic potion administered by Grimhild succeeded in persuading her to leave little Swanhild in Denmark and become Atli’s wife.

Gudrun dwelt, year after year, in the land of the Huns, secretly hating her husband, whose avaricious tendencies were extremely repugnant to her; and she was not even consoled for Sigurd’s death and Swanhild’s loss by the birth of two sons, Erp and Eitel. As she lovingly thought of the past she often spoke of it, little suspecting that her descriptions of the wealth of the Niblungs excited Atli’s greed, and that he was secretly planning some pretext for getting it into his power.

Finally he decided to send Knefrud or Wingi, one of his subjects, to invite all the Niblung princes to visit his court, intending to slay them when he should have them at his mercy; but Gudrun, fathoming this design, sent a runic-written warning to her brothers, together with the ring Andvaranaut, around which she had twined a wolf’s hair. On the way, however, the messenger partly effaced the runes, thus changing their meaning; and when he appeared before the Niblungs, Gunnar accepted the invitation, in spite of Högni’s and Grimhild’s warnings and the ominous dream of his new wife Glaumvor.

[Sidenote: Burial of the Niblung treasure.]

Before his departure, however, they prevailed upon him to secretly bury the great Niblung hoard in the Rhine, where it was sunk in a deep hole, the position of which was known to the royal brothers only, and which they took a solemn oath never to reveal.

“Down then and whirling outward the ruddy Gold fell forth,
As a flame in the dim gray morning flashed out a kingdom’s worth;
Then the waters roared above it, the wan water and the foam
Flew up o’er the face of the rock-wall as the tinkling Gold fell home,
Unheard, unseen forever, a wonder and a tale,
Till the last of earthly singers from the sons of men shall fail.”

[Sidenote: The treachery of Atli.]

In martial array they then rode out of the city of the Niblungs, which they were never again to see, and after many unimportant adventures came into the land of the Huns, where, on reaching Atli’s hall and finding themselves surrounded by foes, they slew the traitor Knefrud, and prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible.

Gudrun rushed to meet them, embraced them tenderly, and, seeing that they must fight, grasped a weapon and loyally helped them in the terrible massacre which ensued. When the first onslaught was over, Gunnar kept up the spirits of his followers by playing on his harp, which he laid aside only to grasp his sword and make havoc among the foe. Thrice the brave Niblungs resisted the assault of the Huns ere, wounded, faint, and weary, Gunnar and Högni, now sole survivors, fell into the hands of their foes, who bound them securely and led them off to prison to await death.

Atli, who had prudently abstained from taking any active part in the fight, had his brothers-in-law brought in turn before him, promising freedom if they would only reveal the hiding place of the golden hoard; but they proudly kept silence, and it was only after much torture that Gunnar acknowledged that he had sworn a solemn oath never to reveal the secret as long as Högni lived, and declared he would believe his brother dead only when his heart was brought to him on a platter.

“With a dreadful voice cried Gunnar: ‘O fool, hast thou heard it told
Who won the Treasure aforetime and the ruddy rings of the Gold?
It was Sigurd, child of the Volsungs, the best sprung forth
from the best:
He rode from the North and the mountains, and became my summer-guest,
My friend and my brother sworn: he rode the Wavering Fire,
And won me the Queen of Glory and accomplished my desire;
The praise of the world he was, the hope of the biders in wrong,
The help of the lowly people, the hammer of the strong:
Ah! oft in the world, henceforward, shall the tale be told
of the deed,
And I, e’en I, will tell it in the day of the Niblungs’ Need:
For I sat night-long in my armor, and when light was wide o’er the land
I slaughtered Sigurd my brother, and looked on the work of mine hand.
And now, O mighty Atli, I have seen the Niblung’s wreck,
And the feet of the faint-heart dastard have trodden Gunnar’s neck;
And if all be little enough, and the Gods begrudge me rest,
Let me see the heart of Högni cut quick from his living breast
And laid on the dish before me: and then shall I tell of the Gold,
And become thy servant, Atli, and my life at thy pleasure hold.’”

Urged by greed, Atli immediately ordered that Högni’s heart should be brought; but his servants, fearing to lay hands on such a grim warrior, slew the cowardly scullion Hialli. This trembling heart called forth contemptuous words from Gunnar, who declared such a timorous organ could never have belonged to his fearless brother. But when, in answer to a second angry command from Atli, the unquivering heart of Högni was really brought, Gunnar recognized it, and turning to the monarch solemnly swore that since the secret now rested with him alone it would never be revealed.

[Sidenote: The last of the Niblungs.]

