The Saga of the Völsungs

About this saga

The most complete prose rendering of the Sigurd cycle, preserved in a single manuscript from around 1400. The saga links the lineages of the divine world to the heroic poetry and constitutes an invaluable parallel to the heroic lays of the Poetic Edda.

A Sigi and Reri: founding the lineage

The saga's root is buried deep in the world of the gods. Sigi is called a son of Odin, though the saga speaks of this with some reserve, as though the divinity is something remembered rather than something that can be proved. Sigi kills a thrall who hunts better than himself and is forced to flee as an outlaw. From this disgrace a dynasty nonetheless grows: Sigi rides to new lands, gathers warriors around him, and rules for a long time as a great king.

His son Rerir inherits the throne but lacks an heir for many years. He and his wife appeal to the gods, and Frigg listens. Odin sends a crow carrying an apple to Rerir, and his wife eats from it. The pregnancy that follows is unlike any other: she carries the child for six years. Rerir dies during the long wait, and his wife prays to be allowed to die once the child has come into the world.

From this act of sacrifice Völsung is born, and with him the lineage's true story begins. That the clan's founder bears a name that literally means 'the ancestor of the Völsungs' is no accident: from the very first lines the saga constructs a genealogy pointing directly at Sigurd the dragon-slayer, whose deeds are the whole narrative's true destination.

A The birth of Völsung and his hall

Völsung grows up with a strength that no one else possesses. When he reaches adulthood he builds his hall around a great oak whose trunk rises through the roof and whose branches spread over the entire building. The tree is called Barnstokkr, and it is no ordinary oak: it is the saga's world-axis in miniature, a cosmological centre for a kingdom that claims divine origin.

Völsung marries and fathers ten sons and a daughter. The twins Sigmund and Signý are the most prominently named. Sigmund bears from birth the signs of election that the saga weaves into his entire life's course. His sister Signý is the saga's quiet tragedy: sharp-sighted, strong, and fated to act only through cunning, never in the open.

The hall is the space into which fate enters. It is a stage prepared for an action the gods have long arranged. The tree at its centre is a promise of what is to come, and the feast that soon gathers there is the condition that sets everything in motion.

A The sword in Barnstokkr

Siggeir, king of Gautland, asks for Signý's hand. The wedding feast is held in Völsung's hall, and it is during this celebration that Odin reveals himself. He enters barefoot and wearing a wide-brimmed hat and cloak, taking the shape of an old man, and drives a sword so forcefully into the trunk of Barnstokkr that it sinks in to the hilt. Then he leaves the hall as silently as he came.

Odin announces that the sword belongs to whoever can draw it, and that it will prove the finest weapon for that man. All the guests try. Siggeir tries, the kings try, the jarls try. None succeed until Sigmund closes his hand around the hilt and draws the blade free as though it had never been fixed in place.

Siggeir demands to buy the sword, and Sigmund refuses. That is the spark that ignites everything. The treachery that follows, Siggeir's false invitation and the massacre of Völsung's sons, has its root in this moment of humiliation. The sword Odin gives is as much a test as a gift: it identifies the worthy one and creates enemies in the same movement.

A Sigmund's vengeance

Siggeir lures Völsung and his sons to Gautland under the pretence of friendship and kills them in an ambush. Völsung falls, and his sons are placed in stocks in the forest. One by one they are devoured by a she-wolf during the night hours, until only Sigmund remains. Signý smears his face with honey, and the wolf licks it instead of biting, whereupon Sigmund grips the wolf's tongue with his teeth and tears himself free.

Sigmund and Sinfjötli, the son Signý bore with her brother in order to create an avenger carrying no blood of Siggeir, live as outlaws in the forest. They undergo werewolf transformations during years of training and violent ordeal. These transformations are a form of initiation rather than mere enchantment: they learn to kill, to move in darkness, and to endure pain.

The night of vengeance finally arrives. They set fire to Siggeir's hall. Siggeir and his men die in the flames. Signý steps forward and reveals who Sinfjötli truly is. Then she turns and walks back into the burning hall. She chooses to die with her husband, the man she hated and whose destruction she spent her life arranging. It is the saga's most laconic and most enigmatic scene.

