Sigurd's dilemma
Volsung Saga is the original Sword and Sorcery novel.It’s got Swords, it’s got sorcery. It’s short, exploitative, punchy.
Tolkien is fully in its debt. Sure, Beowulf has got a gold-guarding dragon; Tolkien did his own translation of that one. But the ‘Children of Hurin’ arc in the Silmarilion is, in it’s essense and in many of its particulars, a re-working of the Volsung material.
This is Sigurd’s Dilemma:
Regin adopted Sigurd, last of the Volsungs, as a prisoner of war. Regin groomed the Volsung hero from boyhood for the task of killing the dragon Fafnir.
In another life, Fafnir had been Regin’s brother. Fafnir took the Inherittance of the Nibelung Brothers and disappeared beneath the earth behind his helm of terror. Fafnir turned from man to Dragon and waits now in an iron vault, sleeping atop the Nibelung Treasure.
Regin tells Sigurd not to worry; he will forge a sword equal to the task of killing the dragon.
When the sword is complete, Sigurd tests it.
It breaks.
Rinse and repeat. Again, the sword breaks. It’s not that Regin is a bad smith; it’s that Sigurd is a total badass.
Regin tries again; this time he makes the perfect blade, which the Volsung hero names ‘Gram’.
Forging a sword is no small feat, no light endeavor. Regin was willing to forge three entire blades just to make sure Sigurd went against Fafnir. This is meaningful; Regin really wanted his brother dead.
At Regin’s urging and with his guidance, Sigurd scouts out the dragon’s lair and sets a trap.
And when finally Sigurd the dragon-slayer slays the dragon Fafnir.
"Regin stood and looked down at the ground for a long time. Then afterward he said with much emotion: 'You have killed my brother, and I am hardly blameless in this deed.
Fast-Forward:
Regin asks Sigurd if he will cut out the dragons heart and roast it for him.
Sigurd obliges.
When Sigurd tastes the juices of the dragon’s heart to ensure that it’s cooked, he finds that he can understand the speech of birds. The birds in a nearby tree are calling him foolish; doesn’t he know that Regin is going to kill him?
This idea comes up often enough in the Icelandic Sagas that it might have been a cultural institution, or at least a sort of best practice. you don’t let people live after they kill your family. Nor do you let people live after you’ve killed their family.
If Regin kills Sigurd, it’s because he has to.
Instead, Sigurd decapitates Regin. Because he has to.
Take a second to think about how grim and strange all of this is. Regin invested years in getting Sigurd to kill Fafnir; Regin regrets the deed, but not so much that he won’t roast and eat his own brother’s heart- only to be murdered by his own ward, a ward he had spent years setting up for betrayal.
Reading Volsung Saga let’s you know why they call the Dark Ages ‘dark’.
Volsung Saga was recorded in the 13th century, but it contains informaton which goes back to Attila the Hun, the migration period,the collapse of Roman Imperialism, the rise of the Gothic States in Spain and Gaul- the 4th and 5th centuries, that’s like…
900 years of the Volsung Saga.
It’s like holding a cultural memory of shocking violence in the palm of your hand. Beneath it’s primal substance, Volsung Saga courses with primal grief. It is a chain of tribal memories eroded by long stretches of time and forgetting. It is also a heavily encrypted mnemonic device built on armatures much older than the events it describes.
Layers: Sati 'The Chaste'
Brynhild is a chaste woman, pledged to a peerless warrior. Through an act of deception, she is wed to a lesser man. Brynhild kills Sigurd because she cannot bear the humiliation she endures. This only causes her more grief, and she throws herself onto his funeral pyre.
Brynhild is burnt alive with the corpse of Sigurd, and the star-crossed lovers are at last wed in the ashes and fire.
Is Brynhild based on the Hindu Goddess Sati?
Let’s dig a little deeper into this to sound the depth of it’s resonance. Wikipedia further states:
The Mahabhagavata Purana presents Sati as a fierce warrior. ...[] Sati, as Kali, went to the sacrifice and split herself into two entities- one real but invisible, another just chhaya- shadow or clone. Chhaya Sati destroyed the sacred event by jumping into the sacrificial fire, while the 'real' Sati was reborn as Parvati.
