Sigrdrifumal Runes Mention

Sigurd rode up onto Hindarfell and headed south towards the land of the Franks. On the mountain he saw a great light, as if fire were burning, and gleaming up against the sky. And when he came there, there stood a shield-wall with a banner flying over it. Sigurd went into the shield-wall and saw someone lying there asleep and fully armed. First he took off the helmet, then he saw that it was a woman. Her corslet was tight, as if it had grown into her flesh. So with his sword Gram he cut from the neck of the corslet downwards, and so along both the sleeves. Then he took the corslet off her, and she woke up, sat up, looked at Sigurd, and said:

1 ‘What bit into my corslet? How have I shaken off sleep?
Who has lifted from me my pallid coercion?’

He answered:
‘Sigmund’s son—the sword of Sigurd,
which a short time ago was cutting the raven’s corpse-flesh.’

2 ‘Long I slept, long was I sleeping,
long are the woes of men;
Odin brought it about that I could not break
the sleep-runes.’

Sigurd sat down and asked her name. She took a horn full of mead and gave him a memory-drink.


- Poetic Edda, Sigrdrifumal