A Sigmund's last battle

Sigmund lives on. He rules, fights wars, and at last marries Hjördís, the most beautiful and wise of the king's daughters being offered in marriage. Another suitor, King Lyngvi, is defeated in the courtship and gathers his revenge. He attacks with a great army, and the battle is unequal. Sigmund cuts down warriors around him as though in a trance, and no weapon bites against him.

Then an old man steps into the battle. He has one eye and wears a wide-brimmed hat. He thrusts a spear toward Sigmund, and the sword Gram shatters against the shaft. In that moment Sigmund is undone. Odin gave and Odin takes back: the sword that once sank into Barnstokkr is now broken, and the man who carried it can no longer be carried by it.

Hjördís finds Sigmund dying on the battlefield. He tells her to save the sword's fragments for their unborn son, who will bear a new sword forged from the old one. He dies at dawn. Hjördís is then born into a new life: she marries Álf, son of the king of Norway, and gives birth to Sigurd in peace and prosperity. The broken pieces of Gram are carried into the future.

A Sigurd's youth and Gram

Sigurd is born and raised at the Norwegian court, but it is the dwarf Regin who shapes him into what he will become. Regin is clever, learned, and bitter. He teaches Sigurd everything a hero needs to know: runes, the arts of war, craftsmanship, and the tongues of men. The teaching is never without purpose, however. Regin has a goal, and Sigurd is the instrument.

Regin tells Sigurd about the dragon Fafnir and the gold on the Gnita Heath. He asks Sigurd to forge a sword. They forge two swords, and Sigurd breaks them against the anvil and finds them wanting. At last he brings forward the fragments of Sigmund's old sword, and Regin forges them into a new blade. That sword is called Gram.

Sigurd raises Gram and strikes the anvil. The blade splits it down to the base. He then takes it to the river and places a tuft of wool in the current. Gram cuts through the wool along with the stream without clanging against anything. The sword passes both tests: stronger than steel and sharper than any razor. Sigurd is ready.

A The dragon-slaying on the Gnita Heath

Fafnir is no ordinary dragon. He was once a dwarf-being, a son of Hreidmar, and he seized the gold that the gods paid as ransom and then transformed himself into a serpent driven purely by greed. He now crawls across the Gnita Heath guarding his hoard, and the venom he breathes turns the ground around him into a field of death. Regin has told Sigurd this, but Regin's telling is never straightforward: it is one man's desire for another man's property, wrapped in a lesson about heroism.

Sigurd digs a trench along the path Fafnir habitually takes down to the water. He lowers himself in and waits. Fafnir crawls over him, and Sigurd thrusts Gram upward through the dragon's soft underbelly. Fafnir twists, the blood flows. The dragon asks who has slain him and why. The dialogue that follows is one of the saga's most remarkable passages: the dragon speaks wisely about gold and curse, about the poisonous nature of inheritance, and about what awaits those who take the hoard.

Regin hurries forward after the battle, drinks Fafnir's blood, and asks Sigurd to roast the dragon's heart for him. That is the final service Regin hopes to receive from his pupil. But the heart's magic is intended for a different recipient, and what happens next seals Sigurd's fate.

A The birds' counsel and Brynhild

Sigurd roasts the heart and burns his finger. He puts the finger to his lips, and in that instant a new dimension opens: he understands the speech of birds. The nuthatches sitting in the branches comment on what they observe. Their tone is not solemn. They speak of Regin's plans, of how he intends to kill Sigurd once the heart is roasted, and of how the young hero should take the gold and ride on.

Sigurd listens. He cuts off Regin's head. Then he eats a portion of Fafnir's heart, takes the rest and the gold, loads it onto his horse Grani, and rides toward Hindarfjall. The birds guide him: they tell him about the valkyrie Brynhild, how Odin pricked her with a thorn of sleep as punishment for granting victory to the wrong man, and how she sleeps inside a ring of fire on the mountain's summit.

Sigurd rides through the flames. He finds an armoured figure and removes the helmet: it is a woman. He cuts away the coat of mail, which has been worn so long that the skin has grown into it. Brynhild awakens. Their meeting on Hindarfjall is the brightest moment in the whole saga, an instant of mutual recognition. They swear oaths of fidelity and Sigurd gives her the ring Andvaranaut. It is a love that will never be fulfilled.

A The betrayal at the Burgundian court

Sigurd rides to Gjúki's court. Gjúki is king of the Burgundians, and his sons Gunnar and Högni are great warriors. It is Grímhild, the mother, who truly governs. She mixes a drink that erases memories and gives it to Sigurd. He forgets Brynhild, forgets the oaths on Hindarfjall, forgets the ring he gave her. He sees Gudrún and loves her.

