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Chapter 17
THE POEM ON THE DEATH OF HELGI HUNDINGSBANI AND SIGRÚN
Page 1
The description of Sigrún's meeting with Helgi in 'the Old Lay of the Völsungs' (H. H., II, 14-18), directly after the prose narrative of Helgi's fight with Hunding's sons, begins thus: 'Sigrún sought out the glad prince (sikling); she seized his hand, she kissed and greeted the helmeted king. Then awoke the chieftain's love for the maiden. She said that she loved Sigmund's son with all her heart before she had seen him.' It seems to me certain that these words describe the first meeting between Helgi and Sigrún, who, according to I, 15 ff, meet for the first time after the fall of Hunding's sons. If we follow the arrangement in the Edda, we must believe that Helgi does not fall in love with Sigrún until she comes to him a second time; and this seems irreconcilable with the characteristics of heroic poetry. Further, the arrangement in the Edda would lead us to believe (what certainly would be very remarkable) that Sigrún, after having seen Helgi twice, and after having spoken to him on a previous occasion, waits until she sees him the third time before she reveals the fact that she loved him with all her heart before she had seen him. H. H., II, 5-13, therefore, which tells of the meeting between Helgi and Sigrún before the fall of Hunding's sons, cannot have belonged to the same poem as II, 14-18, nor can the two fragments have been composed by the same poet. In support of this opinion we may observe that Sigrún is represented as a battlemaiden in II, 5-13, while the relations between her and Helgi in II, 14-18 are those of love. Again, the fact that the name 'the Old Lay of the Völsungs' in the MS. is not applied to the strophes which precede II, 14, seems to show that II, 13 and II, 14-18 were not originally parts of the same poem. Further, II, 19 ff, as I have already pointed out, contain a form of the story different from that in II, 14-18, and did not, therefore, belong to Völsungakviđa in forna.
In my opinion II, 25-51 (including 29 and 39) are fragments of one and the same poem, (1) the conclusion of which seems to be completely preserved. The story here ends tragically: Helgi kills in battle Högni, the father of Sigrún, his loved one, and is himself slain in revenge by Sigrún's brother.
In this poem Sigrún is very unlike the half-divine victory maiden in the First Lay, although there too she is Högni's daughter. The conception of Sigrún in the First Lay resembles closely that in sts. 5-13 of the Second, where Sigrún is represented as present, without Helgi's knowledge, at the battle in which Hunding is slain, and where she is said to see the hero in the bloody stern of the long ship when the billows rise high. But only in the accompanying prose passages is it expressly stated that Sigrún rode through the air and over the sea, and we cannot tell from the verses referred to whether she travelled alone or with a company of maidens.
In the Old Lay of the Völsungs (H. H., II, 14-18), on the contrary, and especially in Helgi's Death, Sigrún is simply represented as a devoted woman who leaves her father and brothers to accompany the hero whom she esteems the bravest of all men. She becomes his wife and bears him children. She cannot resist going with him, though she thereby brings about the death of her kin and her husband. Fate has decreed that she, like Hild, shall awaken strife. In Helgi's Death, Sigrún is intense and passionate in her love: she clings faithfully to Helgi even after his departure for Valhöll. We do not see her advance in the tumult of battle, armed, at the head of a company of maidens. She wanders over the battlefield alone, searching for her beloved among the slain. It is to the warrior, to him who joined in Odin's game, that she looked up with admiration. His battles and victories, the bloody death of his enemies, are to her life and joy. When she embraces the dead Helgi in the grave mound, she says: 'Now am I as glad of our meeting as Odin's corpse-greedy hawks when they see warm meat (bodies) on the battlefield' (II, 43). And with fearful mien she stands and curses her brother, who has announced to her that he has killed Helgi, praying that he may be slain with his own sword.
