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Poetic Edda

57.[1] "Oddrun as wife  thou fain wouldst win,But Atli this  from thee withholds;Yet in secret tryst  ye twain shall love;She shall hold thee dear,  as I had doneIf kindly fate  to us had fallen.
58.[2] "Ill to thee  shall Atli bring,When he casts thee down  in the den of snakes.
59.[3] "But soon thereafter  Atli tooHis life, methinks,  as thou shalt lose,(His fortune lose  and the lives of his sons;)Him shall Guthrun,  grim of heart,With the biting blade  in his bed destroy.
60.[4] "It would better beseem  thy sister fair
  1. ↑ Stanzas 57-58 seem to be the remains of two stanzas, but the Volsungasaga paraphrase follows closely the form here given. Line 3 may well be spurious; line 5 has likewise been questioned. Oddrun: this sister of Atli and Brynhild, known mainly through the Oddrunargratr, is a purely northern addition to the cycle, and apparently one of a relatively late date. She figures solely by reason of her love affair with Gunnar.
  2. ↑ Possibly two lines have been lost; many editions combine the two remaining lines with lines 1-3 of stanza 59. Concerning the manner of Gunnar's death cf. Drap Niflunga.
  3. ↑ Line 3 may well be spurious, as it is largely repetition. The manuscript has "sofa" ("sleep") in place of "sona" ("sons"), but the Volsungasaga paraphrase says clearly "sons." The slaying of Atli by Guthrun in revenge for his killing of her brothers is told in the two Atli lays. The manuscript marks line 4 as the beginning of a new stanza, and some editions make a separate stanza out of lines 4-5, or else combine them with stanza 60.
  4. ↑ To follow in death: this phrase is not in Regius, but is

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