Sigrdrífumál

Sigrdrífumál (also known as Brynhildarljóð) is the conventional title given to a section of the Poetic Edda text in Codex Regius.

It follows Fáfnismál without interruption, and it relates the meeting of Sigurðr with the valkyrja Brynhildr, here identified as Sigrdrífa ("driver to victory"). Its content consists mostly of verses concerned with runic magic and general wisdom literature, presented as advice given by Sigrdrífa to Sigurðr. The metre is fornyrðislag, except for the first stanza.

The end is in the lost part of the manuscript but it has been substituted from younger paper manuscripts. The Vǫlsunga saga describes the scene and contains some of the poem.

Etymology
The compound sigr-drífa means "driver to victory" (or "victory-urger", "inciter to victory") It occurs only in Fáfnismál (stanza 44) and in stanza 4 of the Sigrdrífumál. In Fáfnismál, it could be a common noun, a synonym of valkyrja, while in Sigrdrífumál it is explicitly used as the name of the valkyrja whose name is given as Hildr or Brynhildr in the Prose Edda. Bellows (1936) emphasizes that sigrdrifa is an epithet of Brynhildr (and not a "second Valkyrie").

Contents
The Sigrdrífumál follows the Fáfnismál without break, and editors are not unanimous in where they set the title. Its state of preservation is the most chaotic in the Eddaic collection. Its end has been lost in the Great Lacuna of the Codex Regius. The text is cut off after the first line of stanza 29, but this stanza has been completed, and eight others have been added, on the evidence of the much later testimony of paper manuscripts.

The poem appears to be a compilation of originally unrelated poems. However, this state of the poem appears to have been available to the author of the Vǫlsunga saga, which cites from eighteen of its stanzas.

The basis of the text appears to be a poem dealing with Sigurðr's finding of Brynhildr, but only five stanzas (2-4, 20-21) deal with this narrative directly. Stanza 1 is probably taken from another poem about Sigurðr and Brynhildr. Many critics have argued that it is taken from the same original poem as stanzas 6-10 of Helreið Brynhildar.

In stanzas 6-12, Brynhildr teaches Sigurðr the magic use of the runes. To this has been added similar passages on rune-lore from unrelated sources, stanzas 5 and 13-19. This passage is the most prolific source about historical runic magic which has been preserved.

Finally, beginning with stanza 22 and running until the end of the preserved text is a set of counsels comparable to those in Loddfáfnismál. This passage is probably an accretion unrelated to the Brynhildr fragment, and it contains in turn a number of what are likely interpolations to the original text.

The valkyrja's drinking-speech
The first three stanzas are spoken by Sigrdrífa after she has been awoken by Sigurðr (stanza 1 in Bellows 1936 corresponds to the final stanza 45 of Fáfnismál in the edition of Jonsson 1905).

What is labelled as stanza 4 by Bellows (1936) is actually placed right after stanza 2, introduced only by Hon qvaþ ("she said"), marking it as the reply of the valkyrja to Sigmundr's identification of himself in the second half of stanza 1.

The following two stanzas are introduced as follows:
 * Sigurþr settiz niþr oc spurþi hana nafns. Hon toc þa horn fult miaþar oc gaf hanom minnisveig:
 * "Sigurth sat beside her and asked her name. She took a horn full of mead and gave him a memory-draught."

Henry Adams Bellows stated in his commentary that stanzas 2-4 are "as fine as anything in Old Norse poetry" and these three stanzas constituted the basis of much of the third act in Richard Wagner's opera Siegfried. This fragment is the only direct invocation of the Norse gods which has been preserved, and it is sometimes dubbed a "pagan prayer".

The first two stanzas are given below in close transcription (Bugge 1867), in normalized Old Norse (Jonsson 1905) and in the translations by Thorpe (1866) and of Bellows (1936):

Runic stanzas
Stanzas 5-18 concern runic magic, explaining the use of runes in various contexts.

In stanza 5, Sigrdrífa brings Sigurðr ale which she has charmed with runes:

Stanza 6 advises to carve "victory runes" on the sword hilt, presumably referring to the t rune named for Týr:

The following stanzas address Ølrunar  "Ale-runes" (7), biargrunar "birth-runes" (8), brimrunar "wave-runes" (9), limrunar "branch-runes" (10), malrunar "speech-runes" (11), hugrunar "thought-runes" (12). Stanzas 13-14 appear to have been taken from a poem about the finding of the runes by Óðinn. Stanzas 15-17 are again from an unrelated poem, but still about the topic of runes. The same holds for stanzas 18-19, which return to the mythological acquisition of the runes, and the passing of their knowledge to the æsir, elves, vanir and mortal men.

Gnomic stanzas
Stanzas 20-21 are again in the setting of the frame narrative, with Brynhildr asking Sigurðr to make a choice. They serve as introduction for the remaining part of the text, stanzas 22-37 (of which, however, only 22-28 and the first line of 29 are preserved in Codex Regius), which are gnomic in nature. Like Loddfáfnismál, the text consists of numbered counsels, running from one to eleven. The "unnumbered" stanzas 25, 27, 30, 34 and 36 are considered interpolations by Bellows (1936).

Editions and translations

 * Benjamin Thorpe (trans.), The Edda of Sæmund the Learned, 1866
 * Sophus Bugge, Sæmundar Edda, 1867 (edition of the manuscript text)
 * Henry Adams Bellows (1936) (translation and commentary)
 * Guðni Jónsson, Eddukvæði: Sæmundar-Edda, 1949 (edition with normalized spelling)
 * W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor (trans.), The Elder Edda: A Selection, 1969