The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda

by Anonymous, Eiríkur Magnússon (Translator), William Morris (Translator)

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Mythology, Fiction, Classics, Poetry, Fantasy, Epic, Audiobook

119 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 12, 2012

About the author

Books can be attributed to "Anonymous" for several reasons:

* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author

Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.

See also: Anonymous

Reviews

[Guðrún Gunnarsdóttir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly svo gaman! Hver hefði haldið?🤷‍♀️
Konur eru svo iconic og ég er stolt að vera nafna Guðrúnar Gjúkadóttur.

[Axel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wat een verhaal. Zeer moeilijk om te volgen. Er zijn veel personages die qua naam allemaal wat op elkaar trekken. De meeste personages houden het max. één of twee hoofdstukken vol voor dat ze het loodje leggen. Op enkele uitzonderingen na dan.

Ik heb een versie gelezen die ik online gevonden heb. Het was oud Engels wat het lezen dan ook wat moeilijker maakte. Het einde bevatte deeltjes uit de Poetic Edda, deze heb ik al meteen gelezen maar ook deze stonden in het oud Engels.

Het verhaal gaat over de Volsungs, een familie die afstamt van Odin. Net zoals waar de Noordse folklore voor bekend staat bevat ook dit verhaal veel geweld. Van mythische wezens tot broeders en zusters, niemand is veilig.

De grote lijnen van het verhaal vond ik zeker wel leuk om te volgen. Met momenten enorm absurd en ingewikkeld. Het heeft mijn interesse in de Noordse cultuur verder geprikkeld. Na het lezen heb ik wel even een Youtube video bekeken om toch maar eens te dubbelchecken of ik het niet fout begrepen had. (https://youtu.be/4seWhkArqU4)

Na het lezen ben ik toch wel blij dat we in een tijd leven met iets meer rechten en minder geweld, maar toch de mogelijkheid hebben om verhalen zoals deze te lezen. (thank you internet)

[The Usual · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I’ve got the right book here. What I’ve read is a possibly 1920s Walter Scott Publishing Co. edition rescued, along with a small pile of other, similar-looking volumes, from a bag destined for recycling, and deposited on the Great Indigestible Stockpile for later consumption. It looks like these may have represented someone’s shabby-chic interior design decision (some of the pages were uncut), and that seems peculiarly appropriate when it comes to William Morris, as does talking about aesthetics.

The style of this translation, then, is self-consciously archaic. It’s not in Old English, but has some odd sentence-structures, lots of words like byrnie and hight sprinkled about the place, and features that weird see-sawing between past and present tense that seems to happen in this sort of thing. Like this:

“Then he went home at evening tide and says that Bredi had ridden away from him into the wild wood. ‘Soon was he out of my sight,’ he says, ‘and naught more I wot of him.’”

Not complaining, just saying. And having said, moving on.

From the how to the what, which comes in two parts. There’s “The Story of the Volsungs and Nibelungs” which is in prose, and there’s “Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, which Deal with the Story of the Volsungs” which is in verse and probably ought, for maximum effect, to be sung to you and a slightly beered-up raiding party by an aged skald in a firelit longhouse, possibly as you get a bit lachrymose drinking mead from the skull of a defeated enemy. I’m rather short on skalds and defeated enemies at the moment, so I chose to read them instead. I’m now going to veer dramatically off course.

I have read the Iliad and I did not like it. I found it intensely boring, which is a personal reaction and not an attempt to disrespect someone else’s cultural heritage. Greater minds than mine have admired it and I respect that. Of course, it’s possible I got a duff version and the thing genuinely is the undying masterpiece everyone says it is, and it’s possible that epic poetry about warfare just isn’t to my taste. It’s even possible that I erred by not learning ancient Greek and hiring a megaron, a few cheering warriors and some kind of visually-impaired bard for the occasion – you know, the kind of minimal effort we should all put in. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, I found the thing horribly static and tediously repetitious. Chariot. Stab. Chariot. Stab. Whatsisname breaker of horses. Stab. A good bit with the gods. Chariot. Stab. That sort of thing. I did note, though, that there are an awful lot of names. There’s no point in paying much attention to many of them because they don’t (stab) hang about for long and if you’re not cheering on your team (Go Greeks. Yay!) you probably won’t care much about them, but there are a lot.

