Hello, and welcome Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom on the path between primary secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am always grateful for your company. Hey there, Today, I'm joined by Thomas Lerno and Chase Errington to discuss the next set of readings from the poetic Euto, and so let's go ahead and jump right into that. All right, Well,
welcome back to our latest at a chat. As we cover a number of texts, I'm just saying that we have a lot of short texts here, which makes it a little bit difficult for me at least to remember what's going on each one, and so hopefully you guys
can help me out on that. Starting off with a short poem about Ziggard, and so we're continuing to deal with the Volsong saga kind of material, especially focusing around Ziggurd, and then we're going to move into what happens after his death with his wife Gudrun and her various exploits
and with her brothers and whatnot. So in the short poem about Ziggurd, we're getting another look at the death of Ziggurd and what happens with Brinhild his wife, or not his wife, his should have been wife, because you know, Ziggurd had been engaged with her. He was betrothed to
this valkyrie Brinhild. But then, through really no fault of his own, aside from the general curse that's kind of following the treasure that he liberated from Foffnir, he is, he takes this forgetting potion, and so he forgets Brinhild, forgets his relationship he had with her, and he ends up marrying Gudrun. Her brother. Gunnar, however, ends up marrying Britnheild, and so Britainhild. She never really gets over this because
she wants to be with Ziggard. I mean, he's this great warrior, he's the one who's accomplished these great things, and she was only supposed to marry the greatest man in the world or something of that nature, and so she's never gotten over the situation, and so out of rage, out of envy, she plots to have Ziggard killed, but then she laments that he was killed and basically kills herself and lament and that sets up really this this poem that we're dealing with, as well as the rest
of what follows in these texts. What thoughts do you have about this, whether it be any of that in the background, or anything that stood out to you from this particular poem.
It reminded me a lot of Greek tragedies that I've read, you know, there seems to be this similar sort of pagan obsession with these family feuds, you know, and and how they're almost faded to happen, or or literally faded to happen. Whether it's the in the Greek myths, it seems to be the gods that are often driving people
to fight against one another and do these things. And but I notice in a lot of these stories it can be the acier meddling in people's affairs, but a lot of times it's just this sort of faceless idea of fate, you know, and that your your your destinies are already written. Like sometimes it's it's personified in the norns, but like very rarely, like they mostly just refer to fate.
But yeah, it's like I I it, and it kind of I feel like this is almost like lived on past the pagan period in like some of the Shakespearean tragedies, but like it was reminding me of both those those strains of sort of tragic drama over the centuries. We have a lot of these same themes recurring.
Yeah, and to Brinhild, she is obviously driven by deep passion, but she also feels like she's not really making a choice here, this is what has to happen. In verse seven, here she says the words I'm speaking now, I'll be sorry for later, So she recognizes this is not a good plan to have her beloved Zigger, to have them killed,
but she says I'll be sorry for later. Gudrun is his wife, and I am Gunnar's The hateful Norns decreed this long torment for us, so that we have the idea of, you know, the fates have decided, this is how things are going to play out, and I don't Eve don't really have any choice in the matter.
Yeah, it's almost like she's overcome with like a like an envious, like blood less kind of like wanting for it to happen, but then also being in sorrow. I like that connection with the Greek tragedy. It seems like there's a lot of just like fated to be but faded not to be, or something gets in a way and a lot of these.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting that Kinkery Guarden talks about this actually in the concept of anxiety. He says that the Pagans were principally anxious regarding fate, whereas Christian anxiety kind of takes a new form where now it's oriented not towards fate, but fate gets transmuted into providence, where we still have this belief that in large part things are going to happen as they're going to happen. However,
it's not aimless, it's not empty, it's not materialistic. And even though we do get the personality of the norms here, I mean even and they really are just sort of fate, like there's a personification of fate as this raw, almost materialistic kind of reality, whereas you know, when it gets transmuted into to Christian belief, well, now of course we believe that there's actually a mind, there's intentional will, there's an intentional design a place, and it's not just things
unfolding as they're going to unfold. There's an actual living reason behind it. Got an interesting side note, I do you think it's a good demonstration of their priority on.
Oaths, and so yes, I noticed that.
