Helgi Hundingsbani

Summary

Helgi Hundingsbani, "Hunding's slayer", is the son of Sigmund by his wife Borghildr, half-brother of Sinfjötli and Sigurd, and husband of the valkyrie Sigrún, daughter of King Högni. His story is told in two poems of the Poetic Edda, Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and II, the second called in Guðni Jónsson's edition Völsungakviða in forna, "the old lay of the Völsungs", and in the Völsunga saga 8–9. The second poem's opening prose says he was named after Helgi Hjörvarðsson, the hero of a third poem that comes before it.

The first poem begins with his birth: "It was early in the ages, when eagles screamed and holy waters fell from heaven's hills; then Borghildr bore Helgi". The norns came to the house in the night, twisted the threads of his fate, fastened golden cords beneath the moon's hall and hid their ends in the east and the west, so that the land between was his, and one of them cast a thread to the north. A raven said to a raven: Sigmund's son stands in mail one day old, his eyes keen as a warrior's, a friend of wolves. Sigmund came home from war, named him Helgi and gave him lands.

At fifteen he killed King Hundingr; Hundingr's sons demanded compensation, and he refused it and killed them. As he sat after the battle under the eagle-rock, light broke from the Flame-fells and lightning came out of the light, and valkyries came riding in high helmets, their mail spattered with blood. Sigrún, Högni's daughter, dismounted and told him: my father has promised his daughter to Höðbroddr, Granmarr's son, and I have called Höðbroddr no better than a cat's son; he will come within a few nights unless you fight him or take me from him. Helgi gathered his fleet; a storm struck it, and Ægir's daughter wanted to overturn it, but Sigrún protected it from above and wrested it from the hand of Rán, wife of Ægir. Then his brother Sinfjötli stood at the prow trading insults with Guðmundr, Granmarr's son. They fought at Frekasteinn; Helgi killed Höðbroddr, and Sigrún came down from the sky with the valkyries and said: hail, prince; enjoy Högni's daughter, the land and the victory.

The second poem says that Sigrún's father Högni and her brother Bragi fell in that battle by Helgi's hand, and that her brother Dagr was spared and swore oaths to the Völsungs. Helgi told Sigrún: you have been a Hildr, a battle, to us; princes cannot fight fate. He married her and she bore him sons. Then Dagr sacrificed to Odin for vengeance for his father, and Odin lent him his spear; Dagr met Helgi at a place called Fjöturlundr, "fetter-grove", and ran him through. Dagr came to his sister with the news, and she cursed him: may the oaths you swore to Helgi bite you; may no ship glide under you, no horse run under you, no sword bite but on your own head; may you be a wolf in the woods with no wealth and no food but carrion. Dagr said: you are mad, sister; Odin alone causes all the woe, for he cast strife-runes among kinsmen, and he offered her half the kingdom, which she refused.

Helgi was laid in a mound and went to Valhalla, where Odin offered him a share of rule. One evening Sigrún's maid saw Helgi riding to his mound with many men and said: is it delusion, or is it Ragnarök, that dead men ride? Sigrún went into the mound and said: I am as glad of our meeting as Odin's hawks of the slain; I will kiss the dead king before you cast off your bloody mail; your hair, Helgi, is thick with rime, you are drenched with slaughter-dew, your hands are cold. He said: you alone, Sigrún, make me drenched with grief-dew; you weep cruel tears before you sleep, and each falls bloody on my breast, ice-cold, burning within. Let us drink the precious drink, and let no one chant a dirge though he sees wounds on my breast; now brides are shut in the mound with us dead. She made a bed in the mound and slept in his arms as she would have with the living man. Then he said: it is time for me to ride the reddened roads; I must cross the bridges of the sky westward before the cock wakes the victory-host. The next night she waited at the mound and he did not come, and the maid told her: do not go alone to the house of ghosts; the dead are stronger at night.

The prose at the poem's end says: Sigrún was short-lived from sorrow and grief. In olden times people believed that men were born again, but that is now called old wives' folly. Helgi and Sigrún are said to have been born again: he was then Helgi Haddingjaskati, and she Kára, Hálfdan's daughter, a valkyrie, as told in Káruljóð, a poem now lost. The prose of Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar says that that Helgi and his wife Sváva were also born again, so the three poems are the story of two who come back.

The idea the story turns on is choice and its price. Sigrún chose her husband against her father's word, and the price of her choice was her father and her brother, and then her husband, killed by the brother who had sworn and broke his oath with Odin's leave. Love crosses the border of death for one night: the living woman enters the dead man's house and sleeps beside him, yet it is her tears that wound him. Then the two come back in another life, as if the story would not accept an end.

