Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind or Pursue Wisdom in
Speaker 1: the Past between primary secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I am always grateful for your company. First of all,
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Speaker 1: And if you're watching this on YouTube, they know that
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind podcast is also available on your preferred
Speaker 1: podcasting platform. Well, today we are continuing our conversations on
Speaker 1: the Poetic Eda, or the Elder Ed, as is sometimes called.
Speaker 1: This is one of the oldest, one of the most
Speaker 1: significant collections of text for our understanding of the Northern
Speaker 1: mythos of Norse mythology, in particular Norse mythology, Norse legends,
Speaker 1: Norse epics, and so this is something that none of
Speaker 1: us who are involved, none of are are patrons myself
Speaker 1: are at all experts in this material. In fact, I
Speaker 1: believe that we're all reading this for the first time. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously we all have a general interest in this kind
Speaker 1: of material. Most of us are pretty well acquainted with Tolkien,
Speaker 1: with Lewis, both of whom drew pretty heavily on the
Speaker 1: Northern Mythos as well as you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: us have some knowledge of broader mythology mythological themes, but
Speaker 1: none of us are experts on this material. None of
Speaker 1: us have ever studied or read this in particular before.
Speaker 1: And this is not an easy text just to pick up.
Speaker 1: At least a lot of these readings from the poetic
Speaker 1: are not easy you just to pick up. And that's
Speaker 1: because I mean these are these are older sources. A
Speaker 1: lot of what we're dealing with has been redactive, it
Speaker 1: has been edited over time. Sometimes what we have is
Speaker 1: not entirely coherent. We have some some competing traditions at
Speaker 1: play sometimes, and so it's just not easy always to
Speaker 1: piece together, as opposed to something like the pro Zata,
Speaker 1: which came a little bit later, which provides a lot
Speaker 1: of this material in more of a linear, more of
Speaker 1: a uniform, coherent manner, as well as a lot of
Speaker 1: the the other standalone texts that have come out things
Speaker 1: like the Volsung Saga, which also is very old, but
Speaker 1: it's more recent than the poetic at a narrative, and
Speaker 1: so in fact, we're going to reference the Volsung Saga
Speaker 1: a few times. That's something I would definitely recommend that.
Speaker 2: You pick up and read.
Speaker 1: But when you just read the poetic Eda, even setting
Speaker 1: aside the fact that, okay, sometimes we seem to have
Speaker 1: some maybe incomplete or not fully edited text. As I
Speaker 1: was talking with Chase that reading the Poetica for the
Speaker 1: first time, it's a lot like reading the Silmarillion for
Speaker 1: the first time, where you have a broad host of characters,
Speaker 1: a lot of whom have very similar names, and so
Speaker 1: the first time through it can be kind of difficult
Speaker 1: to keep track of who's who, what's happening, what are
Speaker 1: all the particular backstories. They kind of blend together the
Speaker 1: first time through, and it really takes a second full
Speaker 1: read to get down like what's happening. At least that
Speaker 1: was my experience with the Silmarillion, I think that's pretty common.
Speaker 1: Definitely getting the same vibe with the poetic Eda. I
Speaker 1: think that a second full read would help to solidify
Speaker 1: some of this in our minds. But I think that
Speaker 1: Chase and I were able to hobble together a productive conversation.
Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate.
Speaker 2: His role in that.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, I do want to
Speaker 1: give a special thank you to my patrons who helped
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Speaker 1: had some new patrons come in recently, a number who
Speaker 1: have come in for the current Lord of the Ring
Speaker 1: study which just started. This is study that I just
Speaker 1: started leading is called the Wisdom of Talking the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, and this is a twelve week study
Speaker 1: through the entirety of the Lord of the Rings, a
Speaker 1: way to well learn from the wisdom that Tolkien has
Speaker 1: given us implicitly in these stories. And so each week
Speaker 1: includes two videos, one of which is a shorter wild
Speaker 1: card video that covers some element of lore or philosophy
Speaker 1: or talking to life or a secondary source, basically just
Speaker 1: something to provide a new fresh angle or some kind
Speaker 1: of context to what we're reading. And then there's a second,
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Speaker 1: But now let's go ahead and get to my conversation
Speaker 1: with Chase regarding the next set of readings from the
Speaker 1: Poetic Edda. Right, and so welcome back as we continue
Speaker 1: our chats on the Poetic Edda today, I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Chase and it's just the two of us, and so
Speaker 1: I just say, and I hope he's ready to carry
Speaker 1: that load, because there's a lot going on here that
Speaker 1: you know, I just it's kind of like reading the
Speaker 1: silmar Allion for me, which I mean knowing talking that
Speaker 1: is kind of by design. It makes sense, there's a
Speaker 1: connection there. You know, You've got so many different names
Speaker 1: that many of which sound very familiar, so many different
Speaker 1: things happening, interweaving plots, and you know, with the Silmarillion,
Speaker 1: it took me a couple of reads to really just
Speaker 1: get down like what's happening. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: need another full rate of the Edda to really nail
Speaker 1: this down. But I don't know what's been your just
Speaker 1: general experience so far trying to read the edit for
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 3: So what I read through the Prosta that one helped
Speaker 3: a lot because it just kind of like gave a
Speaker 3: basis for everything, and I started seeing how, you know,
Speaker 3: all of modern entertainment that's anything Norse related, really falls
Speaker 3: from that, even in the smallest ways. And it also
Speaker 3: kind of helps knowing what some of the characters in
Speaker 3: terms of like thor like how he typically acts or
Speaker 3: how Oden typically acts. Overall, I've I mean, I've liked it.
Speaker 3: I think so I finished the prose Eta before this
Speaker 3: month one, but the previous ones I hadn't, and those
Speaker 3: were still kind of abusing to me. So I may
Speaker 3: need to reread those just to see awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a good idea, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that I've started the prose Ata, definitely need
Speaker 1: to finish it. I think that would shed a lot
Speaker 1: of light here the Prozeta, which came a little bit
Speaker 1: after the poetic Ata, but it's arranged a much more
Speaker 1: linear kind of way, a lot more straightforward as far
Speaker 1: as opposed to the poetic Eda, where we're dealing with
Speaker 1: older source material. A lot of it isn't totally coherent
Speaker 1: as we have it because we've got fragments of different
Speaker 1: poems that you know, they've changed. Sometimes there are gaps
Speaker 1: even our you know Larrington, who translated and gives some
Speaker 1: commentary in this edition. You know, she notes a number
Speaker 1: of times that sometimes what we have just is not
Speaker 1: fully coherent, and so it's difficult to work it out
Speaker 1: with that alone. Now, for some of the ones that
Speaker 1: we're going to get into today, we're starting to approach
Speaker 1: the Volse Songs, and so definitely recommend anyone who listening
Speaker 1: to this to read that the Saga of the Volse Songs,
Speaker 1: which Chasa you've read that right, yep, yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: you know again lays out a lot of material, but
Speaker 1: in more of a coherent, straightforward manner. I wish I
Speaker 1: had the time to do a reread I read a
Speaker 1: few months ago, but at least having that somewhere in
Speaker 1: my head has definitely helped to piece some list together
Speaker 1: as far as who's doing and what's happening. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I get we'll get to some of that, but
Speaker 1: before we get to the vul song stuff. The first poem,
Speaker 1: the first reading in this set that we're doing this week,
Speaker 1: is called all Wisest Sayings, So we've got a little
Speaker 1: bit about Thor again before we shift gears to the
Speaker 1: Vull songs, and as I've been doing. I'll just read
Speaker 1: the introduction provided by Larrington. Here, Thor intercepts a dwarf who, apparently,
Speaker 1: and unbeknown to Thor, is intending to marry the latter's daughter.
