The Short Lay of Sigurðr

Sigurðr came to Gjúki’s household after his victories and entered a sworn alliance with Gunnarr and Högni. He married their sister Guðrún. For a time the young men drank and talked together, bound by kinship, oaths, and shared prosperity. When the brothers went to seek Brynhildr, Sigurðr went with them. During the substituted courtship he placed a naked sword between himself and the woman who would become Gunnarr’s wife.

Brynhildr later sat alone at evening and spoke the desire she could not reconcile with those marriages. She would have Sigurðr, even if he died in her arms. Yet Guðrún was his wife, and she belonged to Gunnarr. She knew the wish would bring regret. The poem follows her through evenings of misery while Sigurðr and Guðrún went happily to bed together.

Her longing became an ultimatum. Gunnarr would lose both her and the wealth she had brought if he did not kill Sigurðr. She would return to her own people. Sigurðr’s young son must die too, she demanded, so that the child could not grow into an avenger. The proposed murder extended beyond the man she loved to the future that might survive him.

Gunnarr spent the day in painful indecision. He loved Sigurðr, but feared losing Brynhildr. He consulted Högni, describing her as more precious than his own life and drawing attention to the treasure that could become entirely theirs. Personal jealousy and the attraction of the Rhine gold supported the same terrible plan.

Högni objected. They should not cut through their sworn promises with swords. While Sigurðr lived, no greater alliance existed, and their descendants could make the family stronger still. He recognised the bitterness of Brynhildr’s hatred. Gunnarr found a way around the oath rather than a reason to honour it: their younger brother Gutþormr had not sworn the same promises.

Gutþormr was easily incited. He struck Sigurðr in bed. Mortally wounded, Sigurðr hurled Gram after the attacker, cutting him apart as he tried to escape. Guðrún had been sleeping beside her husband without fear. She woke in his blood, her life changed before she could understand the attack.

Sigurðr spoke to her while dying. Her brothers still lived, he said, but he feared for their son, too young to escape the enemies surrounding him. He knew who had driven the conspiracy. Brynhildr had loved him, yet he had not betrayed Gunnarr sexually; he had kept the oaths of their alliance. His final defence returned to the sword laid between himself and the bride.

When he died, Guðrún struck her hands together so hard that vessels rang and geese cried in the courtyard. Brynhildr heard the wailing and laughed once. Gunnarr confronted her: this was no laughter of happiness or good fortune. Her pale face betrayed something different. Would she have laughed if they had killed her own brother Atli before her eyes?

She answered that Atli would outlive Gunnarr and remain more powerful. Then she began to tell the story from her own position. She had possessed wealth and independence in her brother’s house before the visitors arrived. She had given her trust to the splendid rider on Grani, whose eyes were not like Gunnarr’s. Atli had threatened to withhold her property if she refused marriage.

She had considered resisting him by force, gathering warriors and bringing conflict into her own family. Instead she accepted the arrangement, drawn to the man and treasure she associated with Sigurðr. Only one man had held her love, she insisted. The account explains her grievance without making the murders it produced just.

Gunnarr embraced her and tried to prevent what she intended next. Others joined him, but she pushed them away. He called on Högni to help hold her until her violent thoughts passed. Högni answered harshly that they should not restrain her. The household that had yielded to her demand for Sigurðr’s death could not now restore the life she wanted.

Brynhildr distributed possessions and prepared to die. She put on her golden mail, wounded herself with a sword, and lay down to speak her final wishes. When she offered treasures to attendants who would accompany her, their answer was stark: enough people had died; they wanted to live. The poem lets that refusal interrupt the grandeur of her planned departure.

Her speech widened into prophecy. Guðrún would bear the beautiful Svanhildr and later marry Atli. Gunnarr would love Atli’s sister Oddrún, although Atli would refuse their marriage. The brothers would be destroyed, Gunnarr in a serpent enclosure. Guðrún would kill Atli, and her life would continue toward Jónakr’s household and the death of Svanhildr through Jörmunrekkr’s anger.

Brynhildr judged Guðrún for surviving where she herself chose death, but the poem makes that a character’s judgment, not the measure of the widow’s worth. It also gives the future to the woman left alive: more children, more losses, and more acts of vengeance. Sigurðr’s death would not conclude the consequences of the alliances around him.

Brynhildr asked for a funeral pyre broad enough to hold those who would be burned with Sigurðr. Shields, fine cloth, attendants, and animals formed part of the arrangements she described. The human lives included in those plans remain victims of the household’s violence, even when the speaker presents their deaths as the proper splendour of a royal funeral.

She wanted to lie beside Sigurðr with the sharp sword between them once more, as it had lain during the courtship. That image joins her final claim upon him to the evidence that he had respected another man’s marriage. She finished by saying she would speak no more. Her remaining words were concerned with death, and the wound would complete what her speech had prepared.

Despite its title, the “Short Lay” is a substantial poem. Its centre is not the mechanics of the murder but the voices around it: Högni’s objection, Gunnarr’s divided loyalties, Sigurðr’s defence, Guðrún’s cry, the attendants’ refusal, and Brynhildr’s account of desire turned into destruction. Their words survive together, resisting any version in which one explanation makes all the others disappear.