Sigmund and Sinfjötli

Summary

Sigmund is the son of King Völsung and the father of the heroes Helgi and Sigurd; Sinfjötli is his son by his twin sister Signý, and his companion in the forest and in vengeance. Their story is told in the opening chapters of the Völsunga saga, 1–10, in the short prose piece Frá dauða Sinfjötla, "Of Sinfjötli's death", in the Poetic Edda, and in the two poems about Helgi. The Old English poet of Beowulf mentions them in lines 874–900, and makes Sigmund, not his son, the dragon-slayer.

The story begins with a sword. Völsung built a hall with an oak growing in its middle, its branches spreading over the roof. When Siggeir, king of Gautland, came to marry Signý, a one-eyed old man in a spotted cloak and a slouched hat walked into the hall, drove a sword into the trunk up to the hilt, and said: whoever draws it out shall have it. Every man tried, and only Sigmund drew it, as if it lay loose before him. Siggeir offered him three times its weight in gold; Sigmund refused, saying: had it been your lot to bear it, you could have taken it from the tree as I did. Siggeir was angry and hid his anger. The old man was Odin. Völsunga saga 2–3.

Signý did not want the marriage and told her father she foresaw evil from it, but she was married. Then Siggeir invited her father and brothers to Gautland. She warned them that he had gathered an army against them; Völsung refused to turn back, fell in the battle, and his ten sons were taken and set with their feet in stocks in the forest. Each night a she-wolf came out and ate one of them, for nine nights, until only Sigmund was left. Signý sent a man to smear his face with honey and put some in his mouth. When the she-wolf came she licked his face and put her tongue into his mouth; he bit it, and she tore herself back so hard that the stocks broke and her tongue came out by the roots, and she died. Some say she was Siggeir's mother in a wolf's shape.

Sigmund lived in an earth-house in the forest, and Signý sent him what he needed. She sent him her two sons by Siggeir, one after the other, to help him to vengeance. He gave each the meal-sack to knead; neither dared put his hand in, because something alive was in the meal, and Sigmund killed them at her bidding. Then a witch came to her and the two changed shapes: the witch slept by the king, and Signý went to her brother as a woman lost in the forest. He lay with her three nights and did not know her. She bore Sinfjötli. When he was ten she sewed the sleeves of his shirt to the skin of his arms and pulled it off, so that the skin came away with the sleeves; his face did not change, and he said: Völsung would have thought little of such a smart. She sent him to Sigmund, and he kneaded the meal with whatever was in it, which was the deadliest of serpents. Sigmund laughed and told him not to eat that bread. Sigmund could eat poison unharmed; Sinfjötli could bear it on his skin but not in his mouth.

The two went robbing in the forest to harden the boy. They found a house with two men asleep and two wolf-skins hanging above them; they were kings' sons under a spell, able to leave the skins only every tenth day. Sigmund and Sinfjötli put on the skins and could not take them off, and howled like wolves. They agreed that neither would fight more than seven men without howling for the other. Sinfjötli met eleven men, killed them all and did not howl; Sigmund, angry, leapt on him and bit him in the throat. Then he saw a weasel bite another in the throat and bring a leaf to lay on the wound, so that it rose up, and a raven brought him a leaf of the same plant; he drew it over Sinfjötli's wound and he sprang up whole. When the time came to leave the skins, they burned them.

Then they came to Siggeir's hall and hid in the porch among the ale-casks. A golden ring rolled away from two small children of Signý and Siggeir who were playing; one child saw the two men and told his father. Signý said: kill them, they have betrayed you. Sigmund refused; Sinfjötli killed them and threw them at the king's feet. The two were taken, and Siggeir built a mound of stones and turf with a broad slab standing in the middle between them, so that each could hear the other and not reach him. Signý threw Sinfjötli a bundle of straw with pork in it, and in the pork was Sigmund's sword; they sawed through the stone, one from each side, came out, and burned the hall over the sleepers. Sigmund called out: here am I with Sinfjötli, my sister's son, so that you may know the Völsungs are not all dead. He called his sister to come out, and she said: I had my two sons killed because they were worthless for vengeance, and I came to you in the witch's shape, so Sinfjötli is your son and mine, and that is why he is so hard; then she kissed her brother and her son, went back into the fire and died with Siggeir.

Sigmund went back to his father's land as king and married Borghildr, who bore him Helgi, and Sinfjötli went with his brother Helgi to war. Then Sinfjötli killed Borghildr's brother in a quarrel over a woman; she wanted him driven out, but Sigmund refused and paid her the blood-price in gold. At her brother's funeral feast she brought Sinfjötli a horn with poison in it. He said: the drink is cloudy, and Sigmund took it and drank it. She came a second time, and a third time with taunts if he would not drink, and Sigmund said: let your moustache strain it, son. Sinfjötli drank and fell dead. The saga says Sigmund was drunk when he said it.

