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Brot af Sigurtharkvithu

filled approximately the latter half of the lost section of the manuscript, the first half including poems of which the only trace is to be found in the Volsungasaga prose paraphrase and in two of the stanzas therein quoted.

The course of the Volsungasaga's story from the Sigrdrifumol to the Brot is, briefly, as follows. After leaving the Valkyrie, Sigurth comes to the dwelling of Heimir, Brynhild's brother-in-law, where he meets Brynhild and they swear oaths of fidelity anew (the Volsungasaga is no more lucid with regard to the Brynhild-Sigrdrifa confusion than was the annotator of the poems). Then the scene shifts to the home of the Gjukungs. Guthrun, Gjuki's daughter, has a terrifying dream, and visits Brynhild to have it explained, which the latter does by foretelling pretty much everything that is going to happen; this episode was presumably the subject of a separate poem in the lost section of the manuscript. Guthrun returns home, and Sigurth soon arrives, to be made enthusiastically welcome. Grimhild, mother of Gunnar and Guthrun, gives him a magic draught which makes him forget all about Brynhild, and shortly thereafter he marries Guthrun.

Then follows the episode of the winning of Brynhild for Gunnar (cf. Gripisspo, 37 and note). This was certainly the subject of a poem, possibly of the first part of the "Long" Lay of Sigurth, although it seems more likely that the episode was dealt with in a separate poem. The Volsungasaga quotes two stanzas describing Sigurth's triumphant passing through the flames after Gunnar has failed and the two have changed forms. They run thus:

The fire raged,  the earth was rocked,The flames leaped high  to heaven itself;Few were the hardy  heroes would dareTo ride or leap  the raging flames.
Sigurth urged Grani  then with his sword,The fire slackened  before the hero,The flames sank low  for the greedy of fame,The armor flashed  that Regin had fashioned.

After Sigurth has spent three nights with Brynhild, laying his sword between them (cf. Gripisspo, 41 and note), he and Gunnar return home, while Brynhild goes to the dwelling of her brother-in-law, Heimir, and makes ready for her marriage with Gunnar,

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