Brynhildr’s Ride to Hel

After Brynhildr’s death, the prose introduction says, two pyres were made. Sigurðr burned first. Brynhildr burned on another, lying in a wagon hung with fine cloth. Her journey then continued along the road to Hel, the wagon carrying her through a region where a giantess lived.

The giantess barred the way through her stone-supported courts. Brynhildr would have done better to work at weaving, she said, than to pursue another woman’s husband. Why had she come there from distant lands with human blood upon her? Death had not removed the accusation attached to her actions among the living.

Brynhildr answered from the wagon. The woman of the rocks should not reproach her for having been a warrior. If their ancestry were known, Brynhildr would be judged the nobler. The giantess was unimpressed. Born under an evil fortune, Brynhildr had ruined Gjúki’s children and overturned their happy household.

Brynhildr offered her own account. She would explain how the heirs of Gjúki had made her loveless and broken her promises. Those who knew her in Hlymdalir had called her Hildr beneath the helmet. Her earlier life belonged to battle, before the marriage and deception for which she was now being condemned.

She recalled choosing Agnarr’s victory and causing the death of Hjálmgunnarr, contrary to Odin’s will. The god became angry. He enclosed her among red and white shields and decreed that only someone incapable of fear should break her sleep. Around her dwelling he placed a high fire, to be crossed by the man bringing the gold that had lain beneath Fáfnir.

Sigurðr rode Grani to the house ruled by her foster-father. Among the company he seemed better than all other men. They shared a bed in happiness and restraint, like brother and sister. This telling speaks of eight nights during which neither laid a hand upon the other, a detail that differs from the three-night account elsewhere.

Then Guðrún reproached her with having slept in Sigurðr’s arms. From that encounter Brynhildr learned what she had not wished to know: she had been deceived in the arrangement of her marriage. Her account moves quickly from the discovery to its lasting hurt. It does not retell every exchange that led to Sigurðr’s death.

People, men and women alike, would live too long in suffering, she said. She and Sigurðr would be together. She ended by ordering the giantess to sink away. The road remains before the wagon; the poem does not describe an arrival in a paradise or a final reconciliation approved by the gods.

This is Brynhildr’s defence spoken after death, challenged by a voice that remembers the people she harmed. Her explanation includes genuine deception and genuine suffering, but the giantess’s accusation has also been heard. The poem preserves both as part of her passage, rather than turning her last journey into a judgment that conclusively absolves her.