Yeah. So Gunnar at first, when he's told by his wife brin Hill to go and kill Ziggerd, he's distraught. He's like, I swore an oaths to this man, like I'm in his surface, I can't do this thing. And so a person, he's angry and he's cast down, and like he said, no, okay, do I do issue once? Do I do what is in line with my oas that I've made, And then he comes up with like a loophole and says, let's get our younger brother, who you know at the time we swore oaths to Ziggard.
I mean, he was too young, so he didn't swear any oaths since he came to do it. And so he tries to find this loophole, which I guess gets him out of it.
Yeah, I noticed that in you know, I think in one of the later references, I think it stands as seventeen, where Hogney says it is not fitting for us to do this cutting asunder with a sword the oaths we've sworn, the pledge is made. So there's this kind of and it kind of reminds me of Tolkien. Where you know, oaths are literally binding, that there are personal consequences to you if you break an oath that you've sworn, and the that's clearly coming I think from a lot of
these Norse sagas. They have this you know, belief that it's like, you know, break an oath and it's gonna rebound back on to you, you know, almost almost like a kind of wheel of karma, I guess. But yeah, I like how they get this other fella, their their younger brother. I think he said who it was, and then he he has this very tragic comic death like this stands A twenty three. He attacks Sigurd in his
bed in this version. There seems to be several versions of how Sigurd died across these, but in this one, they cowardly attack him in his bed. But Sigurd, I guess, wakes up like just as he's being killed and kills the other guy. Says his enemy parted into two pieces, arms and head dispatched in one direction, and the leg half landed backwards, and they mentioned it yeah slapstick, you know.
Just yeah, yeah, it's so he takes his sword, the Grom, and he just throws it and slices the guy in two. That's quite with the scene.
Prototype of the Star Wars Lightsaber throw.
Right, I don't recall this Guthorm guy. I don't recall him making an appearance other than in this scene in the various ways that it's told. So he's like he's a the red Shirt, right, he gets thrown in there just for the situation so he can die.
Yeah.
And also like in this version, you know, Gudron is sleeping with him when he's killed, and she goes through this you know, very like like loud and demonstrative, you know, grief and lament, and then in other versions it said like she could barely grieve for it. She's almost catatonic. So again, it's interesting how the different versions, the different
traditions that are being collected together. And I guess this codex that was put together of a lot of these myths, you can see the different strains of the tradition sometimes contradict each other.
Yeah, and so both obviously deal with an intense kind of lament, just taking very different forms.
Yeah, yeah, good, I just saw that, like, you know, from having read like the pros Eda and then also the vols Sega. It was. It is different to see kind of how they all either filled in the blanks or didn't fully know another tradition of what they had said, going so far as like SIGFRIEDA and Britain Hild and kind of like mismatching them together, and then not just
so weird. Speaking of the oaths and Tolkien, I've been reading the Cimmarillion, so it's definitely, yeah, getting some good connections. There was reading that some yesterday.
Oh yeah, I mean the whole driving force of the Oath of feyan Ore and yeahs definitely play a driving role in that text. And then I mean, of course you get to Lord of the Rings and you've got the men of done Harrow right, the Army of the Dead, and so definitely play an important role in Tolkien's writing.
And I'm sure there's very much drawn from the Germanic tradition that we're pulling from right now, anything else from this poem before we move on, and we probably spent a lot of time in any one poem, but there's anything else they feel like bringing up here.
I think just it is interesting to see that the difference of like how she's kind of like bloodthirsty at the beginning, and then at the end she's like wanting to make sure that he's not going to make it too far before her, you know, like in.
Death, yeah, into in even in death, she's going to be She's not gonna let him go.
Yeah.
Yeah. Something about her suicide was very Greek tragedy to me, where it's like I've done this, this this thing, and now I'm I'm also going to kill myself, you know, to sort of make the you know, the circle is now complete, this sort of circle of violence has to resolve itself.