The story of Helgi's Death is here entirely different from the story of the Shieldings in its oldest form, as we know it from Béowulf. The Shielding story is made up of 'reminiscences of the achievements of the Danish people in strife with their neighbours.' If we compare with it the account of Helgi's Death in the Edda, we observe a development which has been truly and finely characterised by Axel Olrik. (2) I repeat in substance his words: The clan feud is now the subject of the poem; the story becomes a tragedy; it is the hero's doom which resounds in the skald's lay; thoughts of the nation scarcely appear; Helgi Hundingsbani is not here the champion of a people. 'We have the ideas of an individual on the awakening of the hero to valiant deeds, the treachery of kinsmen, and the fidelity of wives.'
As an important consideration in the development I may also add: the Helgi lay has now become permeated with the fundamental conceptions of the Valhöll belief. The hero is led by Odin to death at the hands of his enemies, that he may come to Valhöll to dwell among the einherjar and to aid the gods in their last fight against the powers of destruction.
It is not easy to follow the poem on Helgi's Death in its historical development, because we lack the older Scandinavian forms of the story which most nearly preceded it. Two different forms of the Helgi story seem to have developed from that of the Shieldings---one keeping the feud against Höthbrodd, the representative of the Heathobards, in the foreground; the other laying the greatest stress on the fact that the strife which Sigrún awakes, causes the death of her father Högni and her lover Helgi.
The latter form arose under the influence of the story of the Hjathnings. Like Hild, Sigrún is made into the daughter of Högni. Helgi carries off Sigrún against her father's will, as Hethin does Hild, and this brings about a war in which both Högni and Helgi fall. Yet it is possible that Högni, whom the Anglo-Saxons knew as Hagena, king of the Holmryge (at the mouth of the Weichsel), had previously been brought into connection with Heathobards and Shieldings. In H. H., II, 4, Högni is mentioned as brother of the old Danish saga hero Sigar.
We have already seen (pp. 184 f, above) that the Helgi story was brought into connection with the Sigurth story. The story of the Völsungs also affected the account of Helgi's Death. Throughout the Helgi lays a general tendency is manifest to let the action develop in parallelism to the Sigurth stories. The fact, then, that Sigurth (Siegfried) in the German story was killed by his wife's brother, may have led the ON poet to let Helgi be killed by his wife's brother. Yet the poet must also have been influenced in this decision by the prevalent Norse conceptions of just revenge. The feature of Helgi's slaying his wife's father was already present in the story: the most natural person to take vengeance was, of course, the son of the slain warrior. Further, (3) according to the German poem, when Siegfried's body is brought by his murderers to his wife, she breaks out into reproaches against them. In the Edda, when Högni announces to his sister Guthrún the death of Sigurth, (4) she utters a curse on her brother. (5) So in the Helgi lay, Dag is at once cursed by his sister Sigrún when he informs her of Helgi's death (II, 30-33). She reminds her brother of the oaths that he had sworn to Helgi. Similarly, the brothers of Guthrún (Kriemhild) swear oaths to Sigurth (Siegfried) in both the Scandinavian and German forms of the story; (6) and the Gjúkungs are reminded of these oaths after Sigurth's death. (7) It seems clear, therefore, that we owe the form of this part of the story in the Helgi lay to the story of the Völsungs.
In the second Guthrún lay (25, 33), Guthrún's mother Grimhild, together with her brothers, offer her gold and lands as atonement for Sigurth's death. Dag offers his sister Sigrún gold and lands to atone for Helgi's death. (8)
Just as the dead Helgi comes riding from Valhall to Sigrún, who is weeping for him, so also in the poem Guđrúnarhvöt, 18, 19, the sorrowing Guthrún addresses her dead husband Sigurth and begs him to ride to her from the world of the dead, as he has promised to do. The Guđrúnarhvöt is, however, late, and the motive in question is clumsily joined to the Guthrún story. Probably, therefore, we have in this instance an imitation of the Sigrún incident, and not the reverse.
The parallelism between the last section of the Sigurth poem and that of the Helgi lay appears most plainly in Sigrún's magnificent eulogy of the dead Helgi (H. H., II, 38), which resembles closely Guthrún's eulogy of the dead Sigurth (Guđr., II, 2; I, 18). In both places the hero is likened to a hart. It seems to me (9) that the Helgi lay has here imitated the Sigurth poem (and not the reverse), both because the expressions in the Guthrún lay appear to show the image in its inception and because the ţiđrekssaga, after telling of Grimhild beside Sigurth's corpse, has a eulogy of the dead Sigurth, which, to be sure, is not put in his wife's mouth, but is prefaced by the words: 'So says every man.'
