Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom on
Speaker 1: the path between primary secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I am always grateful for your company. Hey there, Today,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Thomas Lerno and Chase Errington to discuss
Speaker 1: the next set of readings from the poetic Euto, and
Speaker 1: so let's go ahead and jump right into that. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: welcome back to our latest at a chat. As we
Speaker 1: cover a number of texts, I'm just saying that we
Speaker 1: have a lot of short texts here, which makes it
Speaker 1: a little bit difficult for me at least to remember
Speaker 1: what's going on each one, and so hopefully you guys
Speaker 1: can help me out on that. Starting off with a
Speaker 1: short poem about Ziggard, and so we're continuing to deal
Speaker 1: with the Volsong saga kind of material, especially focusing around Ziggurd,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to move into what happens after
Speaker 1: his death with his wife Gudrun and her various exploits
Speaker 1: and with her brothers and whatnot. So in the short
Speaker 1: poem about Ziggurd, we're getting another look at the death
Speaker 1: of Ziggurd and what happens with Brinhild his wife, or
Speaker 1: not his wife, his should have been wife, because you know,
Speaker 1: Ziggurd had been engaged with her. He was betrothed to
Speaker 1: this valkyrie Brinhild. But then, through really no fault of
Speaker 1: his own, aside from the general curse that's kind of
Speaker 1: following the treasure that he liberated from Foffnir, he is,
Speaker 1: he takes this forgetting potion, and so he forgets Brinhild,
Speaker 1: forgets his relationship he had with her, and he ends
Speaker 1: up marrying Gudrun. Her brother. Gunnar, however, ends up marrying Britnheild,
Speaker 1: and so Britainhild. She never really gets over this because
Speaker 1: she wants to be with Ziggard. I mean, he's this
Speaker 1: great warrior, he's the one who's accomplished these great things,
Speaker 1: and she was only supposed to marry the greatest man
Speaker 1: in the world or something of that nature, and so
Speaker 1: she's never gotten over the situation, and so out of rage,
Speaker 1: out of envy, she plots to have Ziggard killed, but
Speaker 1: then she laments that he was killed and basically kills
Speaker 1: herself and lament and that sets up really this this
Speaker 1: poem that we're dealing with, as well as the rest
Speaker 1: of what follows in these texts. What thoughts do you
Speaker 1: have about this, whether it be any of that in
Speaker 1: the background, or anything that stood out to you from
Speaker 1: this particular poem.
Speaker 2: It reminded me a lot of Greek tragedies that I've read,
Speaker 2: you know, there seems to be this similar sort of
Speaker 2: pagan obsession with these family feuds, you know, and and
Speaker 2: how they're almost faded to happen, or or literally faded
Speaker 2: to happen. Whether it's the in the Greek myths, it
Speaker 2: seems to be the gods that are often driving people
Speaker 2: to fight against one another and do these things. And
Speaker 2: but I notice in a lot of these stories it
Speaker 2: can be the acier meddling in people's affairs, but a
Speaker 2: lot of times it's just this sort of faceless idea
Speaker 2: of fate, you know, and that your your your destinies
Speaker 2: are already written. Like sometimes it's it's personified in the norns,
Speaker 2: but like very rarely, like they mostly just refer to fate.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like I I it, and it kind
Speaker 2: of I feel like this is almost like lived on
Speaker 2: past the pagan period in like some of the Shakespearean tragedies,
Speaker 2: but like it was reminding me of both those those
Speaker 2: strains of sort of tragic drama over the centuries. We
Speaker 2: have a lot of these same themes recurring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to Brinhild, she is obviously driven by deep passion,
Speaker 1: but she also feels like she's not really making a
Speaker 1: choice here, this is what has to happen. In verse seven,
Speaker 1: here she says the words I'm speaking now, I'll be
Speaker 1: sorry for later, So she recognizes this is not a
Speaker 1: good plan to have her beloved Zigger, to have them killed,
Speaker 1: but she says I'll be sorry for later. Gudrun is
Speaker 1: his wife, and I am Gunnar's The hateful Norns decreed
Speaker 1: this long torment for us, so that we have the
Speaker 1: idea of, you know, the fates have decided, this is
Speaker 1: how things are going to play out, and I don't
Speaker 1: Eve don't really have any choice in the matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost like she's overcome with like a like
Speaker 3: an envious, like blood less kind of like wanting for
Speaker 3: it to happen, but then also being in sorrow. I
Speaker 3: like that connection with the Greek tragedy. It seems like
Speaker 3: there's a lot of just like fated to be but
Speaker 3: faded not to be, or something gets in a way
Speaker 3: and a lot of these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting that Kinkery Guarden talks about
Speaker 1: this actually in the concept of anxiety. He says that
Speaker 1: the Pagans were principally anxious regarding fate, whereas Christian anxiety
Speaker 1: kind of takes a new form where now it's oriented
Speaker 1: not towards fate, but fate gets transmuted into providence, where
Speaker 1: we still have this belief that in large part things
Speaker 1: are going to happen as they're going to happen. However,
Speaker 1: it's not aimless, it's not empty, it's not materialistic. And
Speaker 1: even though we do get the personality of the norms here,
Speaker 1: I mean even and they really are just sort of fate,
Speaker 1: like there's a personification of fate as this raw, almost
Speaker 1: materialistic kind of reality, whereas you know, when it gets
Speaker 1: transmuted into to Christian belief, well, now of course we
Speaker 1: believe that there's actually a mind, there's intentional will, there's
Speaker 1: an intentional design a place, and it's not just things
Speaker 1: unfolding as they're going to unfold. There's an actual living
Speaker 1: reason behind it. Got an interesting side note, I do
Speaker 1: you think it's a good demonstration of their priority on.
Speaker 2: Oaths, and so yes, I noticed that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Gunnar at first, when he's told by his
Speaker 1: wife brin Hill to go and kill Ziggerd, he's distraught.
Speaker 1: He's like, I swore an oaths to this man, like
Speaker 1: I'm in his surface, I can't do this thing. And
Speaker 1: so a person, he's angry and he's cast down, and
Speaker 1: like he said, no, okay, do I do issue once?
Speaker 1: Do I do what is in line with my oas
Speaker 1: that I've made, And then he comes up with like
Speaker 1: a loophole and says, let's get our younger brother, who
Speaker 1: you know at the time we swore oaths to Ziggard.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was too young, so he didn't swear
Speaker 1: any oaths since he came to do it. And so
Speaker 1: he tries to find this loophole, which I guess gets
Speaker 1: him out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed that in you know, I think in
Speaker 2: one of the later references, I think it stands as seventeen,
Speaker 2: where Hogney says it is not fitting for us to
Speaker 2: do this cutting asunder with a sword the oaths we've sworn,
Speaker 2: the pledge is made. So there's this kind of and
Speaker 2: it kind of reminds me of Tolkien. Where you know,
Speaker 2: oaths are literally binding, that there are personal consequences to
Speaker 2: you if you break an oath that you've sworn, and
Speaker 2: the that's clearly coming I think from a lot of
Speaker 2: these Norse sagas. They have this you know, belief that
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, break an oath and it's gonna
Speaker 2: rebound back on to you, you know, almost almost like
Speaker 2: a kind of wheel of karma, I guess. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I like how they get this other fella, their their
Speaker 2: younger brother. I think he said who it was, and
Speaker 2: then he he has this very tragic comic death like
Speaker 2: this stands A twenty three. He attacks Sigurd in his
Speaker 2: bed in this version. There seems to be several versions
Speaker 2: of how Sigurd died across these, but in this one,
Speaker 2: they cowardly attack him in his bed. But Sigurd, I guess,
Speaker 2: wakes up like just as he's being killed and kills
Speaker 2: the other guy. Says his enemy parted into two pieces,
Speaker 2: arms and head dispatched in one direction, and the leg
Speaker 2: half landed backwards, and they mentioned it yeah slapstick, you know.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, yeah, it's so he takes his sword, the Grom,
Speaker 1: and he just throws it and slices the guy in two.
