October 19, 2026
There is a poem in the Edda that begins as a house call. A woman's labor will not come, a friend rides out on a black horse, and for twenty stanzas the story is about a difficult birth. Then, in the middle of the room, the midwife starts talking about herself, and the poem becomes the saddest thing in the Guthrun cycle that is not about Guthrun.
"I have heard it told | in olden tales How a maiden came | to Morningland; No one of all | on earth above To Heithrek's daughter | help could give." — Oddrunargratr 1, trans. Bellows (1923)
The headnote in the manuscript is plain: "Heithrek was the name of a king, whose daughter was called Borgny. Vilmund was the name of the man who was her lover. She could not give birth to a child until Oddrun, Atli's sister, had come to her; Oddrun had been beloved of Gunnar, son of Gjuki."
That last clause is how the story gets in. Bellows says this poem "follows Guthrunarkvitha III in the Codex Regius," and that it "does not directly affect the course of the story at all." Oddrun is a sideways figure, Atli's sister and, by extension, Brynhild's. He notes that "prior to the year 1000 there is no trace of the figure of Oddrun," and he thinks she was "a creation of the North." The poet refers to "old tales" about her, and Bellows allows that this "may be merely a stock phrase, or it may really mean that the poet found his story in oral prose tradition." Either way, she is the one woman at the edge of the great tragedy who has been left to tell it herself.
She hears about the birth and does the practical thing.
"This Oddrun learned, | the sister of Atli, That sore the maiden's | sickness was; The bit-bearer forth | from his stall she brought, And the saddle laid | on the steed so black." — Oddrunargratr 2, trans. Bellows (1923)
The bit-bearer is a horse, in the Edda's habit of never naming a thing it can describe. She reaches the hall, takes the saddle off the weary animal, and asks the household what has happened. A serving-maid says that Borgny lies in bitter pain and that Oddrun is her friend, so she can help. Oddrun asks who did this.
"Vilmund is he, | the heroes' friend, Who wrapped the woman | in bedclothes warm, (For winters five, | yet her father knew not)." — Oddrunargratr 5, trans. Bellows (1923)
Five winters of a secret, and the baby has finally forced it into the open. Nothing more is known, Bellows says, "of Heithrek, Borgny or Vilmund"; the annotator added the father's name from nothing but the poem itself.
"Then no more | they spake, methinks; She went at the knees | of the woman to sit; With magic Oddrun | and mightily Oddrun Chanted for Borgny | potent charms." — Oddrunargratr 6, trans. Bellows (1923)
She went at the knees of the woman to sit. It is the old midwife's posture, and the poem gives it one line and moves on. Bellows connects the charms to the birth-runes in the Sigrdrifumol, which this series has already walked through. The result comes in the next stanza, without ceremony:
"At last were born | a boy and girl, Son and daughter | of Hogni's slayer." — Oddrunargratr 7, trans. Bellows (1923)
Twins. And a father whose name the poem will not leave alone: Hogni's slayer. Bellows can't tell us for sure what it means. He says it is "obviously Vilmund," but that "unless he was the one of Atli's followers who actually cut out Hogni's heart… there is nothing else to connect him with Hogni's death." One editor emends the line to read "born of the sister of Hogni's slayer." Whoever he was, he is in the poem for one reason: to put the word Hogni in the room.
Borgny wakes up and blesses her:
"So may the holy | ones thee help, Frigg and Freyja | and favoring gods, As thou hast saved me | from sorrow now." — Oddrunargratr 8, trans. Bellows (1923)
Frigg is named as a healing goddess and Freyja as the friend of lovers; Bellows's notes say as much. And Oddrun's answer is not the one you expect.
"I came not hither | to help thee thus Because thou ever | my aid didst earn; I fulfilled the oath | that of old I swore, That aid to all | I should ever bring." — Oddrunargratr 9, trans. Bellows (1923)
I didn't come for you. I came because I swore I'd come for anyone. It is the speech of a woman who has made a habit of showing up for strangers precisely because she could not show up for someone she loved.