Yet, while Sigrún thus corresponds in certain features to Guthrún (whose name is the same in the second part), she has also, on the other side, points of resemblance with Brynhild. Sigrún is fated to arouse strife between chieftains (H. H., II, 28); and the same may be said of Hild and Brynhild. Like Brynhild, Sigrún lives on a mountain. (10) Both heroines are regarded, to some extent at least, as battle maidens. They resemble each other in the fearful strength of their love. In each case, the wife follows her loved husband in death.
The poem on the Death of Helgi and Sigrún is not, however, to be explained as having arisen solely by imitation of the stories of the Hjathnings and of Sigurth; for these do not explain fully the last section of the Helgi story. This section, which tells of the dead hero's visit to his living wife, is identical in subject with a medićval ballad, known in many lands and hardly yet extinct in popular tradition, viz. 'The Lover in the Grave' (11) (Fćstemanden i Graven). In both cases the subject is the same: a young man comes back from the abode of death to his loved one, because of her tears and sorrow. He remains with her a single night, and speaks with her, but leaves her before daybreak, and does not return.
1.
So also Sijmons in Ztsch. f. d. Phil., XVIII, 16, who, however, does not
include 29 and 39. On st. 39 see above, pp. 179 ff. St. 29 seems to me
to presuppose 28 and the explanation which is given directly after. First
Helgi says: 'Thou wast destined to awake strife between chieftains.' On
hearing these words, 'Sigrún wept.' And because of this, Helgi
says (II, 29): 'Be consoled, Sigrún!' It cannot be proved that
a poet might not have changed the metre in different parts of the same
poem. The transition to the more lyric metre ljóðaháttr
in II, 29, seems to me very effective. In my opinion, it is also incapable
of proof that the poet treated the story in continuous strophes only,
without prose passages. But more on that question another time. Back
2. See Aarb. f. nord. Oldk., 1894, p. 163. Back
3. Cf. Sv. Grundtvig, Heroisk Digtning, p. 39. Back
4. Brot af Sig., 7; Guðr., II, 7-8. Back
5. According to Brot, II, it is Gunnar she curses; in Guðr., II, 9,
it is Högni. Back
6. Nibelungenlied, ed. Lachmann, v. 334; cf. þiðrekssaga, chap.
228. Back
7. Brot, sts. 5, 16. Back
8. Dag offers his sister as atonement for her husband's death (H. H.,
II. 35): öll Vandilsvé / ok Vígdali. Whence the poet
got the names of these places I cannot say. Finn Magnusen suggests Vendel
in Jutland. Vígdalir resembles Widdale, 'a hamlet in Hawes chapelry,
N. R. Yorkshire,' 4 ½ miles southwest of Hawes. [Is this the same
place in England as Wydale, mentioned in Worsaae, Minder, p. 99?] It is
uncertain whether in Vandilsvé we have Wandesley, 'a hamlet in
Annesley parish, Notts; 9 ½ miles northwest of Nottingham' (in
the Doomsday-book, Wanndeslei). We have similar names in: 'Wensley, a
village in Leyburn district, N. R. Yorkshire' (Wandeslage and Wendreslaga
in D.-book); Wensley in Derby, and Wansley in Dorset. Back
9. Müllenhoff and Edzardi (Germania, XXIII,
185) are of the opposite opinion. Back
10. Cf. H. H., II, frá Sevafjöllum. Back
11. On its occurrence in different lands, and on related stories, see
H. Hoffmann in Altdeutsche Blätter, I, 174 f; Uhland, Schriften,
VIII, 200 f; Grundtvig, Danm. gl. Folkev., II, 492 f; Child, English and
Scottish Pop. Ballads, III, 226-229; P. Loewe, Die Sage von Helgi dem
Hundingstödter (Strehlen, 1877). Back
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