SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

18 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
of the Hunnish people that is destroyed: whatever
disasters may subsequently come upon the Burgundians is
wholly irrelevant to this poem, which otherwise has no
irrelevancies. It seems right, therefore, to accept the
immediate picture that Gunnarrs words present - that
he will fling his gold to the wolves rather than let it fall
into hated enemies' hands, and go deliberately into a trap
so that his enemies may feel the sharpness of his teeth.
A second vivid passage, with the same cryptic
concentration and power, occurs in Cuorun's wild speech
to her brother, envisaging what might have been (stanza
16). He should have come armed against Atli -
"should have sat in the saddle
through days lit with sun,
made the Noms weep
at the corpses' forced pallor,
made the shieldmaids of the Huns
try their skill at the harrow."
Here is the same precision of image as that of the
bear-baiting in stanza II: but what does it mean, 'to sit
in the saddle through days lit with sun'? Solheioa daga
is a pleasant image: s6lheitJr, like s6lbiartr, s6lhvitr, implies
beauty, radiance, splendour (it is contrary to the
associations of the word to suppose, as Neckel does,26
that it refers to the uncomfortable heat of the day).
Does not Guorrin mean that they should have fought in
the saddle as long as there was light to fight by, and that
those days on which they fought would have been radiant
with victory? And just as Cuorun forces fate her way ­
scrP let hon vaxa - so her brothers should have made the
Noms acquiesce to a vast annihilation at which even they
weep.:" To interpret nornir here as 'women' is to lose the
force of Guorun's satiric extravagance. All that they
26 Neckel, op, cit. p. 148.
27 Helgason (op. cit. 154) suggests that 'make the Norns weep' means in
effect 'leave no one alive to weep', since Norns never shed tears. The Hunnish
Amazons however are to remain alive, and would be able to lament in their
degradation.