Gunnar and Högni

Summary

Gunnarr and Högni, sons of King Gjúki and Grímhildr and brothers of Guðrún, ruled a people the poems call the Niflungs and the sons of Gjúki. They were Sigurd's brothers-in-law and sworn brothers, then his killers, and then Atli's victims. Their story is told in the Poetic Edda poems Brot af Sigurðarkviðu, the Short Lay of Sigurd, Atlakviða and Atlamál, in the prose Dráp Niflunga, "the slaying of the Niflungs", in Snorri's Skáldskaparmál 48–50 and in the Völsunga saga 26–38. History knows a king named Gundaharius, king of the Burgundians, destroyed by the Huns with his people around 437.

The brothers swore brotherhood to Sigurd when he came to them and married their sister, and Sigurd rode with Gunnarr to woo Brynhildr for him, crossing the fire in Gunnarr's shape. When Brynhildr learned of the deceit she told Gunnarr: you will lose me and my lands unless you kill Sigurd. Högni said: it ill becomes us to break our oaths. So they fed their younger brother Gotthormr, who had sworn nothing, on wolf's and serpent's flesh, and he stabbed Sigurd in his bed. Then the two took Fáfnir's gold and Andvari's ring.

Then Atli, their sister's new husband, sent a messenger to invite them, promising shields, helmets, gold and wide lands. Gunnarr told Högni: I know of no gold we do not have the like of; we have seven halls full of swords with golden hilts. Högni said: look at the ring our sister has sent, there is a wolf's hair on it; our road is a wolfish road. None of his kin urged him on, yet Gunnarr rose as a king should and said: the wolf will rule the Niflungs' inheritance if Gunnarr is lost. Snorri says they hid Fáfnir's gold in the Rhine before they set out, and it has never been found since. They crossed the dark forest to Atli's land, and their sister came out to them and said: you are betrayed, Gunnarr. They seized Gunnarr, "friend of the Burgundians", and set him in fetters; Högni cut down seven with his sword and threw the eighth into the fire.

They asked Gunnarr to buy his life with the gold, and he said: Högni's heart must lie in my hand, bloody, cut from his breast. They cut out the heart of the thrall Hjalli and brought it to him on a plate. Gunnarr said: this is the heart of Hjalli the coward; it trembles on the plate, and it trembled twice as much in his breast. Then they cut out Högni's heart while he lived, and Högni laughed. Gunnarr said: this is the heart of Högni the brave; it does not tremble on the plate, nor did it tremble in his breast. Now no one but I knows where the Niflungs' hoard lies, since Högni lives no more; let the Rhine rule the gold, and let it gleam in the rolling water rather than on the hands of the Huns' children.

They laid the king alive in a pit crawling with serpents, and Gunnarr, alone, struck the harp with his hand and the strings rang: "so should a brave giver of rings keep gold from men". Other versions say his hands were bound, so he struck the harp with his toes, that Guðrún had sent him the harp, and that the serpents all fell asleep except one adder that crept to him and bit until it reached his liver, in Snorri, or his heart, in the saga.

The idea the story turns on is gold and oath. The brothers broke their oath to Sigurd for the gold and the woman, then kept faith with each other to the death. Gunnarr made his brother's death the condition of his silence, so that once he had seen the heart the secret was his alone; he died with it, and the gold went to the river. The gold Andvari cursed killed them as it killed everyone who owned it, but they withheld it from their killer.

We read the names in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the two essays do not read them. Gunnarr is the Burgundian Gundaharius, that is gunþ, "battle", and hari, "army", the two members run together in Norse. We read the first member as jund, as in his sister Guðrún's name, and the second as karr: the Germanic h answers an older k, as horn answers qarn, and r is r. In Lane karr is "a return to the fight, after wheeling away", and karrār is "one who returns often to the fight". On this reading Gunnarr is "the host that returns to the charge". We read Högni as ḥaqana: ḥ becomes h, q belongs to the group of q, k and j that becomes g, and n is n. Lane gives ḥaqana as "he confined it; kept it in; retained, restrained, or withheld, it", and ḥaqana damahu, "he prevented the shedding of his blood; he spared his blood". On this reading Högni is "the one who spares blood", which is what Atlamál makes him: he asked that the thrall Hjalli be left alive, and gave his own heart.

Linguistic Root

Gunnarr, "the host that returns to the charge"

In title 3 of the Burgundian law the king names his royal forebears: Gibica, Gundomar, Gislaharius and Gundaharius. The first name is the ancestor's, as Gjúki in the poems is the father of the kings, and the last is Gunnarr. Orel gives the first member as *gunþz, "fight", Burgundian *gunþs, and the second as *xarjaz, "army", whence Gothic harjis and Norse herr, setting it beside Lithuanian kãrias, "army". So the Germanic h here is an old k.

Grimm's law, in the project's essay on sound laws, makes an old k into Germanic h, with the example of qarn, Latin cornu and English horn. By this path the h of hari answers the k of karr. Lane gives karr as a return, karra as "a return to the fight, after wheeling away", "a charge, or an assault", karrār as "one who returns often to the fight", and makarr as "a place of war or fighting where the combatants return time after time". The weak point in the first member is the one in Guðrún's name: the d of jund answers a Germanic þ, where the rule asks for t.

