Helgi Son of Hjörvarðr and the Valkyrie Sváva

King Hjörvarðr wanted the most beautiful woman he could find. His messenger Atli sought Sigrlinn, King Sváfnir’s daughter, but her foster-father Fránmarr opposed the marriage. A talking bird had offered Atli help in return for shrines and sacrifices, adding an uncanny bargain to the negotiations. The first embassy nevertheless failed. Hjörvarðr decided to travel himself.

From the mountains they saw Sigrlinn’s country burning. Another suitor, Hróðmarr, had attacked, killed her father, and plundered the land. During the night Atli crossed a stream and found a house guarded by a great bird. He killed it with his spear. Inside were Sigrlinn and Fránmarr’s daughter Álof. The bird had been Fránmarr himself, transformed into an eagle to protect them. Hjörvarðr married Sigrlinn, and Atli married Álof.

The king and Sigrlinn had a son of impressive size and promise, but the boy remained silent, and no name would stay with him. One day he sat on a mound and saw nine valkyries riding. The fairest addressed him as Helgi. He would be slow to win rings and lands, she said, if he never spoke. The name she gave him lasted.

Helgi asked what gift would accompany it. He wanted more than the name if he could not also win the woman who had bestowed it. She told him of swords lying on Sigarshólmr, one of them better than all the others. Gold adorned it, and serpents ornamented its parts. This was Sváfa, King Eylimi’s daughter. She could ride through air and over water, and would repeatedly protect Helgi in battle.

Once named, Helgi reproached his father for leaving Sigrlinn’s family unavenged. Hróðmarr still possessed their wealth, living without fear as though he were the rightful heir of the dead. Hjörvarðr offered troops if his son wished to act. Helgi obtained the sword Sváfa had described, went out with Atli, and killed Hróðmarr. The son completed the vengeance left unfinished by the father’s marriage.

Further adventures brought him against the giant Hati, whom he killed on a mountain. Later Helgi’s ships lay in Hatafjörðr, with Atli keeping the first watch. A voice challenged them from the darkness. Hrímgerðr, Hati’s daughter, wanted to know the name of the king whose men lay so boldly behind their shields. Atli told her, and said that no giantess could harm the protected fleet.

They exchanged threats and obscene insults. Hrímgerðr named her dead father, who had taken many women from their homes before Helgi killed him. Atli accused her of lying before the ships and trying to deliver the men to Rán. She corrected him: that had been her mother. Their quarrel disclosed a family of hostile powers in the sea, with the anchored vessels held between the danger outside and the vigilance of their watchman.

Hrímgerðr challenged Atli to come ashore where she could seize him. He refused to abandon his watch before the other warriors woke. She then called to Helgi himself. If he would spend one night with her, she would accept it as compensation for her father’s death. Helgi rejected her and named another giant as a more suitable husband. The proposed settlement was as impossible as the threats surrounding it.

She knew whom he preferred: the bright woman who had protected the harbour the previous night. Because of that woman, Hrímgerðr could not destroy the king’s men. Helgi asked whether their guardian had ridden alone. No, the giantess answered. Three companies of nine had come, with one shining, helmeted woman at their head. Dew fell into valleys from the horses’ manes, and hail into the high woods. Their passage sustained the land as well as protecting the fleet.

While they talked, night ended. Atli called Hrímgerðr’s attention eastward, and Helgi announced what the delay meant. Daylight had caught her. She would stand in the shape of stone, a harbour-marker at which men could point. The enemy who hoped to pull the ships beneath the sea had been held in conversation until the returning light fixed her above it.

Helgi went to Eylimi and sought Sváfa’s hand. They exchanged promises and loved one another deeply. Sváfa remained with her father while Helgi went campaigning, still a valkyrie as before. At home in Norway, Helgi’s brother Heðinn encountered a troll-woman on Yule Eve. She rode a wolf and used snakes as reins. When he refused her company, she told him he would pay for it at the ceremonial drinking.

That evening a sacrificial boar was led out. Men laid their hands upon it and made solemn vows over the cup. Heðinn vowed that he would possess Sváfa, his brother’s beloved. He immediately regretted the words. Leaving home, he wandered south along wild paths until he found Helgi and confessed what he had sworn. The public boast had made an enemy of the person he should most have respected.

Helgi answered with unexpected gentleness. Heðinn should not grieve. A warrior had challenged him to fight in three nights, and he was not certain he would return. The challenger was Álfr, son of Hróðmarr, carrying forward the vengeance Helgi had thought completed. The prose explanation connects the woman on the wolf with Helgi’s approaching death. Heðinn’s shame and the older blood-feud were converging upon the same future.

In the battle, Helgi received a mortal wound. He sent Sigarr to bring Sváfa quickly if she wished to see him alive. She demanded to know whether the sea or a sword had injured him, and threatened his enemies. The messenger told her that Álfr had won. When she reached Helgi, he said their meeting would be their last: the sword had come close to his heart.

He asked her to accept Heðinn after his death. Sváfa did not simply agree. She recalled the promise she had made when Helgi sought her: she would not willingly embrace an unknown or undistinguished man after losing him. Heðinn asked her for a kiss and swore a new vow. He would not return to his own lands until he had avenged the noblest king beneath the sun.

The poem does not show that vengeance accomplished, or Sváfa entering a second marriage. A brief prose statement says that Helgi and Sváfa were believed to have been born again. Their story remains a sequence of names, promises, protections, and losses: the woman who gave a silent man his name could guard him through storms and battles, but could not prevent the wound that ended his life.