Speaker 1: Thorp proposes a wisdom contest in which he tests the
Speaker 1: dwarf's knowledge of the terminology used by the different races
Speaker 1: of being for natural phenomenon. The dwarf knows the striking
Speaker 1: range of kennings and perhaps taboo words, but Thor's secret
Speaker 1: aim is to delay him until the sun comes up
Speaker 1: and turns.
Speaker 2: Him to stone. Gets the kind enough of that.
Speaker 1: So out of the readings for this time, this is definitely,
Speaker 1: I think the easiest read. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: at least on my d I probably have the least
Speaker 1: to say about it. Did anything stand out to you
Speaker 1: about this reading or anywhere you want to go with this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I think a couple of things I kind
Speaker 3: of got, and I'd listened to some discussion about it.
Speaker 3: It kind of even an interview with with Larrington, and
Speaker 3: she was talking about how she had to kind of
Speaker 3: like look at other texts and find stuff. But this
Speaker 3: one the main thing I pulled from it was it
Speaker 3: really just seems like, you know, this is a time
Speaker 3: when Thor comes back, the Dwarf is asking, not asking,
Speaker 3: He's telling, like, I would like your permission, but I'm
Speaker 3: going to take it anyway to take your daughter. And
Speaker 3: you know, Thor typically comes in like with the hammer swinging,
Speaker 3: ready to like knock everybody out. But I think here
Speaker 3: is the like the rules of like hospitality. Since he's
Speaker 3: in his home, he can't just immediate I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess he's done that sometimes, but here he's respecting that
Speaker 3: and not immediately murdering that the dwarf. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: it's kind of kind of a different one with that,
Speaker 3: and so I think, uh yeah, just basically Thor kind
Speaker 3: of have a more straint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, maybe there is some cultural element here,
Speaker 1: maybe something about hospitality. Maybe it's just the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, we do have a number of different traditions
Speaker 1: of Thor coming together where you know, this does seem
Speaker 1: a little bit out of character.
Speaker 2: Tip him Purdue.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's not exactly a pleasant long run, but
Speaker 1: he's more cunning than just you know, hammer of Blazon.
Speaker 1: Because you know, we've got this lore contest that they
Speaker 1: get into, which teams to happen fairly regularly within the EDA,
Speaker 1: where the back and forth arguing not even so much
Speaker 1: just about lare, but it's about like what do different
Speaker 1: people call different things? It's more like a terminology debate.
Speaker 1: And all these Lord debates, because you know, I'm coming
Speaker 1: to this material from first, starting with Tolkien and Lewis,
Speaker 1: these Lord debates always make me think of Ransom's fight
Speaker 1: with Merdlin when he first shows up, like fighting for dominance,
Speaker 1: talking about you know, all these different elements of the
Speaker 1: cosmos and mythology and whatnot. Yeah, I always makes to
Speaker 1: think of that, which I'm sure that's the tradition that
Speaker 1: Lewis is pulling from for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I think you're right. I do think
Speaker 3: it's funny when he says, you know, he says, maybe
Speaker 3: I'm reading into this, but when he says, like, tell
Speaker 3: me this all Wise, I reckon Dwarf, and it kind
Speaker 3: of almost seems like he's kind of just like, I know,
Speaker 3: your name's all Wise, but I'm still like, you're just
Speaker 3: a dwarf to me, like you're nothing. But I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm probably reading that into it, but he just he
Speaker 3: says it every single time. You know, I reckon, dwarf,
Speaker 3: you have wisdom about all things. So I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's like the meaning way of talking, or he's
Speaker 3: just that's the way he wrote.
Speaker 2: It very well.
Speaker 1: Maybe I know that Thor has killed his number of
Speaker 1: dwarves and usually doesn't hold them in very high esteem.
Speaker 1: That's definitely very possible that he's demonstrating the irony of
Speaker 1: you know, referring to this dwarf as all wise. That's
Speaker 1: definitely possible. And of course his whole strategy here, where
Speaker 1: you know, the the lore or the actual fight isn't
Speaker 1: actually what this story is about. The story is about
Speaker 1: Thor's cunning, and he's just keeping the debate going until
Speaker 1: daybreak when the dwarf turns the stone, which then reminds me,
Speaker 1: of course, of the Hobbit, where you know, Gandalff gets
Speaker 1: the trolls arguing until daybreak where they turn a stone.
Speaker 2: There's definitely connection there, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Definitely, let's see. Yeah, from some discussions on it, I
Speaker 3: did see that people had the thought that it could
Speaker 3: have been like this could have been almost a way
Speaker 3: of teaching children the different words for things, or something
Speaker 3: kind of like a oh, what do you call this.
Speaker 3: This is what each person, each of the mythical beings
Speaker 3: called it.
Speaker 1: You know that that makes a lot of sense. I
Speaker 1: actually kind of like that teaching strategy. Yeah, you need
Speaker 1: to find some way to make use of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we learned a little bit about the dwarfs, like
Speaker 3: appearance when he calls him, was it like pale face? Uh?
Speaker 3: Is it? Where was the so the.
Speaker 2: It does something?
Speaker 3: Eli, Maybe that was a different translation. Oh no, why
Speaker 3: why so pale? About the nostrils? You just spend the
Speaker 3: night with a corpse. I think it just like he
Speaker 3: spends so much time underground that he's just a very
Speaker 3: pale creature.
Speaker 1: And then we get the kind of insults we tend
Speaker 1: to get from Thorn's fellows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 3: I do wonder what they use the word liquid fundament,
Speaker 3: which Larrington doesn't really no, I mean she's just like,
Speaker 3: we don't know what this word is. And so it
Speaker 3: is kind of cool seeing all the different ways that
Speaker 3: they're they're describing something in terms of like like with
Speaker 3: rain in or something it being like roof tripping or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a very descriptive language. That's one of
Speaker 1: reasons why even you know, I can't read the original,
Speaker 1: but in translation and reading this or reading like Beowulf
Speaker 1: or anything from this general time and region, the language
Speaker 1: is so so so cool, like so visual, so descriptive.
Speaker 1: They have so many different ways of referring to you know,
Speaker 1: what we tend to think of as like objects. They
Speaker 1: turn into actions almost that they're turned into process, which
Speaker 1: I think that that kind of adds an extra energy
Speaker 1: to the language.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: Uh? They talked about the the whalen's plaything when they're
Speaker 3: talking about the sun mm hm, which I think is
Speaker 3: just kind of playing with that the sun turns them
Speaker 3: to the stone. So because the whale then, as a
Speaker 3: dwarf so obviously wouldn't be playing with the song, I guess.
Speaker 1: Right, which also is probably where we get Tolkien's Dwarf dwelling,
Speaker 1: I assume. Yeah, And I don't know that I have
Speaker 1: much else to say about this one anything else.
Speaker 3: Now it's pretty just straightforward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the shorter one. It's more straightforward one.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Now we get into the poems that I keep mixing
Speaker 1: up in my head, the three poems with Helgi, well,
Speaker 1: two different Helgi's who also might be the same person,
Speaker 1: so that's okay, yeah, and then of course the yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that this is you know a range where Okay,
Speaker 1: first we were we were dealing with the first poem
Speaker 1: of Helgi hundings Bank who hunis Bonnie, and well, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll just take this one at time. Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: start there. So in this poem, Helgi is this son
Speaker 1: of Zigmund, who is one of the major figures in
Speaker 1: the Volsung Sogam, which again and when listening to this,
Speaker 1: I recommend reading the Volsung Sanga, or I did after
Speaker 1: I read it, put together a short summary video. I'll
Speaker 1: link that in the show notes. I anyone wants to
Speaker 1: look at that, and may even, just for convenience sake,
Speaker 1: drop the audio into the end of this episode. And
Speaker 1: so if anyone wants to just kind of get that
Speaker 1: the basic story down as we get in the more
Speaker 1: worked out saga, then you can just listen to that
Speaker 1: and then jump back here. Now, So Helgi is the
Speaker 1: son of Zigmund as well as Sinfiotli, which they're they're
Speaker 1: half brothers, different different moms in that since sin Fioli
Speaker 1: is actually the son of of Zigmund as and his sister,
Speaker 1: which gives us some children off here in vibes for
Speaker 1: sure if anyone's read that.