Högni, "the one who spares blood"

Cleasby–Vigfusson does not explain the name Högni; it gives it as a proper name answering Middle High German Hagene, the Hagen of the Nibelungenlied, and högni as a common noun, "a tom cat". We read its three letters as ḥ-q-n: ḥ becomes h, as it does in every language without ḥ; q becomes g; n is n. Lane gives ḥaqana as "he confined it; kept it in; retained, restrained, or withheld, it", ḥaqana al-laban fī al-siqāʾ, "he collected the milk in the skin", and ḥaqana damahu, "he prevented the shedding of his blood", "as though he collected his blood in him, and did not pour it forth", the contrary of hadarahu.

The weak point is that the name has no agreed Germanic explanation, so the reading reads its letters and sets them against the story. But Germanic has a word with the very letters of Hagene: Kroonen's dictionary of Proto-Germanic gives *hagan-, "enclosure, pasture", with Old English haga, "hedge, enclosure", and Middle High German hagen, "fencing", from a stem *hagna- that keeps the n in the word, and sets beside it Welsh cae, "enclosure", and Latin caulae, "railing". So the three letters stand in the order of ḥ-q-n, with the sense of confining and keeping in. Neither Kroonen nor anyone else says the name comes from this word, so the link is a proposal on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

Högni and the thrall Hjalli

In Atlamál Atli orders Högni's heart cut out and Gunnarr thrown to the serpents. Beiti, Atli's steward, says: take Hjalli and spare Högni; Hjalli is doomed anyway. Hjalli panics, climbs into every corner and screams before the blade touches him, saying he will do the filthiest work if he is spared. Högni sees it and asks that the thrall be let go, saying: this game is easier for me; why should we listen to that screaming? So they take him, and he laughs as they cut. Then Gunnarr takes the harp and strikes it with his toes until the women weep and the rafters break. The poet ends: happy is he who begets sons like Gjúki's; their defiance will live after them in every land where people hear.

The altered runes and the dreams

In Atlamál Guðrún carved runes to warn her brothers, and Atli's messenger Vingi altered them on the way. Högni's wife Kostbera read them by the firelight and saw they were altered, with other writing beneath that meant death for them both; she dreamed of a bear breaking the king's high seat and an eagle spattering them all with blood. Gunnarr's wife Glaumvör dreamed of a gallows and serpents eating him, and of dead women coming to choose him. Gunnarr gave each dream a mild meaning, then said: it is too late; there are many signs that we shall be short-lived. They killed Vingi when he confessed the treachery at Atli's gate.

The Niflungs' gold

Snorri says that because of Gunnarr and Högni gold is called in poetry "the Niflungs' treasure" and "the Niflungs' inheritance", and that they hid it in the Rhine, where it was never found. So the gold that came out of a waterfall, when Loki took it from the dwarf Andvari, went back to the water at the end of the story.

A harp for Oddrún

Oddrúnargrátr gives another reason for the harp. Oddrún, Atli's sister, loved Gunnarr, and Atli would not take a bride-price for her from him; when Gunnarr was laid in the pit he struck the harp because he thought she would come to help him. She heard the strings from a far island and crossed the sea, but before she arrived Atli's mother came crawling out and dug into his heart.

Historical Context

The Burgundians and the Huns

Prosper of Aquitaine says in his chronicle, under the year 435, that the Roman general Aetius made war on Gundahar, king of the Burgundians, who lived in Gaul, and then granted him peace at his request; Gundahar did not enjoy it long, for the Huns destroyed him and his people completely. Hydatius records, under a year that answers to 437, that twenty thousand Burgundians were slain. Neither names Atli, who in that period ruled the Huns with his brother Bleda, as Jordanes and Marcellinus say. So the poems gathered the Burgundians' destruction by the Huns under the name of the Huns' most famous king.

The name Gundaharius survived among the Burgundians themselves eighty years later: the king names him in title 3 of the Burgundian law, which collects the rulings of Gundobad and his son Sigismund and was issued by Sigismund at Lyon in 517, together with Gibica, Gundomar and Gislaharius, as forebears "of royal memory". Atlakviða calls Gunnarr "friend of the Burgundians", so the people's old name survived in Norse verse.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Norse myths reads Valhalla as the sign that an honourable death in battle was the highest value in Scandinavian society, and the cold house of Hel, for those who die of sickness or age, as a social spur: die fighting or live without remembrance. Gunnarr and Högni go to Atli knowing every sign: a ring with a wolf's hair, altered runes, the dreams of two wives. They choose to go, and the poet at the end of Atlamál says their memory lives in every land. The poem says what the essay says, in its heroes' own words.

The brothers are a pattern of brotherhood by blood and by oath together. They broke their oath to Sigurd because he was not of their blood, and kept faith with each other because each was of the other's blood: Högni laughed as his heart was cut out, and Gunnarr made his brother's heart the price of his secret.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Gunnarr plays the harp in the snake pit and all the serpents sleep except one adder, which kills him. Orpheus sings in the house of the dead, and the three-headed dog holds still, Ixion's wheel stops, and the Furies weep; when he was killed and the water carried his head to Lesbos, a snake tried to bite it and Apollo turned its jaws to stone. In both stories music quiets the creatures of the dark and does not save the player.

The runes Guðrún carved, Vingi altered and Kostbera read are a witness of the runes as writing that is read and forged.