Brynhild Oddness

While the saga author does a remarkably good job of rendering a
readable, cohesive story out of these many conflicting traditions, the
seams are still visible in places in the saga. For instance, in the poem
Sigrdrífumál (Sigrdrifumal) preserved in the Poetic Edda, the hero
Sigurđ encounters a Valkyrie named Sigrdrífa who gives him advice
after he awakens her from her enchanted slumber inside a ring of fire.
Much of this poem is quoted and paraphrased in chapters 20–21 of
the Saga of the Volsungs, but here the words of Sigrdrífa are attrib-
uted to Brynhild. It is unclear in the Poetic Edda whether Sigrdrífa and
Brynhild are the same person, but the saga author unambiguously
presents them as one, never mentioning the name Sigrdrífa.

After this first encounter with Brynhild, the saga has Sigurđ ride away
to the home of Brynhild’s foster-father Heimir, where he finds Brynhild
again, living much as any other woman might. It is never explained how
or why Brynhild has suddenly moved, and she and Sigurđ hardly seem
to know each other at all when they meet again in chapter 24. More-
over, in chapter 27, when Sigurđ rides through Brynhild’s ring of fire a
second time, the text explicitly says that no one has done it before, and
in chapters 29 and 31 we read hints of another tradition in which Gunnar
had to threaten her foster-father Buđli for her hand in marriage. It could
be that some of the confusion arises from the mixing of traditions about
the meeting and courting of two different Valkyries, one who was pos-
sibly originally named Sigrdrífa and the other Brynhild. Or perhaps
Sigrdrífa (which means roughly “victory-driver”) was not originally a
separate woman’s name but rather a poetic title for the Valkyrie’s role as
chooser of victors and losers on the battlefield, and in some branches of
the tradition this became misunderstood as a name. Nevertheless, the
way the saga author handles the multiple meetings with Brynhild shows
a desire to incorporate as much traditional material as possible, while
attempting to forge it all into a straightforward chronology of events.


(taken from the Introduction included with the translation of Volsunga Saga used for this thread)