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Fra Dautha Sinfjotla

words of him if he should not drink from it.[1] He spoke as before with Sigmund. The latter said: "Let it trickle through your beard, Son!"[2] Sinfjotli drank, and straightway was dead. Sigmund bore him a long way in his arms, and came to a narrow and long fjord, and there was a little boat[3] and a man in it. He offered to take Sigmund across the fjord. But when Sigmund had borne the corpse out into the boat, then the craft was full. The man told Sigmund to go round the inner end of the fjord. Then the man pushed the boat off, and disappeared.

King Sigmund dwelt long in Denmark[4] in Borghild's kingdom after he had married her. Thereafter Sigmund went south into the land of the Franks[5], to the kingdom which he had there.[6] There he married Hjordis, the daughter of King Eylimi;[7] their son was Sigurth. King Sigmund fell in a battle with the sons of Hunding[8], and Hjordis then married Alf[9] the son of King Hjalprek. There Sigurth grew up in his boyhood. Sigmund and all his sons were far above all other men in might and stature and courage and every kind of ability. Sigurth, however, was the foremost of all, and all men call him in the old tales the noblest of mankind and the mightiest leader.

  1. ↑ In the Volsungasaga Borghild bids Sinfjotli drink "if he has the courage of a Volsung."
  2. ↑ Sigmund gives his advice because "the king was very drunk, and that was why he spoke thus." Gering, on the other hand, gives Sigmund credit for having believed that the draught would deposit its poisonous contents in Sinfjotli's beard, and thus do him no harm.
  3. ↑ Boat: the man who thus carries off the dead Sinfjotli in his boat is presumably Othin.
  4. ↑ Denmark: Borghild belongs to the Danish Helgi part of the story.
  5. ↑ The Franks: with this the Danish and Norse stories of Helgi and Sinfjotli come to an end, and the Frankish story of Sigurth begins.
  6. ↑ Sigmund's two kingdoms are an echo of the blended tradition.
  7. ↑ Hjordis: just where this name came from is not clear, for in the German story Siegfried's mother is Sigelint, but the name of the father of Hjordis, Eylimi, gives a clew, for Eylimi is the father of Svava, wife of Helgi Hjor-
  8. ↑
  9. ↑

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