Page:Poeticedda00belluoft.djvu/407

The Reginsmol is little more than a clumsy mosaic, but in the Fafnismol it is possible to distinguish between the main substance of the poem and the interpolations.

Here, as in the Reginsmol, there is very little that bespeaks the German origin of the Sigurth story. Sigurth's winning of the treasure is in itself undoubtedly a part of the earlier southern legend, but the manner in which he does it is thoroughly Norse. Moreover, the concluding section, which points toward the finding of the sleeping Brynhild, relates entirely to the northern Valkyrie, the warrior-maiden punished by Othin, and not at all to the southern Brynhild the daughter of Buthli. The Fafnismol is, however, sharply distinguished from the Reginsmol by showing no clear traces of the Helgi tradition, although a part of the bird song (stanzas 40-44, in Fornyrthislag form, as distinct from the body of the poem) sounds suspiciously like the bird passage in the beginning of the Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar. Regarding the general relations of the various sets of traditions in shaping the story of Sigurth, see the introductory note to Gripisspo.

The Fafnismol, together with a part of the Sigrdrifumol, has indirectly become the best known of all the Eddic poems, for the reason that Wagner used it, with remarkably little change of outline, as the basis for his "Siegfried."

^[1]Sigurth and Regin went up to the Gnitaheith^[2], and found there the track that Fafnir^[3] made when he crawled to water. Then Sigurth made a great trench across the path, and took his place therein. When Fafnir crawled from his gold, he blew out venom, and it ran down from above on Sigurth's head.^[4] But when Fafnir crawled over the trench, then Sigurth thrust his sword into his body