Speaker 1: That's quite with the scene.
Speaker 2: Prototype of the Star Wars Lightsaber throw.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't recall this Guthorm guy. I don't recall
Speaker 1: him making an appearance other than in this scene in
Speaker 1: the various ways that it's told. So he's like he's
Speaker 1: a the red Shirt, right, he gets thrown in there
Speaker 1: just for the situation so he can die.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also like in this version, you know, Gudron is
Speaker 2: sleeping with him when he's killed, and she goes through
Speaker 2: this you know, very like like loud and demonstrative, you know,
Speaker 2: grief and lament, and then in other versions it said
Speaker 2: like she could barely grieve for it. She's almost catatonic.
Speaker 2: So again, it's interesting how the different versions, the different
Speaker 2: traditions that are being collected together. And I guess this
Speaker 2: codex that was put together of a lot of these myths,
Speaker 2: you can see the different strains of the tradition sometimes
Speaker 2: contradict each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so both obviously deal with an intense kind
Speaker 1: of lament, just taking very different forms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, good, I just saw that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: from having read like the pros Eda and then also
Speaker 3: the vols Sega. It was. It is different to see
Speaker 3: kind of how they all either filled in the blanks
Speaker 3: or didn't fully know another tradition of what they had said,
Speaker 3: going so far as like SIGFRIEDA and Britain Hild and
Speaker 3: kind of like mismatching them together, and then not just
Speaker 3: so weird. Speaking of the oaths and Tolkien, I've been
Speaker 3: reading the Cimmarillion, so it's definitely, yeah, getting some good connections.
Speaker 3: There was reading that some yesterday.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean the whole driving force of the
Speaker 1: Oath of feyan Ore and yeahs definitely play a driving
Speaker 1: role in that text. And then I mean, of course
Speaker 1: you get to Lord of the Rings and you've got
Speaker 1: the men of done Harrow right, the Army of the Dead,
Speaker 1: and so definitely play an important role in Tolkien's writing.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's very much drawn from the Germanic
Speaker 1: tradition that we're pulling from right now, anything else from
Speaker 1: this poem before we move on, and we probably spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in any one poem, but there's
Speaker 1: anything else they feel like bringing up here.
Speaker 3: I think just it is interesting to see that the
Speaker 3: difference of like how she's kind of like bloodthirsty at
Speaker 3: the beginning, and then at the end she's like wanting
Speaker 3: to make sure that he's not going to make it
Speaker 3: too far before her, you know, like in.
Speaker 1: Death, yeah, into in even in death, she's going to
Speaker 1: be She's not gonna let him go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Something about her suicide was very Greek tragedy to me,
Speaker 2: where it's like I've done this, this this thing, and
Speaker 2: now I'm I'm also going to kill myself, you know,
Speaker 2: to sort of make the you know, the circle is
Speaker 2: now complete, this sort of circle of violence has to
Speaker 2: resolve itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, reminds me of I can't remember Ziggurd's sister, Zigny
Speaker 1: is that if mixing my names, but from the vols
Speaker 1: on Takaiggurd's sister who goes off and marries that other
Speaker 1: terrible king who ends up, you know, killing off all
Speaker 1: of Zigger's brothers that you know, she she also in
Speaker 1: potty revenge against her husband, against the king. You know,
Speaker 1: she ends up she off her own children and just
Speaker 1: like does all this conspiracy and the end of the day,
Speaker 1: once she finally kills the king, she just embraces the
Speaker 1: flames of the castle around her. And so this is
Speaker 1: kind of an ongoing theme here of a woman trying
Speaker 1: to make something right in her eyes and then it
Speaker 1: just ends in blood and or fire and self destruction.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, Yeah, that's kind of recurring theme. Like throughout
Speaker 1: a lot of these poems that we're looking at, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with a woman in lament, and sometimes it's just limitation.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes extraordinary form, like with Brien Healed. But
Speaker 1: there is some some brightness. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: very dark kind of it's a very dark poem that
Speaker 1: garden the content of what's happening here, but there is
Speaker 1: some hope here in fifty five where it says a
Speaker 1: girl will be born, her mother will raise her more
Speaker 1: radiant than the right day. Von Hild will be than
Speaker 1: a ray of the sun. And so you know, even
Speaker 1: though Ziggurd's dying, Gudrun is going to have and going
Speaker 1: to raise Ziggurd's daughter, who is going to be a
Speaker 1: bright ray that she is going to have. This there's
Speaker 1: some light coming out of even this dark tail, and
Speaker 1: that's going to move forward into the rest of the
Speaker 1: Volsung story. With Ziggurd not having a male heir at
Speaker 1: this point, she is really going to carry on the
Speaker 1: Vulsung identity moving forward, although it doesn't go much further
Speaker 1: before the volsung A totally wiped out, but there's at
Speaker 1: least some momentary hope. Speaking of hope, moving on to Britain,
Speaker 1: Hild's ride to Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course this is the Norse hell rather than
Speaker 2: the the Christian Hell?
Speaker 1: Correct? Correct? Is the North held the place of the dead,
Speaker 1: not not the Christian Hell. It's kind of interesting. So
Speaker 1: so brin Hild here dead. Brinhild is going on her
Speaker 1: way when she's stopped by what it was a giantess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, also called an ogress at the end, right, right.
Speaker 1: So she stopped by this ogress and basically they have
Speaker 1: this little spat with each other and goes on her
Speaker 1: way to Hell. I don't, I don't. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure what to make of this. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys have any deep insights.
Speaker 2: It was a funny vignette.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's about what I got from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the one thing that kind of stood
Speaker 3: out was just how it you know what. Earlier it
Speaker 3: talks about Cigaurd being like a Southern man in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways, and then here it says the Danish
Speaker 3: Viking among the retinue. So it's like even even in
Speaker 3: these it's kind of like fixing it, like, no, he's
Speaker 3: actually Danish, He's not like Frank or whatever. It's just weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and I do I think that background changes
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Yeah, and so that that's interesting.
Speaker 1: There is a connection here. I mean, at this point
Speaker 1: we've been so far, I'm forgetting. I'm jumbling together a
Speaker 1: lot of the names from from previous texts, but the
Speaker 1: the original story of the the the valkyrie and the
Speaker 1: guy who oh, man, what are their names? The proto
Speaker 1: Zigger person a. Man, I'm trying to blank. But then
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta bee ter real fast. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's okay. But long before you know, most of these
Speaker 1: texts that we're looking at, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: story of the valkyrie, oh Zigarifa anyways, and you know
Speaker 1: she and her lover, you know, he dies and she
Speaker 1: goes into this lament, and then we're told that potentially
Speaker 1: they reincarnated into Ziggurd and Brinhild, and so we get
Speaker 1: this repetition of ideas here, and in Brinhild's Ride to Hell,
Speaker 1: there is this mention of this kind of connection here
Speaker 1: between some of the background as Brainhild telling her story,
Speaker 1: where she does intertwine herself with this original story, kind
Speaker 1: of confirming this idea that we're dealing with repetition here,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with the same kind of story repeating itself
Speaker 1: over time. So that's that's kind of interesting. And then
Speaker 1: at the end here in verse fourteen, she says, men
Speaker 1: and women, those who are living must spend all too
Speaker 1: long and terrible sorrow, but we shall live fully all
Speaker 1: our time together. Ziggard and I now ogriss sink. So
Speaker 1: she has this hope that now finally in death she
Speaker 1: can actually be united with Sigurd. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you know his his wife Gudrun is still on the
Speaker 1: land of living, so now she can go at all
Speaker 1: to herself. It's, like I said, very dark, kind of
Speaker 1: demented sort of romance.