There’s a similar density of names in the Volsung saga, and again they don’t hang about for long, but instead of covering a few days in excruciating (Breaker of horses. Spear. Stab. Chariot.) detail, they cover an enormous length of time and get the battles over with in a few lines. We’re talking generations here, leading up to and through Sigurd Fafnir’s Bane with the kind of compression you get in The Silmarillion. These names, though, mostly aren’t whatever the pre-gunpowder equivalent is of canon-fodder, but actually go around doing things: marrying, murdering and marauding; backstabbing and betraying; abducting and avenging; dragon-slaying and shape-shifting. It’s all good, if occasionally incomprehensible, pre-Christian fun, full of warrior logic (honour over intelligence) and tragedian’s logic (blithering idiocy terminating in bloodshed). Odin pokes his nose in from time to time, just because he can.

The verse… I’m no expert on poetry… feels like the sort of thing Wagner would like to set, or like the stuff the Rohirrim spout in The Lord of the Rings.

- Because, you see, I’m reading backwards and can, for the most part, only reference things by reversing time’s arrow. I’m sure Tolkien would have cut his teeth on this sort of thing (quite possibly this translation); I’m sure he pinched a few names and motifs from here, not that it matters. I’m not out to make a point – all authors steal.

The verse covers some of the same ground as the prose, but with a slightly different focus. It has more of an emotional impact, lamenting grief and treachery, and sometimes featuring people dying at great and extremely verbose length. Aria to the prose’s recitative, if you will (but then, perhaps you won’t?). It makes sense to have both in the same volume and to read them back-to-back as they reinforce one another.

And so?

Well, I enjoyed it, even the poetry, which is unusual, but I like dusty old language and becobwebbed vocabulary. I like the style to suit the content. I can recommend it for people like me. If you don’t like that sort of thing, if you get frustrated by having to look up the odd word or by strange, pre-modern grammatical constructions then I’m sure there are more fluid, modern translations out there.

But I wouldn’t have found one of those in the bin.

[×× ri ×× · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enough Greek mythology retellings, it's time to start reimagining whatever the hell is going on here!!!

[Michael McCue · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Story of the Volsungs was preserved in Iceland along with the Edda which is including in part in this edition. While this is considered a Norse saga some of the events go back to when the people who became the Norse were wandering in Central Europe. There are similar stories from Germany and Austria. This translation was difficult to read, the English was stilted and archaic. These tales are brutal and bloody and betrayal happens all the time. There must be a newer better translation somewhere.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Völsunga Saga is one of the central sagas in early Norse literature. An ancient tale of several generations of the Völsungs, an heroic Norse family, it was first written down in Old Norse by an unknown Icelandic poet around the turn of the 13th century as part of the Poetic Edda, a collection of then-old oral sagas in verse. It is the basis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Niblung opera cycle. Many of its themes have crept into English literature. (This 1893 book, translated by Einikr Magnusson and William Morris, is the first English translation of the saga. It can be downloaded at no cost from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1152/1..., or it can be purchased at Amazon.com.)

The Saga has something for everyone: heroism and cowardice, forthrightness and treachery, birth and death, greed and good will, gods and men, and—best of all—everyone dies in the end! This is a classic tale that is the fountain for much of English literature: it has been recounted in many forms. Integrated into the saga is the story of Andvari’s Gold, which entered the Lord of the Rings through the character of the greedy dwarf Smaug. The saga also must be in the Guinness record book for number of proper names—everything had a name—and for the total of deaths by foul means. Because of its importance, I’ll give a précis of the entire saga. If you make it through I award you a gold star. Anyone interested should read the book for more details—the language is magnificent.

The Völsunga Saga begins with King Sigi, son of Odin and Odin‘s wife Frigg, then it passes on through generations of male descendants down to Sigurd (the most heroic and the last of the Völsungs). Of particular importance are the chapters on Sigurd, his wife Gudrun, and Brynhild, a woman shield-warrior who loves Sigurd so much she has him murdered.

King Völsung of Hunland, son of Renrir and so Sigi’s grandson, had twin children: a son (Sigmund) and a daughter (Signy). Over her objections, Signy was betrothed to King Siggeir of Gothland. At the wedding feast Odin appeared as an old man, a one-eyed stranger with a gleaming sword. He buried the sword deep in a tree named Branstock and challenged everyone to extract it. All tried in vain until Sigmund’s turn, when the sword came out easily. Sigmund kept the sword and named it Gram. (Thus did Odin start the tale of Excalibur, King Arthur, and Camelot.)