Speaker 2: But again, just listen to that story. We want want
Speaker 2: to rehash that here.
Speaker 1: So again sin Fioti who kind of who joined with
Speaker 1: Zigmund on various raids when Zigmund is kind of like
Speaker 1: an outlaw type figure, and so they rate it off together.
Speaker 1: Helgi was born of Zigmund in Borghild and so they're
Speaker 1: half siblings. But after Zigmund dies at the hands of
Speaker 1: the Saxon king hunting, Helgi sets off to avenge his father,
Speaker 1: which is a regular current in the the the saga
Speaker 1: of you know, aventuring your kinsman when they're killed by somebody,
Speaker 1: so and so, so Helgi goes off. He kills hunting
Speaker 1: with Sinfiotli kill Hunding's children and in the process meets
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 2: The valkyrie. Who is it who's in this one? What's
Speaker 2: her name?
Speaker 3: Is it Sigurine in this one?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so so Segruin and so. But she is
Speaker 1: already promised to this guy, Hobrod, this prince I believe
Speaker 1: at this point Hoobroad. But she doesn't like him very much,
Speaker 1: and so she basically commissions, how you to go off
Speaker 1: and kill them so that way they can be together,
Speaker 1: And that's what takes place. And that's basically the gist
Speaker 1: of this poem. All right, that's probably succinctly as I
Speaker 1: can put that together. So what you have to say
Speaker 1: about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to remember all the foulsen sega
Speaker 3: as I was reading through this. It's interesting with these
Speaker 3: poems just it's they're so like similar, but it's like
Speaker 3: different chunks and different kind of like interpretations. Yeah, no, exactly, sure,
Speaker 3: I noticed the since Fiote and Goubmand Goodmand later on,
Speaker 3: they're kind of exchanging, you know, insults again, as one
Speaker 3: does in any kind of Norse.
Speaker 1: Right right before that last kind of major battle. They Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get into this insult fight whether they can get
Speaker 1: into each other's backstories. I mean, Guruan says that since
Speaker 1: Fiote killed his brothers, which he did because Zigmund's sister,
Speaker 1: who was Zigmund's sister, is that Signey?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Do you remember all songs?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, And so.
Speaker 1: Signey is basically taking against her will as this foreign
Speaker 1: king's wife, and you know she I mean out of
Speaker 1: spy for this king that she's married to basically gets
Speaker 1: sin Fioti to kill her children that she had with him,
Speaker 1: and so he does, you know, indeed, kill his brothers
Speaker 1: since that's brought up against him as well as there's
Speaker 1: a reference to when Sigmund and Sinfiolti wore these enchanted
Speaker 1: wolf skins that basically turned them to wear wolves, and
Speaker 1: so you know, these rampages that he used to engage
Speaker 1: with those are brought up here. And then as there
Speaker 1: usually is, there there's some you know, some sexual insults
Speaker 1: thrown at each other. I can't remember off hand even
Speaker 1: where there's or but I remember coming across them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically saying, you know, you were dressed as like
Speaker 3: one of their daughters or something, and you know it's
Speaker 3: just that was this and filt and and later on too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some reference I can't even remember if this
Speaker 1: is in this one or the other poem, which kind
Speaker 1: of repeats a lot of this, but in a different way.
Speaker 1: There's a mention about him into some guy's armor, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so all sorts of things like that, like we've seen
Speaker 1: from this point now. One thing I thought it was
Speaker 1: interesting about this poem begins by talking about the norns
Speaker 1: who are the Norse fates essentially right, They're the ones
Speaker 1: who weave together the fates of the God's end of men.
Speaker 1: And so it starts off in the second stanza saying
Speaker 1: night fell on the estate, then came norns, those who
Speaker 1: shaped fate for the prince. And so it's a sense
Speaker 1: that everything that we're about to read is happening according
Speaker 1: to fate, which is not uncommon for these Northern tales
Speaker 1: to be very clear that things are happening according to fate,
Speaker 1: which gets to this idea that the kind of the
Speaker 1: what happens in the story is not the point of
Speaker 1: the story. The point of the story is the hero's
Speaker 1: relationship to fate and really how he received that. And
Speaker 1: so he said that things are going to happen as
Speaker 1: they're going to happen. But I guess the question are
Speaker 1: you going to fulfill your destiny by receiving it, you know,
Speaker 1: or are you going to fight against it? And we
Speaker 1: see that the path of honor that Helgy carries out
Speaker 1: is the one that just kind of accepts his fate,
Speaker 1: like you know, he's well, I guess this connects to
Speaker 1: the next poem about Helge. So if I'll say my
Speaker 1: hand on that it's it's it's hard to talk about
Speaker 1: this in a straightforward way.
Speaker 3: I don't know this one. This one's kind of like
Speaker 3: I felt like this one was the not as in
Speaker 3: depth of what's happening. I think it took like till
Speaker 3: the last three that kind of get what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess we can jump around some and
Speaker 1: should we go ahead and talk about the poem of Well, actually,
Speaker 1: one thing I do just want to mention it kind
Speaker 1: of in passing even the name of Helgi he referred
Speaker 1: to as hell Hounding's body, which you know that you
Speaker 1: know what we think of his last name, but as
Speaker 1: really more of a title, you know, speaks to the
Speaker 1: fact that he is the bane of hunting. He's Hunting's bane, right, hunting,
Speaker 1: being this killer of his father that then he goes
Speaker 1: off and kills, and so he is the bane of hunting,
Speaker 1: which again gives us some of precedents for for Tolkien's language,
Speaker 1: like when he refers to, you know, Isildur's bane or
Speaker 1: Durham's bane as these things that did them in He's
Speaker 1: very much just using this northern kind of language, which I.
Speaker 2: Think is an interesting connection.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess we can go in and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the poem of Helge Yorwertsen, which
Speaker 1: really jumps back to a different Helgi, maybe at least
Speaker 1: a different version of Helgi. And so in this poem
Speaker 1: which I don't even know if I can summarize all
Speaker 1: this with, so we've got this king, well, maybe i'll
Speaker 1: read the introduction. Helgiy Hilbert's Son is a kind of
Speaker 1: doublet of Helgi Hondingsbahni, whose two poems surround his in
Speaker 1: the manuscript. The poem of Helgi Heilbertson follows the basic
Speaker 1: plot of the other Helgi poems with an added prelude
Speaker 1: telling of the winning of Helgi's mother. This sets up
Speaker 1: Helgi's first adventure killing his mother's disgruntled former wooer. Then
Speaker 1: comes a flighting between the heroes Lieutenant Atli and a
Speaker 1: troll woman Rumgerd, the marriage with the valkyrie, and the
Speaker 1: death of the hands of the son of his former enemy.