Speaker 3: It was. That's who it was.
Speaker 1: That's that's a that's what I was looking for. Yes,
Speaker 1: anything just from this one, all right. Moving on, there's
Speaker 1: a short prose section on the death of the New Flumes,
Speaker 1: which basically Gunnar and Hogny, the brothers of Gudrun, so
Speaker 1: brothers in law of of Sigurd. Basically they get the
Speaker 1: treasure that liberated from Fafnir, and that's the gist of
Speaker 1: what happens there. That does set up where things are
Speaker 1: going to go. Now, anything you wanted to say about that,
Speaker 1: now we can just move on.
Speaker 3: Just could curse treasure, you know, it's right, So it's
Speaker 3: like it was cursed from when he gets it, So
Speaker 3: anyone that's getting it is coming to some kind of
Speaker 3: evil fate.
Speaker 2: And that that reminds me of something I've been reading recently.
Speaker 2: So I've been I've been going through the Book of
Speaker 2: Lost Tales by Tolkien, and I just finished reading the
Speaker 2: Tale of the nauglaph Ring, which was that dwarven necklace
Speaker 2: that's made with the silmarill and this, and but there's
Speaker 2: also cursed gold involved that's from the Horde of well
Speaker 2: he's not called Glowerung then, but a dragon horde basically,
Speaker 2: and so like it, it reminds me of that same thing,
Speaker 2: where like this dwarf puts a curse on the gold,
Speaker 2: and then Thingle, the king of Dorief, gets it, and
Speaker 2: all of this treachery and murder happens between elves against elves,
Speaker 2: dwarves against elves, elves against dwarves, all this stuff, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm like, this is starting to sound really familiar,
Speaker 2: because like even with with with Faffner's Treasure, wasn't it
Speaker 2: originally a dwarf who puts the curse on it?
Speaker 3: I think it's it's almost like the the ring that
Speaker 3: just keeps making more and more of itself.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, right, and so yeah, definitely, I just realized.
Speaker 2: I just realized how close that is, or either the
Speaker 2: influences on the now glaffering story or the now glimires
Speaker 2: it would be called in later writings. It's it's really
Speaker 2: really obvious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so there's this idea of the the doomed treasure,
Speaker 1: the treasure that has a doom upon it. So we
Speaker 1: see that in the edit text, we see that in
Speaker 1: Tolkien's text, we see that in I mean even looking
Speaker 1: to you know, the Hobbit, right, this this is what
Speaker 1: attracted the dragon. It's the doom that's attached to really
Speaker 1: any tendency to hoard treasure. I mean, you know, as
Speaker 1: as Lewis tells us, sleeping on a dragon's hoard with
Speaker 1: dragon his thoughts tends to make one into a dragon,
Speaker 1: or to the very least it may summon them to
Speaker 1: you or in yeah exactly, or be Wolf, right, we
Speaker 1: get this curse that's on the treasure, and so even
Speaker 1: when be Wolf liberates the treasure from the dragon, it
Speaker 1: doesn't do them any good. That they're still doomed. And
Speaker 1: so there's question to be raised, like should he should
Speaker 1: the treasure have even been liberated to begin with, And
Speaker 1: so there's this this warning in the Anglos Accon literature,
Speaker 1: in the Germanic literature, in Tolkien's literature, there's just warning
Speaker 1: about treasure, which I think is interesting in a culture
Speaker 1: that's so valued treasure that that's like they recognized where
Speaker 1: these tendencies can go wrong, and there's some warnings there
Speaker 1: even in the Pagan writings. Okay, so moving on here
Speaker 1: to the second poem of Gudrun. This is consists of
Speaker 1: Gudrun lamenting her woes to this king Theodoric, and she
Speaker 1: recounts kind of what happened following the death of Ziggerd,
Speaker 1: how she was really forced to marry Attlee, who, depending
Speaker 1: on which text for reading, either is a Tila the
Speaker 1: Hun or he's at least based off a Till of
Speaker 1: the Hun, but he's also the brother of Brinhild. So
Speaker 1: I don't know how all this works out, but so
Speaker 1: she's forced to mary the brother of Brimhild, and that
Speaker 1: just doesn't go well as you would suppose. And so
Speaker 1: who I mean that gets the setup? I mean, do
Speaker 1: you guys have anything to pull out of this?
Speaker 2: I got the horse like knows about Sigurd's death or
Speaker 2: like can sense it or something. I think this is
Speaker 2: an right because the horse runs from the because in
Speaker 2: this one Sigurd is killed at I guess an assembly
Speaker 2: of lords or great fighters or something like that. So
Speaker 2: he's not killed in his bed, but in a public place.
Speaker 2: And so the Gudrun goes and essentially speaks to the horse.
Speaker 2: It's weeping. I went to talk to Granny Grannie, that's
Speaker 2: the horse, cheeks wet with tears. I asked the horse
Speaker 2: for news. Grannie dropped his drooped his head, then hid
Speaker 2: it in the grass. The horse knew that his master
Speaker 2: was no more.
Speaker 1: Right, so she sees his horse and she asks, you
Speaker 1: know why the long face right? Sorry? I I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: You know, with an extra kid of the house, I've
Speaker 1: got extra the dad jokes.
Speaker 3: Now, So from the notes, it was saying that Theodric
Speaker 3: was loosely connected with the historic Theodric the Great. It's
Speaker 3: just interesting seeing that, and like Attila and all these
Speaker 3: people that are just like, I'm sure they heard him
Speaker 3: heard about them, and they're like, oh, this is a
Speaker 3: you know, a great king. We're just borrowing names.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, gonna bring them together. And so yeah, so Theodoric,
Speaker 1: he is this exiled king of Verona who took refuge
Speaker 1: at it Tilla's court, and so so yeah, we got
Speaker 1: various people being thrown together here. It's quite the sitcom.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so Theodoric and Gudrin they take some
Speaker 1: consolation in each other because they both suffered great loss,
Speaker 1: and so they understand lost, understand sorrow, and so Theodoric
Speaker 1: understands Gudron in a way that Attlee doesn't, and of
Speaker 1: course this provokes some jealousy in Atae. And I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's in this poem where one of
Speaker 1: the maids basically tells Atli, like, something's going on here
Speaker 1: with Gudrun and Theodoric.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think that's third Gudroom, because I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, you're right, So I'll save that.