Gunnar wants Brynhild as his wife. Brynhild sits behind a ring of fire and has sworn that only the man who rides through it can have her. Gunnar tries with his own horse and fails. Sigurd exchanges shapes with Gunnar through Grímhild's magic and rides through the flames in Gunnar's place. He sleeps beside Brynhild for three nights with Gram laid as a cold sword between them. When Gunnar marries her, Sigurd takes back the ring. None of those involved understand what has happened, except Sigurd himself, who no longer remembers why it matters.

The crisis is triggered by Brynhild and Gudrún. They quarrel over whose husband is the greater man. Gudrún reveals that it was Sigurd who rode through the fire, that Brynhild belonged to Sigurd, and that the ring on her finger is Andvaranaut. Brynhild falls silent. It is the knowledge she cannot survive, and what she does with it is the saga's darkest chapter.

A Sigurd's death and Brynhild's pyre

Brynhild chooses her path. She urges Gunnar and Högni to kill Sigurd, and she does so with a skill they never see through until it is too late. Gunnar and Högni are bound by sworn oaths to Sigurd and cannot kill him with their own hands. The act falls to their half-brother Guttorm, who never swore that oath.

Guttorm slips into Sigurd's bedchamber at dawn. Sigurd wakes at the final thrust and manages to throw Gram at Guttorm. The sword cleaves him in two in the doorway. Sigurd dies at the side of his wife Gudrún. Her grief is immeasurable: the saga describes how her cry woke dead horses in the stables and made the sleeping-draught sway.

Brynhild commands a magnificent pyre. She speaks her prophecy and tells the truth about everything that happened, about the magic potion, the oaths, and the love that was never given its rightful form. Then she throws herself onto the flames at Sigurd's side. They are carried out of the world together on the pyre, with the sword Gram laid between them as it once lay in the bed. The saga continues into Gudrún's fate and the Atli episodes that consume her brothers, but the lyrical high point is this scene: the pair united in death as they were never permitted to be in life.

A Manuscript, dating, and composition

Völsunga saga is preserved in a single medieval manuscript, NKS 1824 b 4to, dated to around 1400 and now held in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The saga is thought to have been composed in Iceland around 1260, possibly somewhat later. Although the manuscript is relatively late, it is regarded as a faithful copy of an older exemplar, since the language and narrative technique display features that point toward the mid-thirteenth century.

The text is a prose romance that reworks and unifies material from Eddic poems, above all the heroic lays in the Codex Regius. The anonymous author wove together fragments from Reginsmál, Fáfnismál, Sigrdrífumál, Brot af Sigurðarkviðu, and Guðrúnarkviða into a continuous narrative. This combination is especially valuable because parts of the Codex Regius are missing. The so-called Great Lacuna, where leaves have been lost, makes the saga text an invaluable supplementary source.

The manuscript also contains Ragnars saga loðbrókar directly after Völsunga saga, and the two texts were clearly intended to be read as a unit. This coupling underlines the genealogical ambition: Ragnar is presented as a descendant of Sigurd the dragon-slayer, and through him the heroic myth is joined to the historical saga world.

A From Sigi to Sigmund: the rise of the lineage

The saga begins with the divine origin of the lineage. Sigi, a son of Odin, founds a dynasty that over the generations moves toward increasingly human conditions. His grandson Völsung is born through divine intervention and gives his name to the entire clan. Völsung builds his hall around the great oak Barnstokkr, and it is in this hall that Odin himself enters and thrusts a sword into the trunk of the tree, a sword that only the worthy can draw.

Sigmund, the son of Völsung, is the one who succeeds in drawing the sword from Barnstokkr. This act marks him as the chosen one and sets in motion a long series of trials. The fate of his twin sister Signý is interwoven with his: she is married off against her will, and the vengeance she plans demands that she sacrifice everything. The incest motif, in which Signý changes her shape to conceive Sinfjötli with her brother, is one of the saga's most discussed elements.

Sigmund and Sinfjötli live as outlaws in the forest, where they undergo a series of werewolf transformations and violent ordeals. These episodes have an initiatory character and recall the berserker tradition. The vengeance against Siggeirr is finally accomplished, and Signý chooses to die in the hall she herself has set ablaze. Sigmund's later life is marked by war, love, and finally a battle in which Odin himself shatters the sword he once bestowed.