Borgny, who has just been delivered of two children, calls her wild and witless and says she follows her, "as we had been born of brothers twain." And Oddrun hits back with a memory:
"I remember the evil | one eve thou spakest, When a draught I gave | to Gunnar then; Thou didst say that never | such a deed By maid was done | save by me alone." — Oddrunargratr 11, trans. Bellows (1923)
Bellows says it "apparently" means Borgny was at Atli's court "while the love affair between Oddrun and Gunnar was in progress, and criticised Oddrun for her part in it," and that the draught is "apparently in reference to a secret meeting of the lovers." Nobody says it outright. The two women have a history, the history is a scandal, and the scandal is about to be told.
Then the sorrowing woman sat her down to tell the grief of her troubles great. That is stanza 12. The delivery is over. The lament begins.
"Happy I grew | in the hero's hall As the warriors wished, | and they loved me well; Glad I was | of my father's gifts, For winters five, | while my father lived.
"These were the words | the weary king, Ere he died, | spake last of all: He bade me with red gold | dowered to be, And to Grimhild's son | in the South be wedded." — Oddrunargratr 13–14, trans. Bellows (1923)
Winters five again. It was the length of the secret, and here it is the length of her happiness. Her dying father wanted her married to Grimhild's son: Gunnar. And in the next stanza, he wants her sister to be a Valkyrie:
"But Brynhild the helm | he bade to wear, A wish-maid bright | he said she should be; For a nobler maid | would never be born On earth, he said, | if death should spare her." — Oddrunargratr 15, trans. Bellows (1923)
Bellows has a note on that one that is worth keeping. The poet, he says, "seems to have attempted to combine the two contradictory traditions" of Brynhild as Valkyrie and Brynhild as the queen of a city, because in the next stanzas she is not a shield-maiden in a ring of fire at all. "At her weaving Brynhild sat in her bower, lands and folk alike she had," and the city that she ruled is broken by foreign swords when Fafnir's slayer comes. Bellows says this version "is, of course, utterly at variance with the one in which Sigurth wins Brynhild for Gunnar by riding through the ring of flames, and is probably more closely akin to the early German traditions." So Oddrun's Brynhild is a queen with a loom, and the Valkyrie is her father's wish for her. The Edda has all of her at once and does not fuss over which is true.
Oddrun's account of Brynhild's end is two stanzas long, and she does not linger.
"Woeful for this | her vengeance was, As so we learned | to our sorrow all; In every land | shall all men hear How herself at Sigurth's | side she slew." — Oddrunargratr 18, trans. Bellows (1923)
Then she turns to her own story.
"Love to Gunnar | then I gave, To the breaker of rings, | as Brynhild might;" — Oddrunargratr 19, lines 1–2, trans. Bellows (1923)
The Gjukungs would have paid anything. "Fifteen dwellings," says stanza 20, plus "the burden that Grani bore," which is the treasure of Fafnir that Sigurth had carried on his horse. But Atli would not take it:
"But Atli said | he would never receive Marriage gold | from Gjuki's son." — Oddrunargratr 20, lines 3–4, trans. Bellows (1923)
There it is, and it is the line the Atli-poems never state outright. Atli will not take Gunnar's gold, and Gunnar does not get the bride. They go on anyway.
"Yet could we not | our love o'ercome, And my head I laid | on the hero's shoulder; Many there were | of kinsmen mine Who said that together | us they had seen." — Oddrunargratr 21, trans. Bellows (1923)
Yet could we not our love o'ercome. Oddrun does not apologize for it, and does not make excuses. Atli's men are sent to spy "in the murky wood," and they find the lovers "where beneath one cover close we lay." She and Gunnar bribe them with rings so that "nought to Atli e'er they should say," and the men take the rings and ride home and tell him anyway. (Bellows notes that this "murky wood" is the same Myrkwood that divides Atli's realm from the Gjukungs' in the Atlakvitha, though "this hardly accords with the extraordinary geography" of the later stanzas.)