Speaker 2: I was struck in this one about how when she
Speaker 2: goes to lament over Zigard's corpse that you know, they
Speaker 2: say has already been picked over by the birds and
Speaker 2: the animals. And she says, in stands eleven away, I
Speaker 2: went from the conversation to the wood to gather the
Speaker 2: wolves leavings. I could not weep nor strike my hands together,
Speaker 2: meant my man, as other women do there. I sat
Speaker 2: close to death over Ziggurd. And that's a it's a
Speaker 2: striking contrast to the previous one where he's killed in
Speaker 2: bed and she has all these wild expressions of emotion
Speaker 2: and and literally says the opposite of this one where
Speaker 2: I guess clapping was like a sign of like distress
Speaker 2: among these people, and she she does that in the
Speaker 2: previous version. In this she says she can't strike her
Speaker 2: hands together.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's interesting. Yeah, she couldn't weep, she couldn't strike
Speaker 1: her hands together, and she just is close to death
Speaker 1: over sorrow. Which it reminds me of the first death
Speaker 1: in the simmer Alian right when when uh, I can't
Speaker 1: who was that died?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah it was it was Finway's wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, just dies for sorrow, right, she just
Speaker 1: kind of let's go.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's there's them that connection of approaching death or
Speaker 1: you know, in Tolkien's case, engaging with death simply through sorrow,
Speaker 1: because I mean Tolkien puts so much emphasis on will.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lord of the Rings, right, the conflict is
Speaker 1: primarily one of will, and I think that that that
Speaker 1: importance of the will is. I mean we see that
Speaker 1: in the Neumonorian Kings, when you know it's they release
Speaker 1: themselves to death when it's time, or you see this
Speaker 1: in you know, in in Vleenor when she releases herself.
Speaker 1: Ati does get this premonition that Guan is going to
Speaker 1: be the death of him. At the end, near the end,
Speaker 1: when at Lee awakes her up because he's had this
Speaker 1: dream of foreboding here that Guduran basically she's going to
Speaker 1: kill him. And and that's kind of how the poem
Speaker 1: ends without any resolutions to what we're going to do
Speaker 1: about that. But again we said you have a fate
Speaker 1: coming into play.
Speaker 3: You know when you have that like first thought like oh,
Speaker 3: this woman's crazy, like I should not date her or
Speaker 3: marry her, and then you go against.
Speaker 1: It, right, I mean, what's the worst gonna happen.
Speaker 2: And later we see we see Gudrn's brothers go against
Speaker 2: advice that came to Gudrun in dreams, right right, right,
Speaker 2: So there's this idea that like, you can have prem
Speaker 2: it's almost like they don't matter. You can have these
Speaker 2: you know, premonitions in dreams, but it doesn't matter because
Speaker 2: the thing's gonna happen anyway because of the fate is
Speaker 2: driving these people.
Speaker 1: Right, So it doesn't matter if you're giving some spoilers
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Yeah, it's gonna happens. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Anything else from the second poem, right so yeah, Now
Speaker 1: moving on to the third poem of Gudrun, and this
Speaker 1: is where there's this maid who tells Atlie that something's
Speaker 1: going on between Theodoric and Gudrin, and and so she's
Speaker 1: put through this trial by ordeal, you know, which is
Speaker 1: what they used to do to basically discover the truth
Speaker 1: when there's not clear evidence. And so Gudrun has to
Speaker 1: stick her hand into this boiling cauldron and the fact
Speaker 1: that it doesn't hurt her proves that she's innocent. Then
Speaker 1: the maid has to do likewise based off the accusation
Speaker 1: she made and the fact that she scalds her hand
Speaker 1: proves that she's lying, I mean kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2: And then she's turned into a bog body at the.
Speaker 1: End, right, she's drowned in the bog. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was struck by the trial by ordeal because I
Speaker 2: don't think that's something we had seen yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Larrington here in the intro says that maybe
Speaker 1: this was a later idea that's been put into this.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting just even in that first dance
Speaker 3: of how when she's talking to Attlee just saying it
Speaker 3: would seem better to the warriors, like this says, why
Speaker 3: are you downcast? Why do you never laugh? It would
Speaker 3: seem better to the warriors that you should speak to
Speaker 3: the people and look at me, just like the importance
Speaker 3: of their king, you know, laughing, you know, laughing loudest
Speaker 3: and just bringing up the morale of his people. So
Speaker 3: if he's downcast, the rest of the group is not
Speaker 3: going to do well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's basically telling him that things aren't great.
Speaker 1: I mean, they have a terrible relationship with each other.
Speaker 1: But see, he's the duty as the king to put
Speaker 1: on a good face, to look at her, at least
Speaker 1: in public. As if everything's okay. He has a duty
Speaker 1: to laugh, he's a duty to put on the right
Speaker 1: kind of face that a king should have. And so
Speaker 1: she's providing him with some good counsel here. But and
Speaker 1: I guess that's a good way to really set up
Speaker 1: what I mean, how bad of a king Atlee is
Speaker 1: that here she's presented as providing good queen lea counsel
Speaker 1: to her husband, the king. But then he goes off
Speaker 1: into this you know, jealous rage. Essentially he doesn't really
Speaker 1: trust her, and so he's says he he can't rely
Speaker 1: on the wisdom that's right next to him.
Speaker 3: Man, I think drowning in a bog would be so
Speaker 3: much worse than just in water.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, all right, So I guess moving on
Speaker 4: to I'm probably mispronounced most of these names, but Odroon's lament.
Speaker 1: So let's see if I can remember what's going on here.
Speaker 1: So Odrone is a sister of Atli, and she is
Speaker 1: going to help this woman, Borgny, give birth because Borgny
Speaker 1: had an illicit relationship with this guy, Vilmund, and Vilmund
Speaker 1: wanted to hide the pregnancy, and so he hit her
Speaker 1: for a number of years. I think, hold on, where
Speaker 1: where was it somewhere here? I don't remember offhand, but
Speaker 1: it says that he hit her for like multiple winters,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, this is a very long pregnancy and
Speaker 1: she can't give birth during this time until Odroon shows
Speaker 1: up and helps her do so it reminds me of
Speaker 1: in in the Volsungsaka. I think it was Zigfried. Perhaps
Speaker 1: one of them was that their mother was pregnant for
Speaker 1: like years on end, and so it comes out it's
Speaker 1: like a small child. There's something similar I think going
Speaker 1: on here. I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a weirdly does not work, but.
Speaker 2: And there's magic involved anyway, because I think it's in Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's in Stanza seven talks about spells.
Speaker 3: I mean it's uh O Drown.
Speaker 2: Mentioned it's as I think that they did not speak
Speaker 2: much more. The gentle lady went to sit by the
Speaker 2: girl's knee strongly. Odron sang powerfully, Odron sang sharp spells
Speaker 2: for Borkney.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so there's some some magic involved here. I
Speaker 1: don't really know a lot of these as details to
Speaker 1: what's actually happening. For one thing, Borgney, this character is
Speaker 1: a pretty minor character. I don't think that she shows
Speaker 1: up anywhere else that she seems to be definitely kind
Speaker 1: of on on the sidelines of all this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's some kind of magic involved. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's because of just the implicit deceit that's present here,
Speaker 1: that this is why she's unable to have a child.
Speaker 1: You know that there's an emphasis on oath keeping in
Speaker 1: the culture, on truth telling, and so I don't know
Speaker 1: if the deceit is what's almost creating a curse on Borgny,
Speaker 1: preventing her from having a child. So then Odron has
Speaker 1: to kind of counteract that curse with spells. It's my
Speaker 1: best reading of what's happening.
Speaker 2: Or I was like, maybe it's because of like the weird,
Speaker 2: like years long pregnancy that like like the only way
Speaker 2: to give birth to like a toddler in this sense
Speaker 2: is to have this magic spell.
