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Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I

little or nothing to do with the course of the narrative, and which looks like an expansion of a passage from some older poem, perhaps from the "old Volsung lay" to which the annotator of the second Helgi Hundingsbane lay refers (prose after stanza 12). There are many proper names, some of which betray the confusion caused by the blending of the two sets of traditions; for example, Helgi appears indiscriminately as an Ylfing (which presumably he was before the Volsung story became involved) and as a Volsung. Granmar and his sons are called Hniflungs (Nibelungen) in stanza 50, though they seem to have had no connection with this race. The place names have aroused much debate as to the localization of the action, but while some of them probably reflect actual places, there is so much geographical confusion, and such a profusion of names which are almost certainly mythical, that it is hard to believe that the poet had any definite locations in mind.

1.[1] In olden days,  when eagles screamed,
And holy streams  from heaven's crags fell,
Was Helgi then,  the hero-hearted,
Borghild's son,  in Bralund born.

2.[2] 'Twas night in the dwelling,  and Norns there came,
Who shaped the life  of the lofty one;
They bade him most famed  of fighters all
And best of princes  ever to be.

  1. ↑ The manuscript contains the superscription: "Here begins the lay of Helgi Hundingsbane and h. (Hothbrodd ?) The lay of the Volsungs." Eagles, etc.: the screaming of eagles and water pouring from heaven were portents of the birth of a hero. Borghild: Sigmund's first wife; Bralund was her home, not Sigmund's.
  2. ↑ Norns: cf. Voluspo, 20 and note. Here it is the Norns who

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