Magic Garments

After Brynhild’s death two pyres were made, one was for Sigurd, and that was kindled first, and Brynhild was burnt on the second one, and she was in a wagon draped with costly woven tapestries. It is said that Brynhild drove the wagon along the road to hell and went past a home-meadow where a certain giantess lived. The giantess said:

1 ‘You shall not journey through
my homestead set with stone;
it would befit you better to be at your weaving
than to be going to visit another woman’s man.

2 ‘What should you be visiting, from the southern land,
with your giddy mind, in my houses?
Gold-goddess, if you wish to know,
you, gentle lady, have washed your hands in a man’s blood.’

Then Brynhild said:
3 ‘Don’t reproach me, lady living in the rock,
that I’ve been on viking expeditions;
I shall be accepted as of better ancestry than you
wherever people compare our lineage.’

The giantess said:
4 ‘Brynhild, Budli’s daughter,
you were born as the worst luck in the world;
you have ruined the children of Giuki
and destroyed their good dwelling-places.’

5 ‘I must tell you, I, the clever woman in the wagon,
you very stupid woman, if you wish to know,
how the heirs of Giuki made me love-bereft,
and made me an oath-breaker.

6 ‘The courageous king had our magic garments—
those of us eight sisters—put under an oak;*
I was twelve years old, if you wish to know,
when I gave my promise to the young prince.

7 ‘They all called me in Hlymdale,
anyone who knew me, War-lady in the helmet.*

8 ‘Then I let the old man of the Gothic people,
Helmet-Gunnar, quickly go off to hell;
I gave the young man victory, Auda’s brother;
Odin was very angry with me for that.


- Poetic Edda, Helreið Brynhildar


("put under an oak: this part of Brynhild’s story is unclear and not mentioned elsewhere. Most likely the motif is borrowed from swan-maiden stories, like the one in the Poem of Volund. Brynhild and her sisters were able to change their shape by means of the magic garments, probably into some kind of bird, in connection with their life as Valkyries. A king—perhaps Gunnar, perhaps Atli—brings this life to an end by taking the shape-changing garment and forcing her into marriage. Or conceivably this is a reference to the beginning of the Valkyrie’s career, acquiring the magic garments from beneath the tree." - from the Explanatory Notes section included with the translation)

("War-lady in the helmet: a kenning for a Valkyrie." - from the Explanatory Notes section included with the translation)