Speaker 1: Like so it's kind of like an epidural.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting to me that the whole thing
Speaker 2: is Odroun is basically unwillingly aiding the lover of her
Speaker 2: brother's killer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Essentially, she doesn't want to, but she feels somehow duty
Speaker 2: bound to help this person, and she's like help it,
Speaker 2: and she basically comes right out and says, I'm helping you,
Speaker 2: but I don't like you.
Speaker 1: Right right, I'm not very good bedside manner for no, yeah,
Speaker 1: helping her deliver worse midwife right anything significant At the
Speaker 1: end the final stanza, here you sat and listened while
Speaker 1: I told you many evil things about my fate in
Speaker 1: theirs and then everyone lives by their desires. Yep, I
Speaker 1: think a certificate line. Everyone lives by their desires.
Speaker 2: I caught that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is this like any kind of redemption a little
Speaker 3: bit for Gunner post murdering or like devising the murder?
Speaker 3: Because you know, it says like later and I came
Speaker 3: to love Gunner the giver of rings as Brent Hilde
Speaker 3: should have, and talks about and being a ring breaker
Speaker 3: in terms of like giving brings out to this man.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if that's like speaking better of
Speaker 3: him post him being an oathbreaker.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, because we we do get some reference
Speaker 1: to his fate here, and so it does. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like he was a good guy over all
Speaker 1: despite betraying Ziggard, which is it's a pretty big bad
Speaker 1: thing that he did. But yeah, I mean it seems
Speaker 1: to be a noble character overall who dies a fairly
Speaker 1: noble death. You know, we're mentioned here that that Gunner's
Speaker 1: heart was torn out essentially, and so she he does
Speaker 1: kind of get lifted up as well as lamented, and
Speaker 1: we'll get more of that story in a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there. Does seem to be some sort of redemption here,
Speaker 1: or the very least he didn't lose all of his honor.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he's thrown into it mentioned in several versions,
Speaker 2: he's thrown into a snake pit. Gunnar is he uses
Speaker 2: this like harp. Yeah, he plays the harp with his
Speaker 2: toes to like magically like charm the snakes. But then
Speaker 2: it mentioned in one of the notes that, like when
Speaker 2: it mentions how Atlee's mother is the one who stabs
Speaker 2: Gunnar in the heart, that like maybe she had also
Speaker 2: like transformed into a snake, and because she wasn't a
Speaker 2: real snake, she's immune to his snake charming with the heart.
Speaker 3: With the toe harp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the toe harp. It's like when you see
Speaker 2: those videos of like someone playing a banjo with their
Speaker 2: toes and it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a shame to have that kind of
Speaker 1: talent and then just die anyways, like you think that
Speaker 1: should get you out of the trouble, all right, anything
Speaker 1: else for it? Go on to the poem of Atli.
Speaker 1: Okay poem of Atlie. You know, I'll just read some
Speaker 1: of this intro here, and this tense, elusively told poem,
Speaker 1: the heroic deaths of Gunnar and Hogney are related. Atlie,
Speaker 1: anxious to gain the treasure which had been belonged to Sigurd,
Speaker 1: invites Gunnar and Hogney to visit him so she can
Speaker 1: capture them and force them to hand over the gold.
Speaker 1: After their death, Gudrun takes a terrible revenge, and that
Speaker 1: terrible revenge is that she makes Atli eat his children,
Speaker 1: and then she kills.
Speaker 2: Him and then burns down the house.
Speaker 1: And then bursts out of the house, another example of
Speaker 1: the you know, hell hath no fury idea when she
Speaker 1: is just going to make things burn. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 1: so we get the death of Gunar and Hogney, and
Speaker 1: so they are summoned forth to Atlee's court. They're not
Speaker 1: really told why, but they get this invitation. And I
Speaker 1: may mix some of this together with the next, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a retelling.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: They their their wives say don't go, or it's one
Speaker 1: of their wives do they say, don't go that I
Speaker 1: get some foreboding here, you know, But they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fine. They go off anyways, and this is where
Speaker 1: they die because Atley wants to get the treasure, but
Speaker 1: he at Lea's not very smart about this. So first
Speaker 1: he kills Hogney. You know, he rips out his heart
Speaker 1: and shows it to Gunar, and then when Gunnar sees it,
Speaker 1: he says, well, now that I know that my brother's dead,
Speaker 1: I know the secret is not going to get out.
Speaker 1: And so I'm not going to tell you anything because
Speaker 1: with his brother alive, you know, I mean, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: know if okay, is is he going to give the secret?
Speaker 1: Is he not? But now that I know I'm the
Speaker 1: only person with the secret of where the treasure is,
Speaker 1: well I can hold that securely and know with certainty
Speaker 1: that if I die, I die. And he's not going
Speaker 1: to get this treasure. And so knowing that his brother's dead,
Speaker 1: he has that sort of that strength to him that
Speaker 1: he knows it all depends on him, and so he's
Speaker 1: willing to engage with death just the same as his
Speaker 1: brother was. And so they die courageous kinds of deaths here,
Speaker 1: but at the same time they die the death that's
Speaker 1: associated with the treasure. So I mean, I guess the
Speaker 1: question is, you know, regarding their legacy could be raised there.
Speaker 3: But I thought it was interesting just in the intro
Speaker 3: talks about in the German tradition, good Wren is determined
Speaker 3: to kill the brothers or revenge for the death of Sigurd,
Speaker 3: her husband, and nor she is more loyal to her
Speaker 3: brothers than her husband. It's just wonder if it like
Speaker 3: kind of speaks about each of the societies, if they
Speaker 3: viewed anything different, whether it was like with the brother
Speaker 3: relationship or the husband relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is interesting and I can't don't really speak
Speaker 1: to that, but it would be interesting to know that
Speaker 1: if that's consistent or not. It seems to be based
Speaker 1: off the things that I've read, at least regarding the
Speaker 1: Norse tradition. I mean, you know, the fact that sigurd
Speaker 1: sister is you know, she's loyal to him and not
Speaker 1: to the foreign king that she marries, and so that
Speaker 1: that idea does get repeated a couple times here.
Speaker 2: One little details. I noticed that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: mention of mirkwood in the Salon.
Speaker 1: Right, which again gives us the Tolkien connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only difference being, of course, in this is
Speaker 2: spelled with a y, right. But yeah, and it seems
Speaker 2: to take like mirkwood seems to exist in this somewhere
Speaker 2: in eastern Europe because they they mentioned the River Dinuper
Speaker 2: as being near it, and that's in Ukraine. So wherever
Speaker 2: this extensive mirkwood forest is, it seems to be far
Speaker 2: to the east.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 3: I even wonder, just kind of going back to the
Speaker 3: different areas of like Germanic, if Germanic had more of
Speaker 3: like a Christ's influence from like Romans and stuff, and
Speaker 3: Norse maybe had less. So you know, like having Germanic
Speaker 3: you basically would leave your family to be with your husband,
Speaker 3: where like in the other ones, maybe your family was
Speaker 3: a little bit more important than whoever you were with.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's just kind of guessing, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe even something throughout there. I don't really know though.
Speaker 3: Let's say this is one of the oldest of the
Speaker 3: poems in the Policetta.
