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Updated: May 4, 2025
Amazed at hearing all this, and at learning that the man he had taken for a secret enemy was none other than his own uncle, Olaf was speechless. He silently put his hand into Sigurd's great palm, and let himself be led back to the place where Thorgils and Egbert still lay sound asleep.
I remember hearing my father say that what these saints did was more difficult than any achievement of Thor. For perhaps two or three minutes there was a lull in the grumbling. But it was not to be expected, in that brutal age, that moral strength should find a keen appreciation. Indeed, Sigurd's words were far from ringing with his own conviction. Little by little, the discontent broke out again.
As he felt their clear gaze, it came back to him what it meant to take a human life, to change a living breathing body like his own into a heap of still, dead clay. His hand wavered and fell away. The passion died out of his heart, and he arose. "Sigurd Haraldsson," he said, "for what you have done for me, I give you your friend's life." Sigurd's fine face cleared.
Gripisspa, a prophetic outline of Sigurd's life, introduces the Volsung poems, as Völuspa does the Asgard cycle. Riddle-poems. So many of the mythological poems are in this form that they suggest the question, did the asking of riddles form any part of Scandinavian ritual? The Aesir.
Then Gunnar thought that, mounted on Grani, Sigurd's horse, he could ride through the ring of fire. He mounted Grani and came near to the flaring wall. But Grani, knowing that the one who rode him had fear of the fire, reared up and would not go through it. Only with Sigurd on his back would Grani go through the flame. Then were the three sworn brethren greatly discomfited.
In the next fragment Hreidmar calls on his daughters to avenge him; Lyngheid replies that they cannot do so on their own brother, and her father bids her bear a daughter whose son may avenge him. This has given rise to a suggestion that Hjördis, Sigurd's mother, was daughter to Lyngheid, but if that is intended, it may only be due to the Norse passion for genealogy.
Nay, furthermore, Jarl Eric left sons, especially an elder son, named also Eric, who proved a sore affliction, and a continual stone of stumbling to a new generation of Haarfagrs, and so continued the curse of Sigurd's murder upon them.
Regin says, "Trust me well herein; and with that same sword shalt thou slay Fafnir." Ran is the goddess of the sea, wife of Aegir. So Regin makes a sword, and gives it into Sigurd's hands. He took the sword, and said "Behold thy smithying, Regin!" and therewith smote it into the anvil, and the sword brake; so he cast down the brand, and bade him forge a better.
Sigurd, Jarl of Orkney, though nominally a Christian, fought on the heathen side, and fell bearing his Raven banner, and the old king, Brian, was killed in the hour of his people's victory. Sigurd's death is the subject of a strange legend, and the occasion of a weird poem, The Darratha-Liod said to have been sung in Caithness for the first time on the day of Sigurd's death.
Gripisspa is followed by a compilation from two or more poems in different metres, generally divided into three parts in the editions: Reginsmal gives the early history of the treasure and the dragon, and Sigurd's battle with Hunding's sons; Fafnismal, the slaying of the dragon and the advice of the talking birds; Sigrdrifumal, the awakening of the Valkyrie.
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