Yeah, reminds me of I can't remember Ziggurd's sister, Zigny is that if mixing my names, but from the vols on Takaiggurd's sister who goes off and marries that other terrible king who ends up, you know, killing off all of Zigger's brothers that you know, she she also in potty revenge against her husband, against the king. You know, she ends up she off her own children and just like does all this conspiracy and the end of the day, once she finally kills the king, she just embraces the
flames of the castle around her. And so this is kind of an ongoing theme here of a woman trying to make something right in her eyes and then it just ends in blood and or fire and self destruction. Yeah right, Yeah, that's kind of recurring theme. Like throughout a lot of these poems that we're looking at, we're dealing with a woman in lament, and sometimes it's just limitation. Sometimes it takes extraordinary form, like with Brien Healed. But
there is some some brightness. I mean, this is a very dark kind of it's a very dark poem that garden the content of what's happening here, but there is some hope here in fifty five where it says a girl will be born, her mother will raise her more radiant than the right day. Von Hild will be than a ray of the sun. And so you know, even though Ziggurd's dying, Gudrun is going to have and going to raise Ziggurd's daughter, who is going to be a
bright ray that she is going to have. This there's some light coming out of even this dark tail, and that's going to move forward into the rest of the Volsung story. With Ziggurd not having a male heir at this point, she is really going to carry on the Vulsung identity moving forward, although it doesn't go much further before the volsung A totally wiped out, but there's at least some momentary hope. Speaking of hope, moving on to Britain, Hild's ride to Hell.
Yeah, of course this is the Norse hell rather than the the Christian Hell?
Correct? Correct? Is the North held the place of the dead, not not the Christian Hell. It's kind of interesting. So so brin Hild here dead. Brinhild is going on her way when she's stopped by what it was a giantess.
Yeah, also called an ogress at the end, right, right.
So she stopped by this ogress and basically they have this little spat with each other and goes on her way to Hell. I don't, I don't. I'm not really sure what to make of this. I don't know if you guys have any deep insights.
It was a funny vignette.
Yeah, that's that's about what I got from it.
Yeah, I think the one thing that kind of stood out was just how it you know what. Earlier it talks about Cigaurd being like a Southern man in a lot of ways, and then here it says the Danish Viking among the retinue. So it's like even even in these it's kind of like fixing it, like, no, he's actually Danish, He's not like Frank or whatever. It's just weird.
Yeah, and and I do I think that background changes a couple of times. Yeah, and so that that's interesting. There is a connection here. I mean, at this point we've been so far, I'm forgetting. I'm jumbling together a lot of the names from from previous texts, but the the original story of the the the valkyrie and the guy who oh, man, what are their names? The proto Zigger person a. Man, I'm trying to blank. But then I gotta I gotta bee ter real fast. I don't know,
it's okay. But long before you know, most of these texts that we're looking at, you know, there was a story of the valkyrie, oh Zigarifa anyways, and you know she and her lover, you know, he dies and she goes into this lament, and then we're told that potentially they reincarnated into Ziggurd and Brinhild, and so we get this repetition of ideas here, and in Brinhild's Ride to Hell, there is this mention of this kind of connection here
between some of the background as Brainhild telling her story, where she does intertwine herself with this original story, kind of confirming this idea that we're dealing with repetition here, we're dealing with the same kind of story repeating itself over time. So that's that's kind of interesting. And then at the end here in verse fourteen, she says, men and women, those who are living must spend all too long and terrible sorrow, but we shall live fully all
our time together. Ziggard and I now ogriss sink. So she has this hope that now finally in death she can actually be united with Sigurd. I mean, I guess you know his his wife Gudrun is still on the land of living, so now she can go at all to herself. It's, like I said, very dark, kind of demented sort of romance.
It was. That's who it was.
That's that's a that's what I was looking for. Yes, anything just from this one, all right. Moving on, there's a short prose section on the death of the New Flumes, which basically Gunnar and Hogny, the brothers of Gudrun, so brothers in law of of Sigurd. Basically they get the treasure that liberated from Fafnir, and that's the gist of what happens there. That does set up where things are going to go. Now, anything you wanted to say about that, now we can just move on.
Just could curse treasure, you know, it's right, So it's like it was cursed from when he gets it, So anyone that's getting it is coming to some kind of evil fate.
And that that reminds me of something I've been reading recently.