A Sigurd the dragon-slayer: the core of the saga

The second half of the saga revolves around Sigurd, the posthumous son of Sigmund. Sigurd is fostered by the dwarf Regin, who teaches him the arts of war and smithcraft. Regin forges the sword Gram from the shards of Sigmund's shattered blade, and with this weapon Sigurd slays the dragon Fafnir on the Gnita Heath. The scene is the most iconic in all of Old Norse heroic literature and appears in carvings on runestones and stave church portals.

After the dragon-slaying, Sigurd roasts Fafnir's heart and burns his fingertip. When he puts his finger to his mouth he suddenly understands the speech of birds. The birds warn him of Regin's treachery, and Sigurd kills his foster-father. He then rides to Hindarfjall, where he awakens the valkyrie Brynhild from an enchanted sleep cast upon her by Odin. Their meeting and the oaths they swear to each other form the romantic high point of the saga.

Sigurd's arrival at the Burgundian court sets the tragic unravelling in motion. Through Grímhild's magic potion he forgets Brynhild and marries Gudrún. Brynhild is in turn married off to Gunnar under deceitful circumstances, and her fury at the betrayal drives the action toward the murder of Sigurd. Brynhild has a pyre raised and takes her own life at Sigurd's side. This dual scene closes the central arc of the heroic saga and leads into Gudrún's laments and tales of vengeance.

B Relationship to the Eddic sources

Völsunga saga functions as a prose paraphrase of the heroic Eddic lays, and its primary text-critical value lies in preserving material that has been lost from the Codex Regius. The Great Lacuna in that manuscript, which encompasses one or more poems about Sigurd and Brynhild, can be partly reconstructed through the corresponding chapters of the saga. Scholars such as R.G. Finch and Jesse Byock have demonstrated how closely the saga author followed his poetic models.

At the same time, the saga is more than a simple paraphrase. The author added genealogical material, restructured the chronology, and inserted prose scenes that have no direct poetic counterpart. The opening narrative about Sigi and Rerir, for instance, has no known Eddic source and may derive from oral tradition or another lost written source. This free handling of the material makes the saga an independent literary work.

The comparison between the saga and the Eddic poems also reveals differences in tone and perspective. Where the Eddic lay is often elliptical and assumes that the listener knows the background, the saga explains the context and fills in gaps. This difference reflects the genre shift from orally performed poetry to written prose intended for reading.

B Scholarly reception and modern interpretations

Völsunga saga received early attention during the era of Romantic nationalism. Jacob Grimm and his contemporaries saw in the text a Norse parallel to the Nibelungenlied, and the comparison between the two traditions became a central topic in Germanic philology throughout the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner drew heavily on Völsunga saga rather than the German source for his Ring des Nibelungen, giving the Norse version a place in European cultural history.

In modern scholarship, interest has shifted from textual criticism toward literary questions. Scholars such as Jesse Byock have analysed the saga's social structures and shown how its conflicts mirror Icelandic society's norms regarding honour, kinship, and vengeance. Kaplan and Jochens have examined the gender roles, above all Signý and Brynhild as women of agency within a patriarchal narrative tradition.

In recent decades, comparative mythology has emphasised the Indo-European roots of the Sigurd cycle. Parallels have been drawn to the Irish Ulster Cycle and to Indian heroic narratives. This comparative approach has helped to place Völsunga saga in a broader cultural context, beyond the strictly North Germanic frame.

Interpretive traditions

A What we know

Völsunga saga is preserved in NKS 1824 b 4to (ca. 1400) and was probably compiled in Iceland around 1260.

The text is a prose romance based on the heroic Eddic lays, above all poems from the Codex Regius.

The saga is the most important source for reconstructing the Great Lacuna in the Codex Regius.

B What we think we know

The author probably had access to a more complete version of the Codex Regius than the one that survives.

The opening chapters about Sigi and Rerir may derive from lost oral or written tradition.

The saga's genealogical structure suggests that dynastic legitimisation was among its purposes.

C What we do not know

The identity of the saga's author is unknown, and it remains uncertain whether one or several persons were responsible for the compilation.

The relationship between Völsunga saga and continental versions of the Sigurd myth is still debated.