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Poetic Edda

The princes did us service,  for such was their fear;From the forest we called  them we fain would have guiltless,And rich made we many  who of all were bereft.
94.[1] "Slain was the Hun-king,  soon happiness vanished,In her grief the widow  so young sat weeping;Yet worse seemed the sorrow  to seek Atli's house,A hero was my husband,  and hard was his loss.
95.[2] "From the Thing thou camst never,  for thus have we heard,Having won in thy quarrels,  or warriors smitten;Full yielding thou wast,  never firm was thy will,In silence didst suffer,  ........"
  Atli spake:96. "Thou liest now, Guthrun,  but little of good
  1. ↑ Hun-king: Sigurth, though most illogically so called; cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 4 and note. The Volsungasaga paraphrase of line 2 is so remote as to be puzzling: "It was little to bear the name of widow." Perhaps, however, the word "not" fell out between "was" and "little."
  2. ↑ Thing, etc.: here the poet makes Atli into a typical Norse land-owner, going to the "Thing," or general law council, to settle his disputes. Even the compilers of the Volsungasaga could not accept this, and in their paraphrase changed "Thing" to "battle." The text of the second half of line 2 is uncertain. The manuscript leaves a blank to indicate the gap in line 4; Grundtvig adds: "as beseems not a king."

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