Fragment of a Lay about Sigurðr

The manuscript resumes in the middle of a disaster. Eight leaves have been lost between Sigrdrífa’s counsel and this surviving portion of a Sigurðr poem. The courtships and betrayals leading into the scene cannot be read on those missing pages. What survives begins with a question: what has Sigurðr done that deserves his death?

Gunnarr says that Sigurðr swore oaths and broke them where he should have been most trustworthy. Högni answers that Brynhildr has sharpened his anger. She resents Guðrún’s happiness and does not want Gunnarr to enjoy his own marriage. The speakers are already inside a conflict whose earlier stages the lost text once explained. Högni’s objection does not ultimately keep him out of the conspiracy.

The men prepare Gutþormr for violence with the flesh of a wolf and a serpent. Sigurðr is killed. The surviving account places his death outside, and a bird’s warning connects this betrayal to the brothers’ eventual destruction by Atli. The poem moves rapidly from the decision to its consequences, leaving no opportunity for a last duel that restores fairness to the attack.

Guðrún waits outside and sees her brothers returning ahead of her husband. Where is Sigurðr? Högni gives her the answer directly: they have cut him down with their swords, and the grey horse stands grieving over its dead master. A familiar arrival has become the announcement that the person expected behind them will never come.

Brynhildr tells the brothers to enjoy their weapons and lands. Had Sigurðr lived longer, she says, he would have ruled over everything. Her words offer a political justification beside the personal accusation that prompted the killing. Then she laughs once, with a force that resounds through the building. Guðrún answers with anger, condemning the deed and demanding that its malice be repaid.

Evening comes. People drink and talk before going to bed. Gunnarr remains awake after the others, preoccupied with the warnings heard on the journey home. The wealth and security supposedly purchased by the murder have not brought him rest. Before dawn Brynhildr wakes and asks to speak her grief.

Those listening do not understand the change. The woman who had laughed at the result now weeps over it. She describes a terrible dream: the hall was cold, her bed empty of warmth, and Gunnarr rode bound among his enemies. The whole Niflung family would lose its power. They had broken their oaths.

She reminds Gunnarr of the blood-brotherhood he and Sigurðr had sworn, mingling blood in their footprints. He has repaid with evil the man who worked to make him foremost among kings. The charge reverses the opening accusation. It is Gunnarr’s betrayal that now stands clearly before the listeners.

Sigurðr had proved his fidelity when he came to win her for Gunnarr, Brynhildr says. He placed his splendid sword between them in the bed. The weapon marked the boundary he would not cross. Her final recollection therefore removes the sexual betrayal used to justify his death, even as it leaves intact the deception involved in the wooing itself.

The prose note that follows is unusually candid about disagreement. Some accounts said Sigurðr was killed outside, others asleep in his bed; German tellers placed the murder in a forest, while the old Guðrún lay connected it to a journey to an assembly. The writer does not force them into one scene. All agreed, the note says, that his companions betrayed his trust and attacked him lying unprepared.

This fragment cannot provide the full lost poem, but its surviving turn is devastating. Suspicion leads to murder; triumph becomes sleeplessness; laughter becomes grief; the supposed oath-breaker is remembered keeping faith. The manuscript’s gap remains visible at the beginning, while the ending shows that even its medieval compiler knew there was more than one way to tell Sigurðr’s death.