Livid with anger, the king bade him be thrown, with bound hands, into a den of venomous snakes, where, his harp having been flung after him in derision, Gunnar calmly sat, playing it with his toes, and lulling all the reptiles to sleep save one only. This snake was said to be Atli’s mother in disguise, and it finally bit him in the side, silencing his triumphant song forever.

To celebrate the death of his foes, Atli ordered a great feast, commanding Gudrun to be present to wait upon him. Then he heartily ate and drank, little suspecting that his wife had slain both his sons, and was serving up their roasted hearts and their blood mixed with wine in cups made of their skulls. When the king and his men were intoxicated, Gudrun, according to one version of the story, set fire to the palace, and when the drunken sleepers awoke, too late to escape, she revealed all she had done, stabbed her husband, and perished in the flames with the Huns. According to another version, however, she murdered Atli with Sigurd’s sword, placed his body on a ship, which she sent adrift, and then cast herself into the sea, where she was drowned.

“She spread out her arms as she spake it, and away from the
earth she leapt
And cut off her tide of returning; for the sea-waves over her swept,
And their will is her will henceforward, and who knoweth the
deeps of the sea,
And the wealth of the bed of Gudrun, and the days that yet shall be?”

A third and very different version reports that Gudrun was not drowned, but was borne along by the waves to the land where Jonakur was king. There she became his wife, and the mother of three sons, Sörli, Hamdir, and Erp. She also recovered possession of her beloved daughter Swanhild, who, in the mean while, had grown into a beautiful maiden of marriageable age.

[Sidenote: Swanhild.]

Swanhild was finally promised to Ermenrich, King of Gothland, who sent his son, Randwer, and one of his subjects, Sibich, to escort the bride to his kingdom. Sibich, who was a traitor, and had planned to compass the death of the royal family that he might claim the kingdom, accused Randwer of having tried to win his young stepmother’s affections, and thereby so roused the anger of Ermenrich that he ordered his son to be hanged, and Swanhild to be trampled to death under the feet of wild horses. But such was the beauty of this daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun that even the wild steeds could not be urged to touch her until she had been hidden from their view under a great blanket, when they trod her to death under their cruel hoofs.

Gudrun, hearing of this, called her three sons to her side, and provided them with armor and weapons against which nothing but stone could prevail. Then, after bidding them depart and avenge their murdered sister, she died of grief, and was burned on a great pyre. The three youths, Sörli, Hamdir, and Erp, invaded Ermenrich’s kingdom, but the two eldest, deeming Erp too young to assist them, taunted him with his small size, and finally slew him. They then attacked Ermenrich, cut off his hands and feet, and would have slain him had not a one-eyed stranger suddenly appeared and bidden the bystanders throw stones at the young invaders. His orders were immediately carried out, and Sörli and Hamdir both fell under the shower of stones, which alone had power to injure them according to Gudrun’s words.

“Ye have heard of Sigurd aforetime, how the foes of God he slew;
How forth from the darksome desert the Gold of the Waters he drew;
How he wakened Love on the Mountain, and wakened Brynhild the Bright,
And dwelt upon Earth for a season, and shone in all men’s sight.
Ye have heard of the Cloudy People, and the dimming of the day,
And the latter world’s confusion, and Sigurd gone away;
Now ye know of the Need of the Niblungs and the end of broken troth,
All the death of kings and of kindreds and the Sorrow of Odin the Goth.”

[Sidenote: Interpretation of the Saga.]

This story of the Volsungs is supposed by some authorities to be a series of sun myths, in which Sigi, Rerir, Volsung, Sigmund, and Sigurd in turn personify the glowing orb of day. They are all armed with invincible swords, the sunbeams, and all travel through the world fighting against their foes, the demons of cold and darkness. Sigurd, like Balder, is beloved of all; he marries Brunhild, the dawn maiden, whom he finds in the midst of flames, the flush of morn, and parts from her only to find her again when his career is ended. His body is burned on the funeral pyre, which, like Balder’s, represents either the setting sun or the last gleam of summer, of which he too is a type. The slaying of Fafnir is the destruction of the demon of cold or darkness, who has stolen the golden hoard of summer or the yellow rays of the sun.

According to other authorities this Saga is based upon history. Atli is the cruel Attila, the “Scourge of God,” while Gunnar is Gundicarius, a Burgundian monarch, whose kingdom was destroyed by the Huns, and who was slain with his brothers in 451. Gudrun is the Burgundian princess Ildico, who slew her husband on her wedding night, as has already been related, using the glittering blade which had once belonged to the sun-god to avenge her murdered kinsmen.