King Siggeir left the wedding feast feeling that he had been insulted by the Völsungs, so he vowed revenge. He invited King Völsung and Sigmund to visit Gothland, and when they arrived his men attacked them and their warriors. All, including King Völsung, were killed with the exception of nine men who were captured, Sigmund among them. Every night a she-wolf came to the captives and ate one of them. On the ninth night (nine is an important number, the number of worlds in Norse mythology), when Sigmund was to be eaten, Signy came and slathered him with honey, even putting a large quantity into his mouth. When the she-wolf arrived it was distracted by the honey and began licking it. Eventually it went for the honey-gob in Sigmund’s mouth, putting its tongue in Sigmund’s mouth to extract it. (Thus began French kissing.) Sigmund bit the wolf’s tongue off and it ran away.

After the she-wolf departed Signy helped Sigmund escape from captivity and he lived in the Gothland woods for many years while Siggeir thought he was dead; Signy visited often, sometimes staying the night. Signy had two sons with Siggeir whom she sent to Sigmund to be his assistants. He found them useless and lazy. When he told Signy she said he should kill them, which he did (so much for a Norse mother’s love). Then Signy had a son who was Sigmund’s; she never let on that it wasn’t Siggeir’s son. so Sigmund thought the boy was his nephew. The boy was named Sinfjotli and since both his parents were Völsungs he grew to be a great warrior. Signy died soon after this.

When he was an old man Sigmund was killed in battle when left defenseless after Odin came down and destroyed the great sword Glam that he had given Sigmund at Signy’s wedding feast. A Valkyrie (a woman responsible for collecting the dead from battlefields and taking them to Valhalla) asked Sigmund if he wanted to be restored to life or go to Valhalla; Sigmund chose the high road.

Soon after his death, Sigmund’s wife gave birth to a son named Sigurd, who inherited the pieces of the great sword that Odin had destroyed. Sigurd, an orphan, was raised by a king named Regin, who had two brothers named Otter and Fafnir. Fafnir was a venomous worm (dragon) who protected a trove of gold that had been stolen from the dwarf Andvari. Regin and Sigurd made a pact: Regin would have the pieces of Sigmund’s sword Glam reassembled as good as new if Sigurd agreed to kill Fafnir; Regin and Sigurd would then share the treasure.

Regin delivered the restored sword and Sigurd used it to kill Fafnir (who took a long time to die so they had a lengthy conversation about life). When Fafnir was dead, Sigurd roasted his heart for a meal, during which he imbibed a drop of Fafnir’s blood. The blood had the surprising effect of allowing Sigurd to understand the language of the birds. He discovered that they were chatting about how foolish Sigurd was—-Regin, they say, has tricked Sigurd into killing Fafnir and now he plans to kill Sigurd so he can keep all the treasure. (yes, a little bird told him!) So Sigurd decapitates Regin with the new sword, and keeps Andvari’s gold for himself.

Sigurd, now called Sigurd Fafnir’s-Bane is the Cock of the Walk—-he is very handsome, with long wavy red hair and a very tall and strong build. He is the best warrior in a world that values warcraft above any other skill, and now he is very rich from Andvari’s gold. He is every bride’s hope and every mother-in-law’s dream. His only blood-debt is the revenge of his father’s death, a debt he soon collects when he kills the king who killed Sigmund.

Soon after this he comes upon a sleeping woman, a shield-warrior named Brynhild, whom he wakes up. They talk and he sees that Brynhild is very fair, very wise, and able to see the future. For her part, she has vowed to her father to marry the greatest warrior in the land, and that is Sigurd. Since they make such a good match they “pledge their troths.” But when they meet again a few days later, Brynhild prophesies that Sigurd will marry her good friend, Gudrun, who is the daughter of King Giuki and whose family is called the Giukings.

And so it came to pass. Sigurd went to Gudrun’s land where her friend Brynhild was also visiting. At a feast for his arrival Gudrun’s mother gave Sigurd a cup of wine laced with a potion that made him forget his love for Brynhild and look fondly on Gudrun. The mother also worked to get her son Gunnar married to Brynhild, hoping to get Brynhild out of the way and to upgrade the future of her mediocre son.

Brynhild had promised her father that she would marry the bravest warrior in the land, so she sets a test for Gunnar to pass if he is to win her hand: he has to ride Sigurd’s horse Grani through a great fire while carrying Sigurd’s sword Glam, then fight warriors waiting on the other side of the fire. If he could do this and survive, he would be as great as Sigurd and she would marry Gunnar.