Speaker 1: Compared with the other two Helgi poems, the plot in
Speaker 1: this poem is less coherent. The fighting between Atlee and
Speaker 1: Shromguard parallels that in the previous poem, and Hayden's vow
Speaker 1: has no clear tragic consequences. He simply acquires his brother's
Speaker 1: bride after his death. The poem ends before we know
Speaker 1: whether Hayden dies avenging Helgi or whether he and Svava
Speaker 1: find love together. There's some parallels between this poem and
Speaker 1: the other poems. We're dealing again with a guy named Helgi,
Speaker 1: and some kind of similar things take place here. He
Speaker 1: falls in love with the valkyrie Sapa, who seems who
Speaker 1: is or who will kind of reincarnate into the Valkyrie
Speaker 1: of the other poems. And it's at least heavily implied
Speaker 1: that the Helgi of the other poems is not merely
Speaker 1: named after this Algie, but he has the reincarnated Hugi,
Speaker 1: the one and the same. And so we get these
Speaker 1: these lovers, this Helgi and the Valkyrie, who die and
Speaker 1: then they get reincarnated again and sort of play out
Speaker 1: similar roles in another lifetime. Yeah, I guess that's enough background.
Speaker 1: What what do you have to say about this?
Speaker 3: I do think it's funny that she she shows like, hey,
Speaker 3: this is the least coherent compared to the other two,
Speaker 3: which are not super cot.
Speaker 1: Correct, So it's definitely comforting to read that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think throughout these poems, I think just
Speaker 3: to remember that, like it's the family of like Sigmund,
Speaker 3: and then the Huntings are enemies just hostled towards each other.
Speaker 3: So it's just a consistent like trade off of like, oh,
Speaker 3: you killed my kinsman, I'm going to come kill you
Speaker 3: or you know, and then you bring in the third portion,
Speaker 3: which is just like, hey, this is somebody that like
Speaker 3: loved that woman, but she didn't return the feelings, so
Speaker 3: now we got to kill him. But then his sons
Speaker 3: are going to try and come kill us. So it's
Speaker 3: just a cycle of like revenge.
Speaker 1: Right right, Which I think is a major point of
Speaker 1: a lot of these poems is that well, actually I
Speaker 1: don't know what the point is because you know, one hand,
Speaker 1: it would be easy to read this and get out
Speaker 1: of like the futility of the cycle of revenge. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, like the revenge is built into
Speaker 1: the honor system of these people, and so it's like
Speaker 1: it's even really criticism or the way of saying like
Speaker 1: this is how things are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it would be like
Speaker 3: very much different than what was happening there. You know,
Speaker 3: like they these are obviously built off of what's happening
Speaker 3: in you know, in history. You know, so that's around
Speaker 3: that time. I'm sure people were killing each other affinching
Speaker 3: and you're talking about it, but I didn't notice it,
Speaker 3: said Otti, But I don't know if that's supposed to be,
Speaker 3: Like I know when other poems Atli was like Attila
Speaker 3: the Hunt, but I don't know if that isn't this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had that confusion at first too, But it seems
Speaker 1: to be two different people in my reading in that
Speaker 1: Atle seems to be basically the commander of Helgi or
Speaker 1: like one of his lieutenants, and based on context, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense for that to be until the Hunt,
Speaker 1: and so I can only assume these are two different people.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I thought about that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that one comes later anyway, because
Speaker 3: that would have been with that's with like Brent Hill
Speaker 3: and everything. Right, Let's see, this does bring back him
Speaker 3: listening to the birds makes me think of when is
Speaker 3: it faff near slave by? Uh? Figured figured, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 3: he's able to hear the hear the birds speaking, which
Speaker 3: ends up being negative for him. But here I was
Speaker 3: starting to read it and I was like oh no,
Speaker 3: birds are talking. It's it's trouble now because they must
Speaker 3: lie or.
Speaker 1: Just yeh, yeah, I assume understanding birds is some sign
Speaker 1: of wisdom, probably connected to like Odin and his ravens
Speaker 1: Odin being associated with wisdom, which you know, in this context,
Speaker 1: wisdom is not always necessarily a good thing. It's more
Speaker 1: like just knowledge more than anything else, which could be
Speaker 1: a good thing or it could not.
Speaker 2: Be a good thing.
Speaker 1: And I guess we don't get a sign it's necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad thing here, although Helgy does seem to get
Speaker 1: the sense that he is marked by fate, especially towards
Speaker 1: the end of the story, so I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: this He's always been kind of a doomed type of figure,
Speaker 1: which is again definitely a theme that Tolkien like to
Speaker 1: pick up, especially in the Silmarlion.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, Nattie is at least clever enough to not
Speaker 3: just make an open ended yeah, I'll sacrifice anything to
Speaker 3: you from the you know, anything he wishes from the
Speaker 3: King's sport. He like lays out like not gonna kill
Speaker 3: like the bride's of the king, the king or any
Speaker 3: of his sons. So good on at.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And then again we get a fighting or
Speaker 1: the insult competition match, this time between this between Atli
Speaker 1: and the troll woman room guard, which again ends in
Speaker 1: her turning it a stone because they keep up the
Speaker 1: argument until sunrise. And so I just kind of repeated
Speaker 1: the same idea there, and.
Speaker 3: I even feel like it's yeah, he's he's speaking to him,
Speaker 3: and doesn't it Hell he got in there. Maybe it
Speaker 3: was once, Oh that's what it was. They're doing kind
Speaker 3: of an insult.
Speaker 2: And then right and then how he gets pulled in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hell, he gets pulled in and he's like, all right,
Speaker 3: at are you gonna, you know, sleep with this ogre?
Speaker 3: And he's like, right right, the worst of the love
Speaker 3: of dwelling ogres. He's a fitting that made for you.
Speaker 3: That's that's a good insult.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, save that one for Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then jumping toward the end, and we.
Speaker 2: Can always go back if if need be.
Speaker 1: But toward the end we find that he's, you know,
Speaker 1: after Helgi's won all these great conquests and you know,
Speaker 1: great glories. Then his brother Hayden back home, has somebody
Speaker 1: approached him. Who is it that's like a some kind
Speaker 1: of like witch or something.
Speaker 2: I don't control.
Speaker 1: I can't remember some something of that sort of nature
Speaker 1: approaches him and wants him to to get together with her,
Speaker 1: to sleep with her or something, and he says no.
Speaker 1: So then she dooms him essentially, and so that he
Speaker 1: gets into when he gets into the Ale where he
Speaker 1: starts drinking and then pledges that he's going to have Vava,
Speaker 1: his brother's valkyrie wife. And then he comes to and
Speaker 1: you know, he's recognizes in his sobriety that he made
Speaker 1: a big mistake. But even Helgey recognizes that a there's
Speaker 1: like something sacred about what's said over ale, and so
Speaker 1: he says, all right, well now we have to duel
Speaker 1: over this and there's no way out of it. And
Speaker 1: that's how healthy dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 3: You know, even back then, they're realizing, you know, when
Speaker 3: you're when you're drunk or making a pledge over drinks,
Speaker 3: you're typically gonna say, what's fully on your mind? Takes
Speaker 3: all the inhibitions out. Yeah, this troll woman riding a
Speaker 3: wolf with serpents's reins. I'm surprised, he said, no. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just seems like such a very feeling. But yeah, yeah, good,
Speaker 3: just it's a it's a weird reaction from healthy where
Speaker 3: he's just like not immediately like taking it back, like
Speaker 3: this is the woman that I love if you're about
Speaker 3: to you're trying to sleep, where he's like, I'm probably
Speaker 3: gonna die. So he just this may turn out good
Speaker 3: for you, just wait.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like he's not really concerned with the outcome or
Speaker 1: the dishonor that he's been dealt with. He just recognized
Speaker 1: his brother and he stuff whole his honor and you know,
Speaker 1: do what he set out to do. And so he's
Speaker 1: just totally okay with his duel. But yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: that we think today that you know, if if somebody
Speaker 1: clearly inebriated that, okay, you're not gonna put too much
Speaker 1: stock in what they're saying. But yeah, as you said,
Speaker 1: they really understand that no alcohol tends to actually bring
Speaker 1: out what's really in your heart and so it's actually
Speaker 1: more binding, not less binding, and and so yeah, just
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Helgi is totally kind of okay with
Speaker 1: this on an emotional level. I definitely think that it's
Speaker 1: not a bad idea to read like you know, the
Speaker 1: stoics like Marcus Raeli's or something alongside this Northern literature,
Speaker 1: because it's so much like against the emotional. It's just
Speaker 1: this is the path of honor, this is what I need.
