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Poetic Edda

Where my foster-father  ruled his folk;Best of all  he seemed to be,The prince of the Danes,  when the people met.
12.[1] "Happy we slept,  one bed we had,As he my brother  born had been;Eight were the nights  when neither thereLoving hand  on the other laid.
13. "Yet Guthrun reproached me,  Gjuki's daughter,That I in Sigurth's  arms had slept;Then did I hear  what I would were hid,That they had betrayed me  in taking a mate.
14.[2] "Ever with grief  and all too longAre men and women  born in the world;But yet we shall live  our lives together,Sigurth and I.  Sink down, Giantess!"

    Gripisspo, 19 and 27). Grani: Sigurth's horse. Danes: nowhere else does Sigurth appear in this capacity. Perhaps this is a curious relic of the Helgi tradition.

  1. ↑ Eight nights: elsewhere (cf. Gripisspo, 42) the time is stated as three nights, not eight. There is a confusion of traditions here, as in Gripisspo. In the version of the story wherein Sigurth met Brynhild before he encountered the Gjukungs, Sigurth was bound by no oaths, and the union was completed; it is only in the alternative version that the episode of the sword laid between the two occurs.
  2. ↑ The idea apparently conveyed in the concluding lines, that Sigurth and Brynhild will be together in some future life, is utterly out of keeping with the Norse pagan traditions, and the whole stanza indicates the influence of Christianity.

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