Gunnar tries but fails to go into the fire—he doesn't have the skill and Glam isn't about to run through fire for him. So Gudrun’s mother does some shape-switching: she makes Sigurd look like Gunnar and vice-versa. Sigurd, as Gunnar, then takes Grani the horse and Glam the sword through the fire. Brynhild, thinking it was Gunnar who passed the test, agrees to marry Gunnar.

After the wedding things seem to be going well. But one day Gudrun gets angry with Brynhild and tells her about the shape-switch. Brynhild gets mightily pissed at the betrayal and she goes into a deep anger-induced depression: her husband is false, her true love is lost to her and has betrayed her, and her best friend was part of the plot. She vows revenge on Sigurd and compels Gunnar to kill him. Gunnar has taken an oath of loyalty to Sigurd and won’t break it, so he asks his brother Guttorm to do the deed. (Norse ethics are strange: you don’t want to break an oath but it’s OK to arrange a murder?).

Guttorm steals into Sigurd’s room when he is asleep and stabs him, but before Sigurd dies he throws Gram and kills Guttorm. The last of the Völsungs is dead without a male heir; even Granli, the faithful horse, dies—toppling over from heartbreak on learning of Sigurd Fafnir-Bane’s death. The Giulkings take Sigurd’s gold. Gunnar becomes very rich through this treachery.

Brynhild has had her revenge and she soon of heartbreak, but not before telling Gunnar about future events. Gudrun will go off to marry Atli, Brynhild’s brother. Gudrun resists the marriage so it is fueled by another of Gudrun’s mother’s potions. Atli begins to wonder how the Giulkings got so wealthy. He decides that after Sigurd’s death Andvari’s gold is rightfully Gudrun’s, so since Gudrun is now his wife Atli figures that the gold is his. He also decides that he has a blood-debt for the death of his sister Brunhild, .

So Atli invites all the Giulkings to visit him bearing their gold and goods. Gunnar and his remaining brother Hoagni naively accept the invitation over the strong objections of their wives. (Norse men were strong but dumb, their women weak but smart—it has ever been thus.) When they arrive Atli’s forces attack and after great bloodshed Gunnar and Hoagni are captured and killed. Thus ends the Giulking line except for Gudrun and a surprise late entry, Niblung (Hoagi’s son and Gudrun’s nephew). Also alive is Swanhilde, daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun.

Gudrun never liked Atli anyhow, but now she is appalled at his behavior and his murder of her two brothers. She conspires with Hoagi’s son Niblung and they kill Atli and Atli’s two sons with Gudrun. Thus, Atli’s line ends.

The only characters left standing are Gudrun, Swanhild, and Niblung. But don’t worry, they will die soon. Well, not all—Niblung will survive to inherit Gudrun's estate, which incudes Andvari’s gold. He will be the leadoff character for the Niblung Saga, another great Norse saga.

But that's another story.

Five stars for the overwhelming importance of the Völsunga Saga, and for the surprisingly entertaining writing.

[Rhonda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The source of much and more

The origin of some of the spices and flavors found in Tolkien and Martin. With dwarves and dragons, cursed gold and children cooked and served to their father. This is the genesis of all fantasy from Disney surrounding Sleeping Beauty with thorns and flames to a forest named Mirkwood.

[Aron M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool stories. Boring and confusing poetry. Not a big fan of King Alfred

[sb · Rating 3 out of 5]

brynhild deserved better because this was diabolical

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not actually read the whole volume, as I was uninterested (for now) in the excerpts from the Elder Edda, but the actual Völsungasaga proved to be just what I wanted: a turn-of-the-century syntax translation deliberately retaining some of the original Norse vocabulary (or what I assume to be Anglicized transliterations) that tells the story of Sigurd and Gudrun in otherwise unadorned and unembellished prose.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read this in entirety once, and have re-read bits and pieces over the years. I've found it to be pretty engaging by historic standards, although somewhat hard to follow at times by modern entertainment standards. If you like mythology and can deal with not always getting a big payoff, this is a great read.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morris does a great job of capturing the sound of Old English poetry (I realize this would have been old Norse or Icelandic). Really fine alliterative quality.

[Shantel Ramlo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vikings, magic, idiotic but lovable characters, and pages upon pages of medieval insults. Absolutely loved it.

[Joel Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mythic tales of Nordic greed, lust, treachery and vengeance.

[Yuri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aggressively archaic in this translation. Fun for the most part, until you get to a passage obfuscated by a word so old the dictionary doesn't have it.