Speaker 2: To go out and do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so that is indeed how Helgi dies, and
Speaker 1: then it says here we get a prose conclusion right
Speaker 1: at the end after he dies that Helgi and Slava
Speaker 1: are said to have been reincarnated. And then that's how
Speaker 1: it ends, which sets us up for the other Helgi
Speaker 1: in his Valkyrie Bride of Vrocyrariy Lover that seems to
Speaker 1: be them reincarnated. Although it's interesting that the end of
Speaker 1: the second poem of Helgi hundingsbani Are narrator pops in
Speaker 1: and says that reincarnation is like a old wives tale
Speaker 1: of the Pagans, and so I kind of assume this
Speaker 1: is some kind of Christian narrator saying that, okay, this
Speaker 1: is all bunkish, just the story.
Speaker 3: There was a belief in pagan times that is crazy
Speaker 3: that I like that. Like with the pros that I know,
Speaker 3: Snory had left out some things that were more pagan
Speaker 3: and more kind of out there and kind of inserted
Speaker 3: more of what he thought with Christian stuff and kind
Speaker 3: of made it clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, even in his introduction to
Speaker 1: the pros that Snory he tries to kind of humanize
Speaker 1: the gods even and say that, you know, they came
Speaker 1: from Troy, like he's trying to, you know, well, giving
Speaker 1: us the pagan mythos, he's kind of demathologizing it somewhat,
Speaker 1: he's trying to sanitize some of it, make it a
Speaker 1: little bit more palatable to a Christian audio. But I
Speaker 1: was surprised that even in the prose ata to get
Speaker 1: this epilogue where it just you know, makes this reference
Speaker 1: to pagan times, you know, very very straightforward. Well, we've
Speaker 1: kind of jumped around a bit. So whether we're dealing
Speaker 1: with this second poems Bani or whatever, I don't know,
Speaker 1: what's something else on your mind?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this, so it definitely doesn't tell us whatever happens.
Speaker 3: I know, heading rides out to Avenge we are told
Speaker 3: of he ends up being with Spava before she dies.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in both of these it's it's talking about
Speaker 3: how he has this, he meets the same fate right
Speaker 3: he fights? Is it original part or the poem was
Speaker 3: alf son of Rob Moore, So it was a it
Speaker 3: was avenging his father killing. And then I can't remember
Speaker 3: if the second one was the same thing. No, it
Speaker 3: said Dag, So it was a little different than it was.
Speaker 1: Because the second one has some seemed echoing a repetition
Speaker 1: of what happens in the first poem.
Speaker 2: But then it takes it further.
Speaker 1: In that we still have the the Valkyrie wants Helgi
Speaker 1: to go and kill the hole Road, you know. After
Speaker 1: so he kills Hunting and then he goes off to
Speaker 1: kill holb Road. But then the story kind of goes
Speaker 1: on from there, which is going to lead to this
Speaker 1: Halgy's death from what was it dog.
Speaker 3: Or so dog is Dog is Hogney son, So that
Speaker 3: would have been Sigurn's father. I guess signs brother be
Speaker 3: a half brother, maybe a full brother, but instead of
Speaker 3: being Rod Moore's son, it's Hogny's son that fights him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's some similarity there. And I do think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Dog, you know when he so that's
Speaker 1: so Dog is Segrew and the Valkyrie's sister, right, and
Speaker 1: so he's the one who's going to kill Helgi in
Speaker 1: the in this in this rendition, and it says that Okay,
Speaker 1: he sets off to to kill him, and he basically
Speaker 1: he makes a sacrifice to Odin, and so Odin kind
Speaker 1: of gives him the ability to kill Helgi. And Odin
Speaker 1: is just such an interesting character.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He shows up a few times in the the voll
Speaker 1: Song saga where sometimes he's helping the vol Songs and
Speaker 1: then helps randomly show up and bring about their death,
Speaker 1: which is what happens to to Sigmund I believe, who
Speaker 1: was in the Father of Hugi where Sigmund was in
Speaker 1: this battle, and then Odin shows up and basically shatters
Speaker 1: his sword, and then that leads him to be defenseless.
Speaker 1: Then he dies the sword, which would then be re
Speaker 1: forged by Ziggurd giving a strong Narsal vibes.
Speaker 2: But that's beside the point.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, Odin just kind of shows up and
Speaker 1: then shows up again at the end of the Wollsong
Speaker 1: saga to kill off the last Wolsong essentially, and so Odin,
Speaker 1: you know, he's always stirring up these conflicts between these people,
Speaker 1: these dynasties' families, and he's always like raising up a
Speaker 1: powerful warrior and then conspiring to bring about his death
Speaker 1: because he's trying to fill Valhalla with you know, these
Speaker 1: great warriors for you know, for Ragnarok, and so he's
Speaker 1: got his own ends at a play here.
Speaker 3: Yeah that makes I mean, that makes sense because if
Speaker 3: these are men that would not have fallen in battle,
Speaker 3: probably they probably would have died of all day because
Speaker 3: they were stronger than everybody else. Obviously, Oden's gonna need
Speaker 3: to find a way to find the loophole so that
Speaker 3: they don't go to to uh underworld with hell.
Speaker 1: Right right until you build them up and then make
Speaker 1: sure that they die in battle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, to.
Speaker 1: Be fair, how Gey is uh, you know, made to
Speaker 1: be like his right hand man in Dahala.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a bad way to go, yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: until the end. But the what was it? Yeah, and
Speaker 3: this one we see Cigaurine actually or Cigareine actually go
Speaker 3: and find hot Rock on like the point of death,
Speaker 3: laying in the field and just being like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna sink into your arms, bro, uh, you're actually
Speaker 3: gonna have your you know, y'all are all going to
Speaker 3: be eaten by wolves our show. It's like, all right,
Speaker 3: Helgi just likes really metal women, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean at one point, she is even
Speaker 1: referred to as their their battle goddess.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, definitely very very metal.
Speaker 3: Valkyrie, very really yeah, just fine. This one brings in
Speaker 3: something that the other one doesn't in terms of meeting
Speaker 3: Helgi at the burial now, uh yeah, once they I
Speaker 3: don't know if he's like a in ghost form or
Speaker 3: just has not like fully laid down yet. What did
Speaker 3: you get from that? Were you seeing If it was like,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is just like not fully dead or.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to be that he has kind of
Speaker 1: some ability to, you know, even though he lives with Odin,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes at night he's able to sort of
Speaker 1: cross the veil and you.
Speaker 2: Know, appear in his burial ground.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that I think, and I could
Speaker 1: be mixing up the poems, but I think it was
Speaker 1: in the poem of helge Orbitson where it says that
Speaker 1: he was toward the beginning of the poem, where it
Speaker 1: says that he was sitting on basically a burial mound
Speaker 1: and he saw valkyries passing by, And so there's some
Speaker 1: kind of connection here. I don't know exactly what that is,
Speaker 1: but that there's some connection here with the Helgi's with
Speaker 1: burial mounds, the da sort of like living on the
Speaker 1: edge of things, having some connection to the beyond the other.