So I've been I've been going through the Book of Lost Tales by Tolkien, and I just finished reading the Tale of the nauglaph Ring, which was that dwarven necklace that's made with the silmarill and this, and but there's also cursed gold involved that's from the Horde of well he's not called Glowerung then, but a dragon horde basically, and so like it, it reminds me of that same thing, where like this dwarf puts a curse on the gold, and then Thingle, the king of Dorief, gets it, and
all of this treachery and murder happens between elves against elves, dwarves against elves, elves against dwarves, all this stuff, and I'm like, I'm like, this is starting to sound really familiar, because like even with with with Faffner's Treasure, wasn't it originally a dwarf who puts the curse on it?
I think it's it's almost like the the ring that just keeps making more and more of itself.
It's like, yeah, right, and so yeah, definitely, I just realized. I just realized how close that is, or either the influences on the now glaffering story or the now glimires it would be called in later writings. It's it's really really obvious.
Yeah. And so there's this idea of the the doomed treasure, the treasure that has a doom upon it. So we see that in the edit text, we see that in Tolkien's text, we see that in I mean even looking to you know, the Hobbit, right, this this is what attracted the dragon. It's the doom that's attached to really
any tendency to hoard treasure. I mean, you know, as as Lewis tells us, sleeping on a dragon's hoard with dragon his thoughts tends to make one into a dragon, or to the very least it may summon them to you or in yeah exactly, or be Wolf, right, we get this curse that's on the treasure, and so even when be Wolf liberates the treasure from the dragon, it
doesn't do them any good. That they're still doomed. And so there's question to be raised, like should he should the treasure have even been liberated to begin with, And so there's this this warning in the Anglos Accon literature, in the Germanic literature, in Tolkien's literature, there's just warning about treasure, which I think is interesting in a culture that's so valued treasure that that's like they recognized where these tendencies can go wrong, and there's some warnings there
even in the Pagan writings. Okay, so moving on here to the second poem of Gudrun. This is consists of Gudrun lamenting her woes to this king Theodoric, and she recounts kind of what happened following the death of Ziggerd, how she was really forced to marry Attlee, who, depending on which text for reading, either is a Tila the Hun or he's at least based off a Till of
the Hun, but he's also the brother of Brinhild. So I don't know how all this works out, but so she's forced to mary the brother of Brimhild, and that just doesn't go well as you would suppose. And so who I mean that gets the setup? I mean, do you guys have anything to pull out of this?
I got the horse like knows about Sigurd's death or like can sense it or something. I think this is an right because the horse runs from the because in this one Sigurd is killed at I guess an assembly of lords or great fighters or something like that. So he's not killed in his bed, but in a public place. And so the Gudrun goes and essentially speaks to the horse. It's weeping. I went to talk to Granny Grannie, that's the horse, cheeks wet with tears. I asked the horse
for news. Grannie dropped his drooped his head, then hid it in the grass. The horse knew that his master was no more.
Right, so she sees his horse and she asks, you know why the long face right? Sorry? I I'm so sorry. You know, with an extra kid of the house, I've got extra the dad jokes.
Now, So from the notes, it was saying that Theodric was loosely connected with the historic Theodric the Great. It's just interesting seeing that, and like Attila and all these people that are just like, I'm sure they heard him heard about them, and they're like, oh, this is a you know, a great king. We're just borrowing names.
Sometimes, gonna bring them together. And so yeah, so Theodoric, he is this exiled king of Verona who took refuge at it Tilla's court, and so so yeah, we got various people being thrown together here. It's quite the sitcom. And so yeah, so Theodoric and Gudrin they take some consolation in each other because they both suffered great loss, and so they understand lost, understand sorrow, and so Theodoric understands Gudron in a way that Attlee doesn't, and of
course this provokes some jealousy in Atae. And I think it's I think it's in this poem where one of the maids basically tells Atli, like, something's going on here with Gudrun and Theodoric.
Oh yeah, I think that's third Gudroom, because I mean.
Yeah, you're right, you're right, So I'll save that.
I was struck in this one about how when she goes to lament over Zigard's corpse that you know, they say has already been picked over by the birds and the animals. And she says, in stands eleven away, I went from the conversation to the wood to gather the wolves leavings. I could not weep nor strike my hands together, meant my man, as other women do there. I sat
close to death over Ziggurd. And that's a it's a striking contrast to the previous one where he's killed in bed and she has all these wild expressions of emotion and and literally says the opposite of this one where I guess clapping was like a sign of like distress among these people, and she she does that in the previous version. In this she says she can't strike her hands together.
