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Gripisspo

  Gripir spake:39.[1] "The form of Gunnar  and shape thou gettest,But mind and voice  thine own remain;The hand of the fosterling  noble of HeimirNow dost thou win,  and none can prevent."
  Sigurth spake:40. "Most evil it seems,  and men will sayBase is Sigurth  that so he did;Not of my will  shall I cheat with wilesThe heroes' maiden  whom noblest I hold."
  Gripir spake:41.[2] "Thou dwellest, leader  lofty of men,With the maid as if  thy mother she were;Lofty as long  as the world shall live,Ruler of men,  thy name shall remain."
  1. ↑ The last half of line 4 is obscure, and the reading is conjectural.
  2. ↑ Something is clearly wrong with stanzas 41-43. In the manuscript the order is 41, 43, 42, which brings two of Gripir's answers together, followed by two of Sigurth's questions. Some editors have arranged the stanzas as in this translation, while others have interchanged 41 and 43. In any case, Sigurth in stanza 42 asks about the "three nights" which Gripir has never mentioned. I suspect that lines 3-4 of stanza 41, which are practically identical with lines 3-4 of stanza 23, got in here by mistake, replacing two lines which may have run thus: "With thy sword between,  three nights thou sleepest / With her thou winnest  for Gunnar's wife." The subsequent poems tell how Sigurth laid his sword Gram between himself and Brynhild.

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