Speaker 1: And so Helgi seems to have this sort of special
Speaker 1: liminal sort of existence at this point where by day
Speaker 1: he's with Odin and by night he's able to visit
Speaker 1: with or with Sigrun at the burial mound.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Even I mean, maybe it's something to do with
Speaker 3: like he's destined for Valhalla, va Hall or whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: where he's down the Barymone seeing the Valkyries and then
Speaker 3: later coming out and with Odin with like you're saying,
Speaker 3: mm hm, they just they just spent one night together
Speaker 3: and he was occupied. I uh. Before we get to
Speaker 3: that part, it talks about Odin just thrower ice. Helgy
Speaker 3: throws in that hunting is it's basically like a servant
Speaker 3: in Uh right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're told that he has made you know, basically,
Speaker 1: so he's asked to roll over everything in Valhalla alongside
Speaker 1: and the first thing he says is hunting, you shall
Speaker 1: fetch the footpath put me in his place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, scores were apparently not settled when he
Speaker 3: killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be awful get killed even about how
Speaker 1: that's that's your fate. So Seagrun has this encounter with Hell,
Speaker 1: gets the burial mound. Next day, she seems to not
Speaker 1: be there, and then we're told that she didn't live
Speaker 1: long for sorrow and for grief, and so that's really
Speaker 1: how the story ends. And I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have anything else to say?
Speaker 3: Not A whole lot kind of went over the stuff
Speaker 3: and this one. I know that it's said that this
Speaker 3: was told and you basically in a source that was
Speaker 3: lost at the time, so song of Kara care. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I do feel that Volson Sega kind of does a
Speaker 3: little clear a little more straight line than this is.
Speaker 3: But it's cool kind of seeing different maybe how it
Speaker 3: was told in different places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and from what I remember in the Volson saga,
Speaker 1: does it even go into I know that Helgee going
Speaker 1: off to to kill hunting, and I know that's mentioned
Speaker 1: this saga, but I feel like we get more detail
Speaker 1: about Helge in this version.
Speaker 3: I think I think you're right. I think it just
Speaker 3: kind of like briefly summarizes that, oh, these are like
Speaker 3: the ancestors and then kind of moves on. So his
Speaker 3: family's just destined for Valkyries.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess, so, which I mean is connected
Speaker 1: to the fact that they're especially marked by Odin, who
Speaker 1: you know, doctor is obviously associated with Odin. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so that is the story of the Helgies. There we go,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, don't know that I have a great
Speaker 1: conclusion here.
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 1: Do you have anything to recommend anything you've been reading
Speaker 1: recently outside of this?
Speaker 3: So I actually joined another book club and we're working
Speaker 3: our way through. It's a it's nothing to do with this.
Speaker 3: It's actually a Japanese book Shipwrecks, which it's kind of
Speaker 3: interesting to see, like what it's like a fishing village
Speaker 3: and kind of life there, and like the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: I think late eighteen hundreds, really nice hundreds, and so
Speaker 3: kind of does give a feeling of what life would
Speaker 3: have been like on a fishing type village in anyone
Speaker 3: in the world. I guess that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely different. That's cool.
Speaker 1: My I mean, basically everything I've been reading recently is
Speaker 1: related to Tolkien for this Tolkien class that I'm leading now.
Speaker 2: But I've I've really enjoyed. I don't have it around
Speaker 2: me right now.
Speaker 1: But the the let me see if I can look
Speaker 1: at up profest and I'll probably cut out here where
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at that out. Yeah, I've really liked
Speaker 1: the Reader's Companion to Lord of the Rings by Hamilton's Skull,
Speaker 1: which it's just it's such a detailed commentary on Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings. It provides all kinds of backstory connections
Speaker 1: to biographical connections.
Speaker 2: In Tolkien's life.
Speaker 1: It points you to letters, points you to, you know,
Speaker 1: where to look in History of Middle Earth, looks like
Speaker 1: other drafts of that section, that of the Reading. It's
Speaker 1: like a super detailed commentary that runs all throughout Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, which is just great for just compiling
Speaker 1: all this stuff secondary information, but also pointing you to,
Speaker 1: you know, when you want to look more about the
Speaker 1: backstory of this character or like what this looks like
Speaker 1: in different drafts and whatnot. It's just a great kind
Speaker 1: of hub to get to all these different areas. And
Speaker 1: so I can't believe I haven't come across this before,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so that's definitely something I would recommend for
Speaker 1: studying Tolkien.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's that's good. I sometimes I see those
Speaker 3: and I'm always like, Okay, who's writing kind of a gimmick,
Speaker 3: you know, just to like if it's a reading compaining,
Speaker 3: You're like, I really need that, But that sounds like
Speaker 3: it's actually very forminative.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically anything with the Hammin and Skull authors or
Speaker 1: editors on there. It seems to be pretty reliable. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still, all things considered, relatively new to Tolkien.
Speaker 1: I mean able spent like the whole.
Speaker 2: Life reading him.
Speaker 1: You know, I first started in twenty twenty one. I
Speaker 1: think I've just been going NonStop since then. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm still discovering all kinds of new stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely something I would recommend. Awesome, Well cool, So yeah,
Speaker 1: next time we'll cover the next probably four readings or so,
Speaker 1: but I'll post that in the discord. But otherwise I
Speaker 1: guess that's where we'll go ahead and end it off.
Speaker 1: So thanks again for joining us and for carry in
Speaker 1: probably more than half of the conversation appreciated.
Speaker 3: Man, it was good, I got it. M hm.
Speaker 1: The saga begins with Sigi, who was introduced as a
Speaker 1: son of Odin, giving him legendary status from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and letting us know that Odin will be taking a
Speaker 1: special interests In this line, Seggy was in fellowship with Scotty,
Speaker 1: a man of greater stock and power than he, who
Speaker 1: owned a thrall named Breddy, who excelled in skill and accomplishments.
Speaker 1: One day, Siggi took Bretty hunting for the entire day
Speaker 1: and into the evening, and Bretty proved himself to be
Speaker 1: the superior hunter, much to Siggi's disappointment. Unable to accept
Speaker 1: the wound to his pride wrought by being bested by
Speaker 1: a mere thrall, Seggi attacked and killed Bretty and buried
Speaker 1: his corpse in a snowdrift. When Scotty asked about the venture,
Speaker 1: Siggi attempted to lie, but the truth became known and
Speaker 1: Siggy was driven away as an outlaw. With guidance from Odin, Sigge,
Speaker 1: in a company provided by his father, became fearsome raiders,
Speaker 1: and Siggi eventually became a great and powerful king of Hunland,
Speaker 1: the exact location of which is difficult to pin down,
Speaker 1: but according to Snorri Stirlson, the thirteenth century compiler of
Speaker 1: the Prosetta, this is likely somewhere in France. As Siggy
Speaker 1: grew in years and prestige. His wife's brothers, who held
Speaker 1: his trust, conspired against him, reminding us of Siggy's previous
Speaker 1: betrayal of his trust. Hunting companion Siggi's in laws assaulted
Speaker 1: his land and killed the aged king, who was caught unprepared.
Speaker 1: Siggi's son, Rarier, was not present during the attack. He
Speaker 1: gathered together a company of trusted companions and local chieftains,
Speaker 1: and he took back his father's land and claimed his
Speaker 1: inheritance as king. Once he was well established, Rarier was
Speaker 1: faced with competing obligations to his kin and to his
Speaker 1: father's honor, a tense ethical position that is often found
Speaker 1: in the Great Germanic legends. However, because of his uncle's
Speaker 1: great sins, Rarier no longer counted their ties of kinship
Speaker 1: to be binding, and he honored his father with vengeance,
Speaker 1: striking down his killers and claiming more land, wealth, and
Speaker 1: power than his father ever had. During these exploits, he
Speaker 1: also took a wife, but they were unable to produce
Speaker 1: an air, and so they implored the gods until Friga
Speaker 1: heard their prayers and asked Odin to intervene. Odin sent
Speaker 1: one of his balkyries lude the daughter of the giant
Speaker 1: Krumnir to bring an apple of fertility to King Rarier,
Speaker 1: and she did so, dropping the apple on the King's lap.