Sigmund carried his son a long way in his arms until he came to a narrow, long fjord with a small boat and one man in it, who offered to take him across. When Sigmund laid the body in, the boat was full; the old man told him to go round the head of the fjord, pushed off, and vanished at once. The prose does not name the old man; the saga's translator takes him to be Odin. Sigmund drove Borghildr away and she died; he married Hjördís, and fell in his last battle when his sword broke on the spear of a one-eyed old man, which is where Sigurd's story begins.

The idea the story turns on is that the Völsung blood is tested until it hardens. Sigmund is tested by the she-wolf; Sinfjötli by the flayed skin, the serpent, the wolves and the poison; and Signý tests herself, killing her two sons and bearing her brother a child who is Völsung on both sides, because she judged that only that blood could take the vengeance. The sword Odin gives at the start of the story Odin takes back at its end, and he takes the son as well, in his boat.

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. In Sigmundr the final r is the nominative ending. The first member, sig-, is the first member of Sigurd's name, and we read it as we read it there, shawka: a weapon's edge, vehemence in fighting. The second member, mund, is "hand" in Norse and "protection, guardianship" in its sister languages; we read it as Arabic manʿ: m is m, n is n, the ʿ drops as gutturals do outside Semitic, and the d is a Germanic addition that Latin manus, "hand", does not have. In Lane manʿ is withholding and refusing, "the contrary of giving", and manaʿahu is "he protected, defended him". On this reading Sigmund is "the edge withheld", which is what the story makes him: he drew the sword from the tree and withheld it from Siggeir even at three times its weight in gold, and everything began from that refusal. Sinfjötli has two members: sin-, "lasting, old" in Germanic, which we read as sanna, "he bit with his teeth; he whetted a knife", with asanna, "he grew old"; and -fjötli, which is Fitela in Old English, and which we read as fatl: fatala is to twist a rope firmly, and "a man muḥkam al-fatl" is one firmly made. On this reading Sinfjötli is the whetted, firmly twisted one, which is what the story does to him: Sigmund set out to harden him, bit him in the throat when they were wolves, and brought him out of every trial like a twisted rope.

Linguistic Root

Sigmund, "the edge withheld"

The first member we read on the Sigurd page as shawka; it names the whole family, Sigi the ancestor, Sigmund, Signý and Sigurd. For the second member, Cleasby–Vigfusson gives mund as "the hand, mostly in poetry", comparing Latin manus, and lists -mundr as "the latter part of several pr. names": Ásmundr, Guðmundr, Sigmundr. The same dictionary gives mundr as the sum "which the bridegroom was to pay for his bride", comparing Old High German munt, tutelage, "perh. akin to mund (hand), as hand and authority are kindred notions". Orel derives it from *munđō: "hand" in Norse and Old English, "protection, guarding" in Old Frisian.

Lane, under m-n-ʿ: manaʿahu al-shayʾ, he withheld the thing from him, refused it; "manʿ is the contrary of iʿṭāʾ", giving; manaʿahu, "he protected, defended, or guarded, him". So the Arabic root holds both senses of the Germanic word, the hand that holds and the protection. The comparison follows the Juthoor laws: m and n stay, and the ʿ drops, since gutturals fall away or become a vowel outside Semitic. We take the d as an addition because Latin says manus without it. The weak point was that in Norse the d belongs to the word, and no lexicographer separated it. Kroonen's dictionary of Proto-Germanic now does: it makes the n and d of mund a Germanic suffix, as in Norse hǫrund, "flesh". But it proposes that the root is m alone with a throat sound, from a verb meaning to beckon with the hand, which makes the n part of the suffix too, though Latin manus and the Germanic word share it. So manʿ keeps its n on that agreement alone, and the question stays open on the n.

A second reading stands beside it: yamīn, which Lane gives as "the location that is on the right" and "a covenant confirmed by an oath". It keeps m and n and joins hand and pledge, but its initial y is not in the Norse word. In Atlamál Atli says that he paid Guðrún's mund, her bride-price, so the word in Sigmund's name is the word with which a bride was bought from her guardian.

Sinfjötli, "the whetted, firmly twisted one"

Beowulf keeps the name without its first member: Fitela. So the second member is the old name, and sin- is added to it. In Germanic sin- means "lasting, old": Orel analyses Norse sígrœnn and Old English singrēne, "evergreen", as compounds of *senaz, "old", whence Gothic sineigs, "old man", and compares Latin senex. Lane, under s-n-n: sannahu, "he bit him with his teeth"; sanna al-sikkīn, "he sharpened it, whetted it"; asanna, "he became advanced in age". So s and n hold in Arabic the age that is in the Germanic word, and the biting and the whetting that are in the story.