Speaker 1: HM. So once the brothers recognize what's going on here,
Speaker 1: this is a trap lay out for them, they do
Speaker 1: immediately start fighting, and they kill off a number of people,
Speaker 1: and obviously they recognize they're not going to get out
Speaker 1: of here, and so we do get this idea of
Speaker 1: backs against the wall. We're just going to fight to
Speaker 1: the death, because well, why not, like why simply submit
Speaker 1: to this deceit? Why not go down fighting for the
Speaker 1: sake of our legacy. And this is the idea that
Speaker 1: we see in a number of the North text the
Speaker 1: idea that I know I'm going to die. I know
Speaker 1: this is kind of feudile in the broad scale, but
Speaker 1: as long as I have the ability to swing a sword,
Speaker 1: I'm going to swing a sword. And I do think
Speaker 1: that there's something in there about the resilience of life
Speaker 1: over against the futility of mortality.
Speaker 2: And you definitely see that kind of warrior ethos continue
Speaker 2: down to like the present day, and like when you
Speaker 2: if you read military history and stories of great last stands,
Speaker 2: there's kind of like, well, why just submit to being captured,
Speaker 2: especially if we're going to be captured and then killed anyway,
Speaker 2: we might as well just go down fighting, you know.
Speaker 2: And you see that across history from you know, like
Speaker 2: you know, even to things like you know, in American history,
Speaker 2: you have the Alamo or customers last Stand or something
Speaker 2: like that, or you know, like you see that that
Speaker 2: willingness to die rather than submit to death by torture.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, there's a certain spirited rationality behind that
Speaker 1: that I think it's particularly play in the Northern text.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, you see that in a number
Speaker 1: of different cases.
Speaker 2: It's very interesting, uh, contrasted to like Christianity, right, because
Speaker 2: like it it's interesting how in later like medieval and
Speaker 2: like later texts, you have this idea of Christ as
Speaker 2: a warrior, as a fighter, right, and but where he
Speaker 2: he wrestles with death, you know, on the cross, he
Speaker 2: makes it submit to him. Yet at the same time,
Speaker 2: in the actual facts of the case, you know, he's
Speaker 2: laying down his life, he's letting himself be tortured to
Speaker 2: death rather than where he says, I could call a
Speaker 2: host of angels and end this now, but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah that I mean that, I mean that,
Speaker 1: and I think that both of those are true, right,
Speaker 1: that it's and that's what why even that the word martyr,
Speaker 1: like it is related to the martial spirit Mars, the
Speaker 1: god of war, and so the same influence and This
Speaker 1: gets into like the medieval cosmology idea that Mars this
Speaker 1: martial influence has a connection both to the just warrior
Speaker 1: or something like the noble knight, as well as to
Speaker 1: the martyr, because both the noble warrior as well as
Speaker 1: the martyr are victors and as they stand against the
Speaker 1: forces that would come against them, so both present a
Speaker 1: different kind of victory, and I think that in the
Speaker 1: Victory of the Cross, we definitely see both playing out simultaneously.
Speaker 1: That Christ is the victor standing over against death, standing
Speaker 1: over against sin. Yet he's also letting himself down, which
Speaker 1: is another kind of standing against opposing forces.
Speaker 2: Right. It's it's the kind of turn the other cheek
Speaker 2: thing where it's it's a different way of opposition, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not it's not letting yourself be trampled upon.
Speaker 2: It's literally like it's it's turning your opponent's opposition against
Speaker 2: himself almost right, You're forcing you're forcing your opponent to
Speaker 2: recognize the injustice of what he's doing.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, which is one reason why it's the blood
Speaker 1: of the martyrs, that's the seeds of the Church. Yeah, simultaneously,
Speaker 1: that's how we conquered room, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's not done through Like you know, Rome
Speaker 2: conquers the known world with armies, and yet Rome itself
Speaker 2: is conquered by these people who are willing to get
Speaker 2: thrown to lions, impaled, crucified stone to death, you know,
Speaker 2: for for you know, for something that to them is
Speaker 2: more important than you know, all the armies and all
Speaker 2: the power that the emperors have. It doesn't mean anything
Speaker 2: to these people, you know, right.
Speaker 1: It's hard to read something like the Martyrdom of Polycarp
Speaker 1: and not see strength there. Well, back to the Pagans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, she she goes on this rampage of
Speaker 1: she she gets she gets Atlie to eat their children,
Speaker 1: and then when he's just thrown off in the horror
Speaker 1: of what happened, that's basically when she kills him and
Speaker 1: then burns the place down. And she even considers killing
Speaker 1: herself here, but she doesn't. She's prevented somehow or another
Speaker 1: from from doing that. And I do think it's interesting
Speaker 1: this this this line stood out to me in thirty
Speaker 1: nine where it says gold she scattered the gosling bright
Speaker 1: woman she described as being gosling bright here, you know,
Speaker 1: which gosling like a goose, I suppose, which made me
Speaker 1: think of Elwing a little bit from some Earlian who
Speaker 1: tries to cast herself into the sea, essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: escaping what's happening around her, trying to make sure the
Speaker 1: somarill doesn't get into the wrong hands, and so she
Speaker 1: dives into the sea to kill herself, but she's prevented
Speaker 1: from doing so, and she actually ends up getting turned
Speaker 1: into a bird, right, a white bird. And so I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if there's some connection here between sort of this
Speaker 1: scene of you know, she's casting herself away she describes
Speaker 1: as being gossling bright and now we get the l
Speaker 1: Wing connection and Tolkien. It's not a clear one to one,
Speaker 1: but I do think there's some similarity here on a
Speaker 1: thematic level, which is potentially another Tolkien connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the notes mentioned something earlier about swan women. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: being like an important recurring device in these tas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that came up profoundly in that one
Speaker 1: poem about that that elf, that trickster elf who I
Speaker 1: can't remember all the details, but there's swan woman, swan
Speaker 1: women in that story. But yeah, there's just there's just
Speaker 1: some terrifying imagery here in for forty one, with a
Speaker 1: sword point, she gave the bed blood to drink. With
Speaker 1: a hell bent hand, she loosed the dogs hurled before
Speaker 1: the hall doors of Flaming Brand, wakening the house servants.
Speaker 1: The bride made them pay for her brothers, and this
Speaker 1: goes on like it's it's terrifying, like a horror kind
Speaker 1: of imagery that we get played out here. Yeah, anything
Speaker 1: else from this, well then, I guess moving on to
Speaker 1: the Greenlandic lay of Attlee, which is a retelling of
Speaker 1: the story from the Greenlanding tradition, where we're told it's
Speaker 1: a little bit less courtly, less kind of aristocratic things
Speaker 1: are a little more sort of like a human focus.
Speaker 1: I guess it's more of a human story than simply
Speaker 1: a terrifying courtly story. So I don't know what what's
Speaker 1: it up to, guys. From this one.
Speaker 3: Voice, that's where I'm thinking I'm getting this. I thought
Speaker 3: I remember like the runs being corrupted when they were
Speaker 3: sending a message, but I'm may be misremembering, or that
Speaker 3: was somewhere else.
Speaker 2: That sounds familiar.
Speaker 1: It's from one of these yeah, yeah, so so in
Speaker 1: this tale Gudrun catches wind of what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: this plot that Athlete is hatching to kill off her brothers,
Speaker 1: and there's no mention, or at least there's not much
Speaker 1: focus on treasure in this. For it's the exact motivation
Speaker 1: of Ali here isn't super clear to me, because I
Speaker 1: don't know if he just wants to kill off Atlee's
Speaker 1: or a kill off Gudrun's brothers because they're brothers and
Speaker 1: they're not getting along very well, and I don't really know.
Speaker 1: But she catches wind of this plot that Attlee is hatching,
Speaker 1: and so she tries to send these this runic message
Speaker 1: to her brothers, but you know, it gets corrupt, it
Speaker 1: gets scratched out basically. But there's also this warning that
Speaker 1: comes from Hockney's wife to not take this invitation of Atli.