Stanza 25 is a gap. Bellows says "evidently Guthrun has already become Atli's wife," and the line before the break says that the household "close from Guthrun kept they hid what first of all she ought to have known." Then the poem comes back with the sound of a ride:
"Great was the clatter | of gilded hoofs When Gjuki's sons | through the gateway rode; The heart they hewed | from Hogni then, And the other they cast | in the serpents' cave." — Oddrunargratr 26, trans. Bellows (1923)
The other. Gunnar has been so thoroughly turned into a piece of the scenery that the poet does not name him in his own death sentence. And then, in the pit:
"The hero wise | on his harp then smote, . . . . . . . . . . For help from me | in his heart yet hoped The high-born king, | might come to him." — Oddrunargratr 27, trans. Bellows (1923)
I think this is the stanza the whole poem is built to reach. Gunnar is in a pit of serpents, and he is playing for help (the poem does not say how he came by the harp; the Volsungasaga, Bellows tells us, has Guthrun give it to her brother). And the help he is hoping for is her. Not Guthrun, who does not yet know. Not Hogni, who is already dead. Oddrun.
She hears the strings from across the water.
"Alone was I gone | to Geirmund then, The draught to mix | and ready to make; Sudden I heard | from Hlesey clear How in sorrow the strings | of the harp resounded.
"I bade the serving-maids | ready to be, For I longed the hero's | life to save; Across the sound | the boats we sailed, Till we saw the whole | of Atli's home." — Oddrunargratr 28–29, trans. Bellows (1923)
I should be honest about the geography. Bellows is, too: "the poet's geography is here in very bad shape," he writes, noting that Hlesey may be the Danish island of Läsö, and "However, geographical accuracy is seldom to be looked for in heroic epic poetry." Oddrun is riding to the Huns, and then she is crossing a sound to an island in the Kattegat, and the poem does not seem to mind. Forget the map. She hears the harp, she gathers her women, she crosses the water.
She is too late.
"Then crawling the evil | woman came, Atli's mother— | may she ever rot! And hard she bit | to Gunnar's heart, So I could not help | the hero brave." — Oddrunargratr 30, trans. Bellows (1923)
This is where I have to take the teaser back a notch. It is not "the serpents" who kill him, at least not in the sense of a pit full of them. It is one thing, crawling, and it is Atli's mother, and Oddrun curses her in the middle of the lament. Bellows notes that the Volsungasaga does it differently: Gunnar puts all the serpents to sleep with the harp "but a mighty and evil adder crawled to him and drove his fangs into him till they reached his heart." He adds that "it is possible that 'Atli' is a scribal error for a word meaning 'of serpents.'" Atli's mother, or the mother of serpents. The Edda does not tell us which.
"Oft have I wondered | how after this, Serpents'-bed goddess! | I still might live, For well I loved | the warrior brave, The giver of swords, | as my very self." — Oddrunargratr 31, trans. Bellows (1923)
Serpents'-bed goddess is Borgny: "goddess of gold" was a common kenning for a woman, Bellows says, and gold was "the serpents' bed." So Oddrun addresses the young mother in the language of treasure, and the language takes a bitter turn in her mouth, because the serpents' bed is also the place where Gunnar died.
"Thou didst see and listen, | the while I said The mighty grief | that was mine and theirs; Each man lives | as his longing wills,— Oddrun's lament | is ended now." — Oddrunargratr 32, trans. Bellows (1923)
I don't know a better last stanza in the Edda. Each man lives as his longing wills. It can mean she lived on because she wanted to, or that Gunnar died because he wanted her, or that everyone goes where they are drawn and pays what it costs. Bellows, noting that "some editions make line 4 a statement of the poet's, and not part of Oddrun's speech," leaves it open. I think the poem has been quietly telling us that she has spent her life as a kind of midwife: bringing other people through the worst night of their lives, because the worst night of her own was one she reached too late.
If you'd like to follow the series on into the poem where Atli himself finally speaks, new tellings land in the newsletter first. And if somebody you love is playing a harp in a pit, take the boat. Don't wait to find out if you can arrive in time.
Sources: Oddrunargratr (The Lament of Oddrun), with Bellows' introductory note and notes, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (1923). Public domain. Retelling © Jennifer Sage.
Next in The Old Tellings: the Atlakvitha, the Lay of Atli, the poem that tells the same disaster from the other end, the ride of Gunnar and Hogni to Atli's hall. The harp in the pit has been heard from across the water in this telling; next week we go and stand in the hall where it began.