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. Cleasby–Vigfusson gives Helgi as "the Holy", from heilagr, which is built on heill, "whole", the g being the adjective suffix. The Germanic h at the start answers an old k, as horn answers qarn; Old Prussian has kails, "healthy". We read heil- as Arabic kull: k is k, l is l. In Lane kull is "all, the whole", and "he is the learned man, kull al-ʿālim" means he has reached the utmost degree. On this reading Helgi is "the whole, the complete", which is what the story makes him: the norns stretched his land from east to west so that all of it was his, and Sigrún greeted him with the very word, heill, "hail". We read his title Hundingsbani, "Hunding's slayer", with fanāʾ, perishing: Germanic b answers f, n is n, as the end of Persephone's name is read. And Sigrún is edge and cry, as in the names of Sigurd and Guðrún: the valkyrie who guards the ships with weapons and then weeps at the mound.

Linguistic Root

Helgi and kull

Cleasby–Vigfusson gives Helgi as a proper name, "the Holy", and says that heilagr, holy, "is derived in a metaph. sense from heill, whole", and that its original sense, as a law term, is "inviolable, one whose person is sacred, who cannot be slain with impunity". Orel derives heill from *xailaz, whence Gothic hails, "healthy", and Old English hāl, "whole", and sets it beside Old Prussian kails and Slavic *cělъ, "whole". So the k at the start is old and became Germanic h by Grimm's law, as in horn against qarn.

Lane, under k-l-l: kull, all, the whole; "huwa al-ʿālim kull al-ʿālim" means "that he is one who has attained to the utmost degree of the quality thus attributed to him"; kullī, "relating to all or the whole". So k and l hold in Arabic the wholeness that is in heill, but not the inviolability that the Norse dictionary makes the original sense of heilagr, which is the weak point. The first poem uses both words around Helgi: "holy waters" at his birth, and "hail" in Sigrún's greeting.

Hunding's slayer and fanāʾ

The Norse dictionary gives bani as "bane, death", then "a slayer", comparing Old English bana and English bane. Orel calls it "of uncertain origin" and records Meid's derivation from Indo-European *gʷhen-, "to kill", the root that the Bailly dictionary gives for the second member of Persephone's name, which we read there as fanāʾ. Lane gives faniya as "it passed away, came to an end", fanāʾ the contrary of remaining. Germanic b answers f under the Juthoor laws, as the two alternate within Semitic itself.

Kroonen's dictionary of Proto-Germanic takes another view of bani: it traces it to a root with b and n, sets it beside Gothic banja, "wound", and Old Avestan bąnaiiən, "they make ill, afflict", and rejects the derivation from *gʷhen-, since that sound does not become b in Germanic. The link with Persephone's name falls away, and fanāʾ stands on its own letters: f answers b, n is n; the Germanic word means the wound, the affliction and the death a slayer brings, and the Arabic word the passing away.

Key Mythic Narratives

The king in disguise at the quern

The second poem opens with the young Helgi spying in the house of his enemy Hundingr, then sending his son a message: tell Hemingr that Helgi remembers whom the warriors felled in mail; you had a grey wolf in the house, and King Hundingr took him for Hamall. Hundingr's men seek him in Hagall's house; he dresses as a bondmaid and stands at the quern, and one of them says: keen are the eyes of Hagall's maid, no thrall's kin is she who stands at the quern; the stones split and the mill-frame leaps.

Helgi in Valhalla

When Helgi reached Valhalla, Odin offered him a share of rule, and Helgi told his slain enemy: you, Hundingr, shall fetch a foot-bath for every man, kindle the fire, tie up the dogs, tend the horses and feed the swine before you sleep. The enmity lives on in the hall of the dead, and the slain king becomes a servant.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Norse myths reads the valkyries as women who choose, and "the valkyrie chooses who dies" as an image of "the woman chooses who is worthy". Sigrún is the plainest witness to this reading in the poems: she comes down from the sky with the valkyries, chooses Helgi, says she has been promised to a man she does not want, and asks him to take her. The same essay reads Valhalla as the dwelling of the chosen; Helgi goes there after his death, and comes back from it one night to his wife.

The second poem passes a judgment on weeping: Sigrún's tears fall bloody on the dead man's breast and hurt him, and Helgi asks that no dirge be chanted over his mound. The story sets a limit to grief, as it set one night to love.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Sigrún's entry into her dead husband's mound is a case of the descent to the underworld. In the Kojiki Izanagi goes down to Yomi after his dead wife Izanami, lights a tooth of his comb, sees her body swarming with maggots, flees from her and blocks the way with a rock. Sigrún sees her husband thick with rime and drenched with blood, kisses him and sleeps in his arms. In both stories the living spouse goes in to the dead one; Izanagi flees, Sigrún stays.

In the Iliad the shade of Patroclus comes to Achilles in the night, asks to be buried quickly, and asks that their bones lie in one urn, as they were reared in one house. Achilles stretches out his hands to embrace him and clasps nothing, and the shade goes under the earth like smoke. Helgi comes to Sigrún in the night as a body she can embrace, goes back before dawn, and does not come again.

The norns' presence at his birth, and what they decree for him, is a witness of the norns in the heroic poems.