Another popular tradition holds that the charred body of Sati was carried around the universe by a grieving Shiva, and whereever her remains fell, a shrine to the mother goddess was instituted.There are 76 such sites, called Shakti Pithas, still in use.
Humiliation, self-immolation, and warrior women…
I will admit that trying to fit a Brynhild-shaped peg into a Sati-shaped hole requires some imagination. It would be easier to write off the similarities if there weren’t other outstanding features of Vedic literature which appear to have contaminated the Norse Eddic material. Vedic and Eddic even sound similar. You might say, that’s a false etymology, but… More on that later.
Brynhild's Wavering Flames
When we find Brynhild’s gold-roofed hall, it’s surrounded by wavering flames. Only a dauntless hero would dare leap into the fire and ride across her Wavering Flames.
When Brynhild immolates herself on Sigurd’s pyre, she is no longer immune to fire. perhaps she was brought down to the terrestrial sphere when she was wed to Gunnar. Or perhaps her Wavering Flames were never flames at all.
I think Brynhild’s wavering flames are the Northern Lights, and Brynhild’s gold-roofed hall is the polar axis. The Valkyrie gate-keeps the rainbow bridge to the land of Asgard, home of the Gods.
Brynhild guards the Warrior’s Way to transcendence, the road to High Magic, inside her gold-roofed palace.
And Fafnir guards the way to Brynhild-
Fafnir as Draco
Is Volsung Saga the original ‘Dragon Guarding A Princess’ myth?
Only after slaying Fafnir is Sigurd translated into the reality Brynhild inhabits.
If Brynhild’s Wavering Flames are the Northern Lights, and her citadel is at the roof of the world, what if Fafnir is the constellation Draco?
Draco is the 8th largest constellation in the sky, and it is circumpolar. From time immemorial the dragon has hung in the Northern sky, guarding the approach to that still point around which the whole sky appears to revolve: True North.
Alpha Draconis, Thuban, the Tail of the Dragon, used to be the Pole Star 2,600 years ago!
The Sigurd/Brynhild/Fafnir/Polar Axis complex was built on an earlier template that is written across the sky itself.
Notice King Cepheus near Draco; he was Andromeda’s father, the Andromeda that Perseus rescued from the sea monster- and the lyre of Orpheus is there, Orpheus who faced hell itself to bring his lover back from death;
And see Hercules, right in front of Draco. Some say Hercules killed the great dragon Ladon in order to win the golden apples from the tree in the center of the Garden of the Hesperides.
At The Garden of the Hesperides
According to the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, only Prometheus knew the way to the Garden of the Hesperides. Before setting out on his quest for the golden apples, Hercules had to travel to the Caucasus mountains to liberate the primeval titan from torture and bondage. After Hercules kills the great eagle and severs the chains of Hapheastus, Prometheus tells the that the Garden he seeks may be found among the Hyperboreans in the extreme north of the world, where Atlas holds up the planetary axis.
‘Hesperides’ means something like ‘Daughters of the Sunset’, or ‘Nymphs of The West’. The Garden of the Hesperides would be a realm of unending twilight, not unlike certain months in the Arctic.
In one version of the story, Hercules tricks Atlas into retrieving the apples while Hercules holds the world on his shoulders for a second. In the version we’ve already mentioned, Hercules goes all Sigurd, kills the dragon, and seizes the golden apples with his own hands.
After Hercules returns to Hellas with the golden apples, Athene comes to retrieve them, for
‘… it was not lawful that they should be laid down anywhere.’
Is this not like the Nibelung treasure? It never abided in one place for long, and whoever held it was condemned to reap no reward from it.
I think the eyes of the hundred-headed Ladon were all the stars in the sky; the golden apples suspended on the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides were no less than the sun, the moon and the planets, a treasure that could never be possessed; and I think the Great Tree the dragon guarded was no less than the planetary axis.