Speaker 1: And you know this recurring theme of like women warning
Speaker 1: men about their fate, about their foolhardiness, about their pride.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes you think of even Pilot's wife, right.
Speaker 1: She she gets a dream saying don't do this thing,
Speaker 1: and so she tries to warn Pilot, and so I
Speaker 1: just I find that interesting. It's this recording theme even
Speaker 1: you know, in different contexts.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was, I mean, was this do you think
Speaker 5: the between them was does at least blame them for
Speaker 5: the death of Brita Hilde being.
Speaker 3: His sister, right, So I don't know if this one
Speaker 3: is connidering him as her his sister, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really bring it up at all, but.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean potentially it might just be that there's
Speaker 1: this general bad blood between them, and so if he
Speaker 1: wants to wipe them out.
Speaker 2: There's a lot in this about more about how they
Speaker 2: can't escape their fate and like even with the dreams,
Speaker 2: and you know, they try to blow them off, but
Speaker 2: then later one of them is like, it's too late
Speaker 2: to speak. Thus all is now arranged. I cannot escape
Speaker 2: these fateful, poor tense since we intend to go. Everything
Speaker 2: seems to show that we haven't long to live. So
Speaker 2: he put whatever, Yeah, it's like he knows he's going
Speaker 2: to his death, you know. And then when they they
Speaker 2: they later they part from their wives. Their wives go
Speaker 2: a little bit on the journey on them and are
Speaker 2: with them and are still trying to convince them to
Speaker 2: go home, and then when they finally part, it's like
Speaker 2: a long time they gazed before they turned away from
Speaker 2: each other. I think their fates were laid down there
Speaker 2: when their ways parted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I love just these pretty natural relationship we
Speaker 1: get here between men and women, where the women say,
Speaker 1: you don't go this, it's dangerous. You know, things aren't
Speaker 1: going to go well. At thirteen, Hugby says, all women
Speaker 1: think the worst. Women just worry too much. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I just found that kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Interesting detail that when again that they are very clear
Speaker 2: eyed about going to their fate, that when they arrive
Speaker 2: at this place they had to travel by ship to
Speaker 2: get there, they don't tie the boat up, so presumably
Speaker 2: the boat would just drift away on the current. And
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, we're not going to need it anymore.
Speaker 1: You're right, We're going to our fate.
Speaker 2: It's fine where it's like I guess like for a viking,
Speaker 2: like your viking ship has to be one of the
Speaker 2: most like sacred and valuable things you own, and they're
Speaker 2: just like, Eh, we're not going to need it where
Speaker 2: we're going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's interesting that so this guy Vingy is
Speaker 1: the messenger who brings them to at least court, and
Speaker 1: even as they start to approach even VINGI says, Okay,
Speaker 1: hold on, guys, this is a trap, Like he tells them.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly why. I don't know. If it's
Speaker 1: some you know, prick of his conscience, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But suddenly as they approach at least territory, then he
Speaker 1: tells them what's about to happen, and then they respond
Speaker 1: by killing him. Uh. I love the language here. It
Speaker 1: says after he reveals what's about to happen, it says,
Speaker 1: they push Viggie down and knocked him into hell. Such
Speaker 1: intense language. Uh. They set about him with axes while
Speaker 1: he struggled for breath, and so they just knock him
Speaker 1: into hell. And then they, as in the last poem,
Speaker 1: they start fighting, but in this version, Gudran actually picks
Speaker 1: up a sword and starts fighting alongside them. Which it's
Speaker 1: a great scene, right, You get get all these siblings
Speaker 1: working together here knocking down a bunch of people.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I feel like the different different poets and stuff
Speaker 3: that wrote all these like just maybe there was the
Speaker 3: original one and then each one like picked the character
Speaker 3: that they liked because like some of the ones you
Speaker 3: read like Guduran is not a good one because she
Speaker 3: kind of like makes a cigared forget and that causes
Speaker 3: all the trouble, and then other times it wasn't her
Speaker 3: fault and she actually cared for everybody and just wanted love.
Speaker 3: And you're just like, who do I vote? Who do
Speaker 3: I vote for? I don't even know.
Speaker 1: It does seem that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like the it's clear that the ancient pagan authors
Speaker 2: were not and the later compilers were not as obsessed
Speaker 2: with cannon as storytellers are today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's very true. That they have no problem
Speaker 1: taking Texas there and just changing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and where they completely contradict one another, it's just
Speaker 2: even in major details.
Speaker 3: Yes, it kind of makes sense because like this is Greenland,
Speaker 3: and then like another one's in Germany, another ones like Norse.
Speaker 3: So they're just like, no one's ever gonna find out
Speaker 3: what I just said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what you're telling me is that the Rings
Speaker 1: of Power is just fine. Yeah, it's just a different
Speaker 1: take on it.
Speaker 3: Right, We're just too connected, That's what I'm saying. Yep.
Speaker 2: And the here it comes up the fate again. This
Speaker 2: is in forty eight. It's Gudron speaking to her brothers.
Speaker 2: I think I tried to remedy this by keeping you
Speaker 2: at home. I think she's referring to the ruins, she said,
Speaker 2: Yet no one defeats fate, and so you still came here.
Speaker 2: She spoke common sense to them to try to make
Speaker 2: peace between them, but they would not agree at all.
Speaker 2: Both sides said no. So there's like a brief parley here.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't go anywhere, right, both sides are just
Speaker 1: going to keep fighting, and this is fate. This is
Speaker 1: no getting around it. And then even after this, we
Speaker 1: get some bickering between Atlee and Gudrun, which at this
Speaker 1: point Atlee would just have her killed or something like
Speaker 1: seeing that she took up a sword against his men,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't.
Speaker 3: And they just.
Speaker 2: Sit at different ends of the hall. That's all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's things are just a little bit heated
Speaker 1: between them, that's about it. And they just started fighting
Speaker 1: with each other. Like Gudrun says, I think the gods
Speaker 1: when for it when things go badly for you, And
Speaker 1: then you know, he says, yeah, to his people, do
Speaker 1: all you can to make Gudrun sob so that I
Speaker 1: might see her without a vestige of joy. And so
Speaker 1: like they're still together, but they just absolutely hate each other.
Speaker 2: This one makes explicit the murder of the children. It's
Speaker 2: very terrifying, very metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the one where she makes a goblet
Speaker 1: out of one of their skulls, right, yes, yes, horrifying.
Speaker 2: And like you know, she slits their throats and it's
Speaker 2: just like, but even the children, you know, is being
Speaker 2: Viking children, I guess go courageously to their deaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's horrifying, like this is their mother
Speaker 1: who just calls them over and kills them, Like I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that. But it's just it's part of this
Speaker 1: scorned woman motif that we've been getting in these various
Speaker 1: poems from breen Hill to Gudrun, that you know, they
Speaker 1: that the things that they've most prized been taken away,
Speaker 1: and so they're just going to see things burned down
Speaker 1: around them, even their own children, their own kin. It's
Speaker 1: almost like these aren't her kids, right, her kid came
Speaker 1: from Sigurd. These are at least kids, not hers. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the way that she sees it.
Speaker 2: I think it's the kids who say to her sacrifice,
Speaker 2: if you wish your children, no one will prevent you,
Speaker 2: but brief will be your respite from rage when you
Speaker 2: find out what results. So this isn't gonna say her rage.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, vengeance is vain, it's empty, you know,
Speaker 2: like there's gonna be no your respite will be very
Speaker 2: brief and then you'll just it's going to drive you
Speaker 2: to do something else.