Yeah that's interesting. Yeah, she couldn't weep, she couldn't strike her hands together, and she just is close to death over sorrow. Which it reminds me of the first death in the simmer Alian right when when uh, I can't who was that died?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah it was it was Finway's wife.
Yeah yeah, yeah, just dies for sorrow, right, she just kind of let's go.
Oh yeah right, yeah, yeah.
So there's there's them that connection of approaching death or you know, in Tolkien's case, engaging with death simply through sorrow, because I mean Tolkien puts so much emphasis on will. I mean, Lord of the Rings, right, the conflict is primarily one of will, and I think that that that importance of the will is. I mean we see that in the Neumonorian Kings, when you know it's they release themselves to death when it's time, or you see this in you know, in in Vleenor when she releases herself.
Ati does get this premonition that Guan is going to be the death of him. At the end, near the end, when at Lee awakes her up because he's had this dream of foreboding here that Guduran basically she's going to kill him. And and that's kind of how the poem ends without any resolutions to what we're going to do about that. But again we said you have a fate coming into play.
You know when you have that like first thought like oh, this woman's crazy, like I should not date her or marry her, and then you go against.
It, right, I mean, what's the worst gonna happen.
And later we see we see Gudrn's brothers go against advice that came to Gudrun in dreams, right right, right, So there's this idea that like, you can have prem it's almost like they don't matter. You can have these you know, premonitions in dreams, but it doesn't matter because the thing's gonna happen anyway because of the fate is driving these people.
Right, So it doesn't matter if you're giving some spoilers ahead of time. Yeah, it's gonna happens. It's gonna happen. Anything else from the second poem, right so yeah, Now moving on to the third poem of Gudrun, and this is where there's this maid who tells Atlie that something's going on between Theodoric and Gudrin, and and so she's put through this trial by ordeal, you know, which is what they used to do to basically discover the truth
when there's not clear evidence. And so Gudrun has to stick her hand into this boiling cauldron and the fact that it doesn't hurt her proves that she's innocent. Then the maid has to do likewise based off the accusation she made and the fact that she scalds her hand proves that she's lying, I mean kind of makes sense.
And then she's turned into a bog body at the.
End, right, she's drowned in the bog. Yeah.
I was struck by the trial by ordeal because I don't think that's something we had seen yet.
Yeah. The Larrington here in the intro says that maybe this was a later idea that's been put into this.
I think it's interesting just even in that first dance of how when she's talking to Attlee just saying it would seem better to the warriors, like this says, why are you downcast? Why do you never laugh? It would seem better to the warriors that you should speak to the people and look at me, just like the importance of their king, you know, laughing, you know, laughing loudest and just bringing up the morale of his people. So if he's downcast, the rest of the group is not going to do well.
Yeah, and she's basically telling him that things aren't great. I mean, they have a terrible relationship with each other. But see, he's the duty as the king to put on a good face, to look at her, at least in public. As if everything's okay. He has a duty to laugh, he's a duty to put on the right kind of face that a king should have. And so
she's providing him with some good counsel here. But and I guess that's a good way to really set up what I mean, how bad of a king Atlee is that here she's presented as providing good queen lea counsel to her husband, the king. But then he goes off into this you know, jealous rage. Essentially he doesn't really trust her, and so he's says he he can't rely on the wisdom that's right next to him.
Man, I think drowning in a bog would be so much worse than just in water.
Oh yeah, yeah, all right, So I guess moving on to I'm probably mispronounced most of these names, but Odroon's lament.
So let's see if I can remember what's going on here. So Odrone is a sister of Atli, and she is going to help this woman, Borgny, give birth because Borgny had an illicit relationship with this guy, Vilmund, and Vilmund wanted to hide the pregnancy, and so he hit her for a number of years. I think, hold on, where
where was it somewhere here? I don't remember offhand, but it says that he hit her for like multiple winters, and so, uh, this is a very long pregnancy and she can't give birth during this time until Odroon shows up and helps her do so it reminds me of in in the Volsungsaka. I think it was Zigfried. Perhaps one of them was that their mother was pregnant for like years on end, and so it comes out it's like a small child. There's something similar I think going on here. I don't know.
It's kind of a weirdly does not work, but.
