Sword in the Tree

It is said that King Volsung ordered a magnificent hall to be built,
with a large oak that stood in the middle of the floor with its branches
and beautiful blossoms weaving among the beams in the roof, and its
trunk standing in the middle of the hall. They called this tree Barnstokk.

[...]

And at the time when the wedding and wedding-feast were to be
held, Siggeir was to come as a guest into Volsung’s hall. King Volsung
prepared the feast in the best possible manner, and when everything was
ready on the appointed day, the guests came, including King Siggeir,
and many noble men came with King Siggeir. It is said that many fires
burned within, all along the length of King Volsung’s hall, and at the
center was the apple tree [sic] which has been told of before.
Now it is told that while the guests were seated around the fires
during the feast, a man came into the hall. No one recognized this man.
He was dressed in this way: he had a spotted cloak draped over himself,
he was barefoot, and he had linen pants tied to his legs. He had a
wide-brimmed hat on his head, and he was very tall, elderly, and had only
one eye. This man drew a sword, and then he stabbed it into the tree
trunk and it sank up to the hilt.

No one greeted this man. Then the man spoke: “Whoever draws this
sword out of the tree trunk will receive the sword as a gift from me, and
he will say truly that he never held a better sword in his hand than this
one.” And then the old man left the hall, and no one knew who he was
or where he went.

Now all the men stood up, and they did not hesitate to try to take
the sword, since they thought that the man who took it first would be
its rightful owner. So the highest-born men went to the sword first,
followed by all the others. No one who grasped the sword could pry
it loose in any way. But then Sigmund, Volsung’s son, came to try the
sword, and it came out in his hands as if it had sat there loose for him.
This weapon seemed so good to everyone that no one thought he had
ever seen a sword so good, and King Siggeir offered to buy the sword
from Sigmund for three times its weight in gold. But Sigmund said,
“You could have taken this sword from the tree just as easily as I did, if it
had been meant for you. But now, because it came to me, you will never
receive it from my hand, even if you offer me all the gold you own.”

King Siggeir was angry and thought he had received a mocking reply.
Yet because he was a man of underhanded character, he behaved as
though he didn’t care about the sword at all, but during that evening he
thought up the revenge that he would later carry out.


- Volsunga Saga, Chapters 2 and 3