Speaker 1: Right, you can, you can sacrifice your children if you
Speaker 1: want to, but it's not going to get what you're
Speaker 1: trying to purchase here. M m man. There's a pro
Speaker 1: life message right there.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because this one is like written later with
Speaker 3: verse one of three where it says I'll buy a
Speaker 3: ship and a painted coffin, just because it's like two
Speaker 3: different ways of bearying them, the Christian and the Pagan.
Speaker 3: So definitely more influence there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that the death of Hogny is significant
Speaker 1: here when he's told that he's going to die and
Speaker 1: as he already knows, and he responds by saying, do
Speaker 1: as you wish. I'll cheerfully, await it my courage. You
Speaker 1: can test. I've borne sharper trials before you met some
Speaker 1: resistance when you were unwounded. Now we are so injured,
Speaker 1: do as you please. So he's injured, he can't fight
Speaker 1: back at this point, and so he says, just kill
Speaker 1: me and I'll cheerfully wait for it. So he's not
Speaker 1: just going to stoically embrace his death, which idea that
Speaker 1: I'm going to laugh my way to death. I'm going
Speaker 1: to embrace this cheerfully. And I think that really gets
Speaker 1: into this Viking kind of spirit of laughing even in
Speaker 1: the face of death.
Speaker 2: Or even the martyr Saint Lawrence, who's cracking jokes while
Speaker 2: he's being fried on this hot iron griddle. He's like,
Speaker 2: he says something the effect of turn me over. I'm
Speaker 2: not done on the other side.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, right. Yeah. It's like when you're so
Speaker 1: when you embrace life to that degree, death itself almost
Speaker 1: becomes a joke, or at the very least, the vile
Speaker 1: forces that would bring it about are a joke because
Speaker 1: they're they're weak, they're vain. That's what's vain. Your death
Speaker 1: isn't vain. The forces that are bringing about your death
Speaker 1: are ultimately in vain. And I think that we even
Speaker 1: see that sort of mentality here in this to the
Speaker 1: extent we can't see it in the Pagan hero and
Speaker 1: we get this contrast between this guy Hyali and Hogney.
Speaker 1: So Kali is this guy who dies as a coward,
Speaker 1: and so when they rip out his heart, it's still
Speaker 1: quivering with fear. Whereas when they rip out Hogney's heart,
Speaker 1: it's steady, even as it was in his death. And
Speaker 1: so when they present it to Gunar, he recognizes this
Speaker 1: steady heart.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of how you're judged in the Egyptian afterlife
Speaker 2: by your heart. Right, they judge how your heart looks
Speaker 2: and they weigh it, and that determines whether you're obliterated
Speaker 2: for eternity or get to enjoy eternity with the gods.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, so there's a thematic connection there. Another great
Speaker 1: line here, when Gudrun starts to hatch her plot, she says,
Speaker 1: a demon I've seen before, now I'll improve on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going to be worse than a demon here.
Speaker 3: So do we think the Temple of Doom heart removal
Speaker 3: scene was that a steady or a quivering heart? Watch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so, unlike some of these other women that
Speaker 1: we've read about so far, we are told that she
Speaker 1: tries to kill herself, but her fate wasn't to die
Speaker 1: at that time, that she would die another day. We
Speaker 1: were told here towards the end, and so her fate
Speaker 1: was to live on her fate wasn't to die. So
Speaker 1: she survives this just terrible situation here to go on
Speaker 1: with her daughter Zanhild, who isn't mentioned here, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if she's going to company these other eedic texts,
Speaker 1: but she does go on in the Volson saga, and
Speaker 1: then we're told as just an encapsulation or a I
Speaker 1: guess solidification of the legacy of Gudrun and her brothers
Speaker 1: at the end. Fortune is any man who afterwards can
Speaker 1: father such heroic children as Gooki fathered after them in
Speaker 1: every land. Their defiance lives on wherever people hear of it,
Speaker 1: and so they have this living legacy that even as
Speaker 1: they all died ultimately in courageous situations in defiance of
Speaker 1: you know, their killers, that they, you know, inspire this
Speaker 1: legacy of defiance wherever people hear it. And so there's
Speaker 1: this noble legacy even from these doomed people, which I
Speaker 1: mean potentially we could draw another Tolkien connection there when
Speaker 1: you when you look at you know, the number of
Speaker 1: noldor despite the the doom placed upon them that you know,
Speaker 1: die in heroic ways, and so even though there's this
Speaker 1: kind of futility, that futility doesn't necessarily defined the entirety
Speaker 1: of their legacy and the life that they lead.
Speaker 3: And the grin like follows their you know, their heroic deeds,
Speaker 3: like is interested and still keeps up with them compared
Speaker 3: to the others.
Speaker 1: Right, you could even think about someone like Turin turn Bar,
Speaker 1: which I mean I haven't gotten there yet, Chase, but
Speaker 1: that he has this doom placed upon him and he
Speaker 1: has this tragic ending, yet nonetheless he still is one
Speaker 1: of the great heroes of the Legendarium. And so two
Speaker 1: things can be true at once. There's this great sorrow
Speaker 1: and great tragedy, great doom, but that doom itself can
Speaker 1: actually be that it can be great into there's still
Speaker 1: significance that can be born out of this cursed kind
Speaker 1: of life.
Speaker 2: Even the doom of fayan Or doesn't include a line
Speaker 2: where it's like, despite everything that happens and all the
Speaker 2: tragedy he causes, that even the Valor will marvel at
Speaker 2: the courage in the face of death that the Knolldor show.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, right exactly. Yeah, I definitely think that in
Speaker 1: the not too distant future. We need to do the
Speaker 1: Children of Turin following up on this. Children of Urin
Speaker 1: following up on this. I think there's such strong theomatic
Speaker 1: connection there. Who knows me. One day we'll do the
Speaker 1: Summarillion if we have the demotion for that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, it takes a long time to do
Speaker 2: it in episodes. We've been doing it on the Secrets
Speaker 2: of Middle Earth, and we're we're just getting to the
Speaker 2: Battle of Unnumbered Tiers.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I'll have to go back and listen to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's that's an investment, but I don't know. At
Speaker 1: some point, maybe it's something worth doing, like a year
Speaker 1: long Patron series.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean like we and we we had
Speaker 2: to break some of them up. We did Baron and
Speaker 2: Luthian in two parts just because they're so and the
Speaker 2: chapter on Turin, I think we're gonna do a three parter.
Speaker 1: You just have to.
Speaker 2: There's so much there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, next time we will finish the poetic
Speaker 1: Eta with the remaining text, So we're getting close there.
Speaker 1: It's just then a number of different angles here at
Speaker 1: tragedy and cannibalism and just absolute darkness, and so we'll
Speaker 1: see if things get lifted up at all, probably not
Speaker 1: that that's kind of the I guess the necessity of
Speaker 1: a pagan story that there is this courage and heroism
Speaker 1: and these positive legacies we can take from it. But
Speaker 1: in the end there's this haunting futility. There's this haunting doom,
Speaker 1: which of course it gets really pronounced in something like Beowulf.
Speaker 1: But well, I guess I'll save more closing thoughts for
Speaker 1: after the next section, but we'll go in to wrap
Speaker 1: it there. So thanks again and we will do it
Speaker 1: again next month.
Speaker 3: Jeliu.
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