The Prophecy Given to Sigurðr

Sigurðr rode alone to the hall of his mother’s brother. Grípir was a ruler famed for wisdom and the power to see what lay ahead. Outside, Sigurðr met a man named Geitir and asked who owned the dwelling. When Geitir asked who wanted to speak with the king, the visitor named his parents: Sigmundr was his father, Hjördís his mother. The announcement brought Grípir out to welcome him and have Grani taken into care.

They talked together, and Sigurðr asked the question that had drawn him there. What would his life become? Grípir answered with a future worthy of his appearance and ancestry. He would be generous, courageous, and honoured above other men. The young man pressed for particulars. Praise was welcome, but he had come for knowledge rather than a blessing whose shape could fit anyone.

First he would avenge his father and his grandfather Eylimi upon Hundingr’s sons. Then he would face the dragon on Gnitaheiðr and kill both Fáfnir and Reginn. The treasure would be his, loaded onto Grani’s back. Grípir could describe not only victories but their sequence, carrying his nephew past enemies who still lived into the wealth that would follow their deaths.

Sigurðr asked again what came next. He would find an armoured woman asleep on a height and cut the mail from her with his sword. She would teach him runes, healing, and wisdom from the worlds. Afterward he would go to Heimir’s house. At that point Grípir tried to end the account. He had told all he could see; Sigurðr should ask no further.

The young man did not believe that the gift of foresight stopped so neatly after his early triumphs. His uncle must know something sorrowful and be unwilling to say it. Grípir protested that he could see youth clearly but lacked knowledge of what followed. Sigurðr answered that no one saw farther. He wanted the truth even if his own deeds would be shameful.

Grípir assured him that his name would remain great as long as the world endured. Still Sigurðr would not accept reputation in place of an answer. Were they to part without his learning the road ahead? At last the older man yielded. He would speak because his nephew insisted. The death appointed for Sigurðr was part of the future too.

At Heimir’s house, Grípir said, lived Brynhildr, daughter of Buðli. Sigurðr would love her so much that he would lose sleep and peace if he could not see her. He asked whether he might simply marry her. They would indeed exchange solemn promises, his uncle replied, but few would be kept. After a stay in Gjúki’s household, Sigurðr would forget the woman he had loved.

He recoiled from the apparent accusation. Would his heart be so changeable that he would break such vows? Grípir placed the cause in another person’s deception. Grímhildr would act to obtain him for her daughter Guðrún. He would become bound to that household and make Guðrún his wife. A marriage that sounded honourable in itself would rest upon the destruction of an earlier commitment.

The deception would extend further. Grímhildr would persuade Sigurðr to help obtain Brynhildr for Gunnarr. Sigurðr saw the wrong at once: he would be wooing for another man the woman he himself loved. Grípir explained that he and Gunnarr would exchange appearances on the journey. Under Gunnarr’s outward form, but with his own speech and intelligence, Sigurðr would win Heimir’s foster-daughter.

Sigurðr wanted to know how such a thing could happen without making him a villain. He did not wish to deceive a noble woman. His uncle answered that, when he lay beside her, he would treat her as though she were his mother. The intimacy of the sleeping place would not become a sexual betrayal of Gunnarr. That restraint, Grípir said, would be remembered among the reasons for his lasting fame.

But the young man could already see that restraint would not undo the original fraud. Could Gunnarr’s marriage be happy after the bride had lain beside a different man? Grípir described the return journey, the restoration of their appearances, and the weddings celebrated in Gjúki’s hall. Outwardly the alliances would be complete. Inwardly the promises, knowledge, and identities would no longer fit together.

Sigurðr would remember his earlier vows. He would nevertheless remain silent and wish Guðrún well. Brynhildr would realise she had been married through deception. From that recognition would come anger and grief, and she would accuse Sigurðr of betraying the trust Gunnarr had placed in him. The accusation would convert what happened during the wooing into a reason for his destruction.

Was that accusation true? Sigurðr demanded. Would he actually have committed the act alleged, or would Brynhildr lie against him and herself? Grípir answered that she would speak under the force of anger and sorrow. Sigurðr had not sexually wronged her during the substituted courtship, though the men had deceived her in arranging the marriage. The poem distinguishes those wrongs instead of allowing innocence of one to erase the other.

He asked whether Gunnarr, Högni, and Gutþormr would turn against their own kinsman at her urging. Grípir said that Guðrún’s brothers would bring about his death, leaving her with no happiness afterward. The bright predictions of victory had led into a household where affection and kinship could not protect him. He would survive the dragon and fall among people bound to him by marriage and sworn alliance.

Grípir offered the consolation he had repeated throughout: no greater man would walk beneath the sun. Sigurðr accepted the end of the conversation. They should part in goodwill, he said. Fate could not be overcome. His uncle had done what he asked and would have told a happier life if one had been available to tell.

The poem leaves Sigurðr at the beginning of that life with its whole outline spoken aloud. It does not explain why foreknowledge fails to provide an escape, or make him devise plans that later poems never mention. His last act here is to release the reluctant prophet from blame. The future remains terrible, but the young man has chosen to hear it and to part without resentment from the person who told him.