Speaker 1: He ate of the apple, and the queen was soon
Speaker 1: found to be with child. The pregnancy lasted long, and
Speaker 1: when King Rairier was away on a campaign, he took
Speaker 1: sick and died in distress. The queen could not give
Speaker 1: birth for six years, at which point the child was
Speaker 1: finally cut out of her. The child kissed his mother,
Speaker 1: and then she breathed her last, as her life by
Speaker 1: this point was utterly spent. The boy was given the
Speaker 1: name Volsung, and he was a king and a warrior
Speaker 1: who surpassed his fathers before him. Volsung eventually married Siuld,
Speaker 1: the valkyrie who brought the apple to his father, thereby
Speaker 1: introducing a semi incestuous melody, if not exactly then at
Speaker 1: least in a manner that rhymes with events that are
Speaker 1: yet to come. Volsung Atiuld bore ten sons and one daughter.
Speaker 1: The eldest were the twins Zigmund and his sister Zigny.
Speaker 1: Zigny's hand in marriage was requested by Zigir, king of Goutland.
Speaker 1: And although Zigny was reluctant, she honored her father's direction
Speaker 1: to accept the proposal. During a feast held to celebrate
Speaker 1: this union, a stranger enter the hall. He wore a
Speaker 1: modeled cape and hood. He was barefoot, and he had
Speaker 1: only one eye, which reveals to us that this was
Speaker 1: in fact none other than the All Father Odin. This
Speaker 1: stranger brandished a magnificent sword and thrust it into the
Speaker 1: great tree that grew through the middle of the hall,
Speaker 1: and he made the declaration that whoever could draw the
Speaker 1: sword from the trunk shall receive it as a gift,
Speaker 1: and this would be a sword better than any of
Speaker 1: them had ever borne. Each the noblest of men made
Speaker 1: their attempts, but to no avail. Finally, Zigmund, son of
Speaker 1: King Volsung, grasped his hand around the hilt and pulled
Speaker 1: it out with no effort whatsoever. It was he who
Speaker 1: would bear this great sword of the All Father. King
Speaker 1: Zigger offered to buy the sword for triple its weight
Speaker 1: in gold, to which Zigmund answered, you could have taken
Speaker 1: the sword from where it stood no less than I did,
Speaker 1: if it were meant for you to carry it. But
Speaker 1: now that it has come first into my hands, you
Speaker 1: will never obtain it, even if you should offer me
Speaker 1: all the gold you own. Ziger was deeply offended at this,
Speaker 1: but being an underhanded and deceitful man, he plotted his
Speaker 1: revenge in silence rather than demonstrating open scorn. Zigger decided
Speaker 1: to leave for home the next day, but Zigni employed
Speaker 1: her father to annul the marriage, for she was informed
Speaker 1: by her gift of foresight that misery would otherwise follow.
Speaker 1: King Volsung did not see sufficient reason to commit this dishonor,
Speaker 1: and so he told his daughter to continue with her
Speaker 1: new life as so agreed. Before leaving, Zigur invited Volsung
Speaker 1: and his sons to visit him in Goutland in three
Speaker 1: months time, and Volsung agreed to the offer. When the
Speaker 1: appointed time came, Zigny called her father and brothers together
Speaker 1: for a private conversation. She informed them that Ziggur had
Speaker 1: gathered an unbeatable army and that he had intended to
Speaker 1: betray the Volsung clan, and she implored them to flee.
Speaker 1: King Volsung declared that he would not betray his pride
Speaker 1: in his honor, but that he and his men would
Speaker 1: instead stand and fight with fierce and valiant combat, Volsung
Speaker 1: charged the hostile forces of Ziggur, but Volsung's forces were
Speaker 1: no match for the overwhelming power of Zigger's. King Volsung
Speaker 1: fell in battle and his ten sons were taken captive.
Speaker 1: Zigny pleaded with her husband on behalf of her brothers,
Speaker 1: but he agreed only that they should not be immediately
Speaker 1: huge down, but that they would instead be subject to
Speaker 1: torture and lingering deaths. The sons of Volsom were pinned
Speaker 1: down under a great trunk in the woods, and every
Speaker 1: night a she wolf who may have actually been King
Speaker 1: Zigger's mother transformed by sorcery, would arrive to feast on
Speaker 1: one of the brothers. This continued every night until only
Speaker 1: Zigmund was left. Before the final knight that would have
Speaker 1: claimed his life as well, Zigny instructed one of her
Speaker 1: trusted servants to smear honey on Zigmund's face and into
Speaker 1: his mouth. When the she wolf arrived that evening, she
Speaker 1: did not instantly devour him, but first licked the sweet
Speaker 1: honey off his face and reached her tongue into his mouth,
Speaker 1: allowing Zigmund to bite the wolf's tongue, causing the great
Speaker 1: wolf to recoil back and split the trunk that held
Speaker 1: his feet. As she recoiled, Zigmund did not release her
Speaker 1: tongue from his teeth, causing it to be sundered from
Speaker 1: her mouth. With this great wound, the she wolf bled
Speaker 1: out and died, and Sigmund was free to take his leave.
Speaker 1: Sigmund then took up residence in the woods as an outlaw,
Speaker 1: while Zigger believed that he had killed the last of
Speaker 1: the Volsungs save for his wife. Signy had two sons
Speaker 1: of Zigger, whom she sent one at a time to
Speaker 1: aid Zigmund and to potentially serve as companions of revenge
Speaker 1: against Zigger her husband. However, both proved to be cowards,
Speaker 1: so Zigny, bearing no love for her husband or his offspring,
Speaker 1: asked Sigmund to kill them, which he did without remorse.
Speaker 1: One day, when Zigny was sitting in her chamber, a
Speaker 1: sorceress appeared to her. Zigny requested the sorceress change appearances
Speaker 1: with her, and with this magic in effect, Zigny went
Speaker 1: to Zigmun's home in the forest, seduced him, and laid
Speaker 1: with him for three nights. Sometime later, she gave birth
Speaker 1: to a son, Sinfiotli, who grew to be large and strong.
Speaker 1: Zigmund and Sinfiote rated together, sometimes as men and sometimes
Speaker 1: with the guise of enchanted wolf skins. Once Sinfiotle was
Speaker 1: fully grown, Zigmund was ready to avenge his father by
Speaker 1: striking at King Zigger. Late in the evening, Zigmund and
Speaker 1: Sinfiotli hid themselves among ale caskets outside Zigger's main hall.
Speaker 1: By this point, Zygney and Ziger had two more young
Speaker 1: sons who were playing with golden toys, and as a
Speaker 1: the golden ring rolled down the hall. The boys chased
Speaker 1: after it. Zigmund and Sinfioti presented themselves with terrifying appearance
Speaker 1: to these children, and Signy told Zigmund to kill them,
Speaker 1: but Zigmund stays his hand this time. Symfioti, however, has
Speaker 1: no qualms with dispatching his half brothers, and he swiftly
Speaker 1: does so. Their bodies were then cast into the hall
Speaker 1: of King Zigger, who called the guards to his defense.