The Norse dictionary does not explain fjötli. But two Norse words surround it: fjöturr, "fetter", from Orel's *feturaz, and fetill, the strap by which a shield or sword is hung, from Orel's *fatilaz, which gives Middle Dutch vetel, "fetter". In the story itself the Norse text says that Sigmund and Sinfjötli were taken "and set in fetters". We read the three letters as Arabic fatl: f is f, t is t, l is l, with no substitution. Lane gives fatala as twisting a rope, and "a man muḥkam al-fatl" as one "firm, or compact, in respect of make; as though firmly twisted". So the Arabic sense holds the rope and the fetter of the Germanic words, and adds the hardness Sigmund wanted for the boy.

The weak point is that the dictionaries do not analyse the name, so reading fjötli with fetter or strap reads its letters and is not a witness to its origin.

Key Mythic Narratives

Sigmund the dragon-slayer in Beowulf

In Beowulf, as the Danes celebrate the killing of Grendel, the king's poet tells what he has heard of Sigmund, Wæls's son: his far journeys and feuds, things men did not know except Fitela, who was with him, for Sigmund used to tell them to him, "uncle to his nephew", comrades in every need; they had laid low with swords many of the giant kin. Then he says that after his death Sigmund won no little fame for killing the dragon that kept the hoard: he went alone under the grey rock, Fitela was not with him, the sword went through the dragon so that it stood fixed in the wall, the dragon died, and Sigmund loaded his ship with the bright treasures while the dragon melted in its own heat. So the Old English gave the father what the North gave his son Sigurd with the dragon Fáfnir, and kept the bond the saga keeps: Sinfjötli as Sigmund's sister's son.

Sigmund and Sinfjötli in Valhalla

In Eiríksmál, a poem on King Eiríkr Bloodaxe made after his death in 954, Odin dreams that he is making Valhalla ready for a coming king, then calls: Sigmund and Sinfjötli, rise quickly and go to meet the prince, and bid him in if it is Eiríkr. He is asked why he took victory from so brave a man, and answers that it cannot be known, for the grey wolf watches the seats of the gods. Father and son are here the first of the chosen in Odin's hall. Hyndluljóð says that Odin gave Hermóðr a helm and mail-coat, and gave Sigmund a sword.

Insults on the shore

In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I Sinfjötli stands at the prow of his brother Helgi's fleet, and Guðmundr, Granmarr's son, asks who leads the host; the two trade insults. Guðmundr says he has eaten wolves' food, killed his brothers, sucked wounds with his cold mouth and crept into animals' lairs, and that he is Siggeir's stepson who lived howling in the woods. Sinfjötli answers that Guðmundr was a witch on an island, then a valkyrie, and that he fathered nine wolves on her. Helgi says that fighting suits them better than words. The insults keep what the prose tells of Sinfjötli's life: the wolves, the killing of the two boys, Siggeir's house.

A skin that bears poison

Snorri says in Skáldskaparmál that Sigmund was so mighty that he drank poison unharmed, and that Sinfjötli and Sigurd were so hard of skin that poison did not hurt them if it came on their bare skin from outside. The prose of Frá dauða Sinfjötla says that all Sigmund's sons could bear poison on the skin.

Symbolic Reading

The project's Arabic essay compares Odin with al-Khiḍr: both are mysterious old men who appear suddenly, know men's fates, and travel in disguise. The essay does not mention Sigmund, but his story turns on an old man of this kind who appears twice and is known to no one: he drives the sword into the tree and leaves, and no one knows where he came from or where he went; then he stands in a small boat on a narrow fjord, takes the dead son and vanishes. The old man who gives is the one who takes.

The story also carries the image of the outlaw. The saga's first chapter says that Sigi, the family's ancestor, killed a thrall and was declared "a wolf in holy places", an outlaw who may not live among men. Sigmund and Sinfjötli live as outlaws in the forest and put on a wolf's skin in the literal sense, unable to leave it until they burn it. In this family the wolf is a name for the outlaw before it is an animal.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Sigmund and Signý are twins in the saga, and belong among the twins whose stories turn on brother and sister. In Rigveda 10.10 Yamī asks her twin brother Yama to unite with her, and he refuses, calling it a sin. Signý does not ask: she comes to her brother in another woman's shape, he does not know her, and she bears him the son she wants for vengeance. The two stories ask one question about brother and sister and give two answers: Yama refuses, Sigmund is deceived.

Sigmund and Sinfjötli are companions in the wild, living with wolves and killing giants together, as Beowulf says, as Enkidu lived with the animals and became Gilgamesh's companion in killing Huwawa. When Enkidu died, Gilgamesh said he wept over him day and night and did not give him up for burial for seven days and seven nights, until a maggot dropped from his nostril. When Sinfjötli died, Sigmund carried him a long way in his arms and gave him up only to the old man in the boat.

The old man in the little boat who takes the dead across the water is like the Greek Charon, the old man who ferries the dead, whose name the Etruscans took for their demon Charun. This is one form of the descent to the underworld: water is the border between the living and the dead, and the living man does not cross with the dead one, so Sigmund goes round the head of the fjord and the boat goes on alone.

Sigmund's killing of the dragon in Beowulf is another case of the hero's fight with the dragon, which in the North passes to his son Sigurd.