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Poetic Edda

3. "Hail to the gods!  Ye goddesses, hail, And all the generous earth!Give to us wisdom  and goodly speech, And healing hands, life-long.
4. "Long did I sleep,  my slumber was long, And long are the griefs of life;Othin decreed  that I could not break The heavy spells of sleep."

[1]Her name was Sigrdrifa[2], and she was a Valkyrie. She said that two kings fought in battle; one was called Hjalmgunnar, an old man but a mighty warrior, and Othin had promised him the victory, and

The other was Agnar,  brother of Autha, [3]None he found  who fain would shield him.

Sigrdrifa slew Hjalmgunnar in the battle, and Othin pricked her with the sleep-thorn in punishment for this, and said that she should never thereafter win victory in battle, but that she should be wedded. "And I said to him that I had made a vow in my turn, that I would

  1. ↑ Prose (after stanza 4). A few editions insert in this prose passage stanzas 7-10 of Helreith Brynhildar, which may or may not have belonged originally to this poem.
  2. ↑ Sigrdrifa: on the error whereby this epithet, "victory-bringer," became a proper name cf. Fafnismol, 44 and note.
  3. ↑ Hjalmgunnar: in Helreith Brynhildar (stanza 8) he is called a king of the Goths, which means little; of him and his adversary, Agnar, we know nothing beyond what is told here. The two lines quoted apparently come from the same poem as stanza 1; the two first lines of the stanza have been reconstructed from the prose thus: "Hjalmgunnar was one,  the hoary king, / And triumph to him  had Heerfather promised."

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