Speaker 1: Zigmund and Simfiotle fought valiantly, but they were eventually overpowered,
Speaker 1: bound and fettered, and sealed alive in a stone cairn. However,
Speaker 1: Zigny had subtly provided them with provisions, including Zigmund's great
Speaker 1: sword given to him by Odin. With this noble blade,
Speaker 1: Zigmund cut through the rock and the two left freely
Speaker 1: and promptly returned to the hall of the King, which
Speaker 1: they set ablaze. Zigmund asked Zigny to leave with him,
Speaker 1: at which point she revealed that Simfioti is his son,
Speaker 1: and that she had plotted all of these years for
Speaker 1: vengeance against her husband. She finds contentment in knowing that
Speaker 1: the deed had been done, but she believes that her
Speaker 1: life was spent in the process and she now must
Speaker 1: die in the flames along side her husband. Zigmund takes
Speaker 1: the throne and marries Borghild, who gives birth to his
Speaker 1: son Helgi. When Helgi is of age, he desired to
Speaker 1: marry Segrun, daughter of King Hogny. However, Zigrun was betrothed
Speaker 1: to King Hothbrod, so naturally, Helgi and Simptioli invade Hothbrod's realm.
Speaker 1: Helgi usurps his kingship and then marries Zigrun. Zinfield Lee
Speaker 1: also finds a woman that he desires to marry, but
Speaker 1: he must kill a competing suitor in order to secure
Speaker 1: her hand. It turns out that the suitor was actually
Speaker 1: Borkild's brother. In vengeance, she poisons and kills Sinfiotli, leading
Speaker 1: Zigmund to cast her out. In his old age, Zigmund
Speaker 1: married another named Geordis, much of the anger of King LINGVI,
Speaker 1: who also sought her hand. Lingviy attacks Sigmund, and in
Speaker 1: the midst of the battle, Odin appeared, armed with his
Speaker 1: spear to make divine intervention. Sigmund struck Odin's spearshaft with
Speaker 1: his sword, but the blade shattered on impact As this
Speaker 1: mysterious spearman vanished. That evening, Geordis found the languishing Zigmund
Speaker 1: on the battlefield among the slain. Zigmund of four sortis
Speaker 1: that she is carrying a son in her womb and
Speaker 1: tells her to guard the charge of the sword that
Speaker 1: was broken. Shortly thereafter, Prince Alph of Denmark arrives and
Speaker 1: clucts Spoils from the battlefield aunt Ordis for his wife.
Speaker 1: She gives birth to Ziggard, son of Zigmund, who is
Speaker 1: raised in the Danish court. Ziggurd grows to be strong
Speaker 1: and valiant in the tradition of his father's, and eventually
Speaker 1: his tutor Reagon reveals to him the story of fof
Speaker 1: Near the Dragon, who we come to find is in
Speaker 1: fact Reagan's brother, who killed their father to secure a
Speaker 1: great treasure for himself. Assus Lewis said of us to
Speaker 1: scrubs dragoning sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish
Speaker 1: thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
Speaker 1: Thus we have fofth Near the Dragon, who would find
Speaker 1: no Aslan.
Speaker 2: To remove his.
Speaker 1: Scales, Reragon re forges the sword of Odin that was broken,
Speaker 1: thereby providing Sigurd with a legendary sword known as gram
Speaker 1: before facing off with the dragon. Zigard uses his sword
Speaker 1: for vengeance, slaying his father's killers. With this duty fulfilled,
Speaker 1: he faces off with the dragon, which he readily despatches
Speaker 1: before liberating its great wealth, including the dreaded Helm of Fear.
Speaker 1: He roach the dragon's heart, and when its enchanting blood
Speaker 1: touches his mouth, he gains wisdom, which now allows him
Speaker 1: to understand the speech of birds. Zigmund hears the birds
Speaker 1: discussing how Regan intends to betray Zigmund, so Zigmund acts
Speaker 1: preemptively and strikes Regan down with great wealth and power.
Speaker 1: Ziggurd goes to Frankish lands and vows to marry the
Speaker 1: valkyrie Brinhild. However, the sorceress Grimhild bewitches Ziggurd into forgetting
Speaker 1: about Brinhild so she would marry her daughter Gudrun, and
Speaker 1: she also tells her son Gunnar to marry Brinhild. Sigurd
Speaker 1: and the three sons of Grimhild go to King Boodli,
Speaker 1: father of Brinhild, so that Gunnar may ask for her
Speaker 1: hand in marriage. Brinhild is in a hall surrounded by
Speaker 1: fire and will only marry one who is brave enough
Speaker 1: to ride through the flames, as she believes that only
Speaker 1: her Ziggurd would perform such a feat. She is correct, Butziggard,
Speaker 1: still bewitched, knows nothing of his connection to Brinhild, so
Speaker 1: in service to Gunnar, they switch upon spearances and Zigmund
Speaker 1: appearing as Gunnar passes through the flames and secures her
Speaker 1: hand in marriage for Gunnar. Bridenhild eventually discovers what happened
Speaker 1: and she falls into deep despair, only desiring to wed
Speaker 1: the great and courageous Ziggurd. Attempting to deal with this problem,
Speaker 1: Gunnar gives his brother wolf and snake meat, which sends
Speaker 1: him into a violent rage, with which he stabbed the
Speaker 1: sleeping Ziggard before dying. Ziggrid throws Grom and cleaves his
Speaker 1: assailant in two Bridenhild tells Gunnar that what he did
Speaker 1: was wrong, and she stabs herself in despair and dies.
Speaker 1: Grimhild orders Gudrun, Sigurd's widow, to marry King Attlee, also
Speaker 1: known as Attila the Hun, who proves himself to be
Speaker 1: treacherous under false pretenses. Gunnar and his brother Hogny are
Speaker 1: summoned to the court of King Attlee, who desires the
Speaker 1: treasure of Ziggurd. Hogney's heart is cut out and Gunnar
Speaker 1: is bound and cast into a pit of snakes. Gudrun
Speaker 1: is able to give Gunnar a harp, which he plays
Speaker 1: his toes, sending all the serpents into a slumber, except
Speaker 1: for one, which bites his heart and p ruse his doom.
Speaker 1: In retaliation, Gudurun kills Atli's sons and feeds their blood,
Speaker 1: and hearts to their father. Gudrun and Hogni's son Niflun
Speaker 1: then stobs Atli while he's sleeping and sets his court ablaze.
Speaker 1: Feeling her life spent by this point, Guduruan attempts to
Speaker 1: cast herself to the sea, but she was carried by
Speaker 1: the waves to the fortress of King Yunaker, whom she
Speaker 1: married and bore three sons, who are raised alongside Zwanhild,
Speaker 1: her daughter by means of Ziggard. Vanhild was exceedingly beautiful
Speaker 1: and her hand was desired of King Yormanrek, but she
Speaker 1: instead marries his son Ronb. In response, Goorman Rect has
Speaker 1: his son hanged and Zvanhild trampled by horses. In revenge,
Speaker 1: Gudrun's sons cut off Yormanrec's hands and feet, but he
Speaker 1: calls for his Housecarls, who, with Odin's guidance, kills gunrun
Speaker 1: sons and so ends the Saga of the Volsungs. In
Speaker 1: this presentation of the Saga of the Volsongs, which originally
Speaker 1: part of my course called Life, Death and Meaning with
Speaker 1: Beowulf and Boethius at the time of this recording, you
Speaker 1: can purchase the course in full at Andrew Snyder dot
Speaker 1: Patia dot com, although it will soon be moving to
Speaker 1: Patreon For the latest updates, Follow Mythic Mind on Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com, slash mythic Mind, or feel free
Speaker 1: to reach out to me at Mythicmind podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com or on x at Andrew inn Snyder