Sleep Thorn Sigrdrifumal

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.

3 ‘Hail to the day! Hail to the sons of day!
Hail to night and her kin!
With gracious eyes may you look upon us two,
and give victory to those sitting here!

4 ‘Hail to the Æsir! Hail to the goddesses!
Hail to the mighty, fecund earth!
May you give eloquence and native wit to this glorious pair
and healing hands while we live!’

She was called Sigrdrifa and was a valkyrie. She said that there were two kings who were fighting one another; one was called Helmet-Gunnar, he was old and a great warrior and Odin had promised him victory; and:

‘the other was Agnar, the brother of Auda,
whom no creature wanted to protect.’

Sigrdrifa brought down Helmet-Gunnar in battle. And Odin pricked her with a sleep-thorn in revenge for this and said that she would never again fight victoriously in battle and said that she should be married. ‘And I said to him that I had sworn a great counter-oath, to marry no man who was acquainted with fear.’* He asked her to teach him wisdom, if she had news from all the worlds.


- Poetic Edda, Sigrdrifumal


("acquainted with fear: this is the condition of marriage which Brynhild makes, pointing to an original identity between Sigrdrifa and Brynhild. Certainly Sigrdrifa is not known to Snorri, nor does this name appear in Volsunga saga." - from the Explanatory Notes section included with the translation)