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Guthrunarkvitha I

25. By the pillars she stood,  and gathered her strength,
From the eyes of Brynhild,  Buthli's daughter,
Fire there burned,  and venom she breathed,
When the wounds she saw  on Sigurth then.

[1]Guthrun went thence away to a forest in the waste, and journeyed all the way to Denmark, and was there seven half-years with Thora, daughter of Hokon.[2] Brynhild[3] would not live after Sigurth. She had eight of her thralls slain and five serving-women. Then she killed herself with a sword, as is told in the Short Lay of Sigurth.

    merely an error (neither Gunnar nor Sigurth could properly have been connected in any way with Atli and his Huns), based on Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, wherein Sigurth appears more than once as the "Hunnish king." The North was very much in the dark as to the differences between Germans, Burgundians, Franks, Goths, and Huns, and used the words without much discrimination. On the other hand, it may refer to Sigurth's appearance when, adorned with gold, he came with Gunnar to besiege Atli, in the alternative version of the story just cited (cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 36). Flame of the snake's bed: gold, so called because serpents and dragons were the traditional guardians of treasure, on which they lay.

  1. ↑ Prose.
  2. ↑ The manuscript has "Gunnar" in place of "Guthrun," but this is an obvious mistake; the entire prose passage is based on Guthrunarkvitha II, 14. The Volsungasaga likewise merely paraphrases Guthrunarkvitha II, and nothing further is known of Thora or her father, Hokon, though many inconclusive attempts have been made to identify the latter.
  3. ↑ Brynhild: the story of her death is told in great detail in the latter part of Sigurtharkvitha en skamma.

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