And there's magic involved anyway, because I think it's in Yeah, it's in Stanza seven talks about spells.
I mean it's uh O Drown.
Mentioned it's as I think that they did not speak much more. The gentle lady went to sit by the girl's knee strongly. Odron sang powerfully, Odron sang sharp spells for Borkney.
Yeah, and so there's some some magic involved here. I don't really know a lot of these as details to what's actually happening. For one thing, Borgney, this character is a pretty minor character. I don't think that she shows up anywhere else that she seems to be definitely kind of on on the sidelines of all this. But yeah, so there's some kind of magic involved. I don't know if that's because of just the implicit deceit that's present here, that this is why she's unable to have a child.
You know that there's an emphasis on oath keeping in the culture, on truth telling, and so I don't know if the deceit is what's almost creating a curse on Borgny, preventing her from having a child. So then Odron has to kind of counteract that curse with spells. It's my best reading of what's happening.
Or I was like, maybe it's because of like the weird, like years long pregnancy that like like the only way to give birth to like a toddler in this sense is to have this magic spell.
Like so it's kind of like an epidural.
Yeah, And it's interesting to me that the whole thing is Odroun is basically unwillingly aiding the lover of her brother's killer.
Right.
Essentially, she doesn't want to, but she feels somehow duty bound to help this person, and she's like help it, and she basically comes right out and says, I'm helping you, but I don't like you.
Right right, I'm not very good bedside manner for no, yeah, helping her deliver worse midwife right anything significant At the end the final stanza, here you sat and listened while I told you many evil things about my fate in theirs and then everyone lives by their desires. Yep, I think a certificate line. Everyone lives by their desires.
I caught that.
Yeah, is this like any kind of redemption a little bit for Gunner post murdering or like devising the murder? Because you know, it says like later and I came to love Gunner the giver of rings as Brent Hilde should have, and talks about and being a ring breaker in terms of like giving brings out to this man. So I don't know if that's like speaking better of him post him being an oathbreaker.
You know, yeah, because we we do get some reference to his fate here, and so it does. I mean, it seems like he was a good guy over all despite betraying Ziggard, which is it's a pretty big bad thing that he did. But yeah, I mean it seems to be a noble character overall who dies a fairly noble death. You know, we're mentioned here that that Gunner's heart was torn out essentially, and so she he does kind of get lifted up as well as lamented, and we'll get more of that story in a little bit. Yeah,
that's there. Does seem to be some sort of redemption here, or the very least he didn't lose all of his honor.
Right, Yeah, he's thrown into it mentioned in several versions, he's thrown into a snake pit. Gunnar is he uses this like harp. Yeah, he plays the harp with his toes to like magically like charm the snakes. But then it mentioned in one of the notes that, like when it mentions how Atlee's mother is the one who stabs Gunnar in the heart, that like maybe she had also like transformed into a snake, and because she wasn't a real snake, she's immune to his snake charming with the heart.
With the toe harp.
Yeah, with the toe harp. It's like when you see those videos of like someone playing a banjo with their toes and it's great.
Yeah, it is a shame to have that kind of talent and then just die anyways, like you think that should get you out of the trouble, all right, anything else for it? Go on to the poem of Atli. Okay poem of Atlie. You know, I'll just read some of this intro here, and this tense, elusively told poem,
the heroic deaths of Gunnar and Hogney are related. Atlie, anxious to gain the treasure which had been belonged to Sigurd, invites Gunnar and Hogney to visit him so she can capture them and force them to hand over the gold. After their death, Gudrun takes a terrible revenge, and that terrible revenge is that she makes Atli eat his children, and then she kills.
Him and then burns down the house.
And then bursts out of the house, another example of the you know, hell hath no fury idea when she is just going to make things burn. Yeah. So, so so we get the death of Gunar and Hogney, and so they are summoned forth to Atlee's court. They're not really told why, but they get this invitation. And I may mix some of this together with the next, which is kind of a retelling.
But.
They their their wives say don't go, or it's one of their wives do they say, don't go that I get some foreboding here, you know, But they say, yeah, it's fine. They go off anyways, and this is where they die because Atley wants to get the treasure, but he at Lea's not very smart about this. So first he kills Hogney. You know, he rips out his heart and shows it to Gunar, and then when Gunnar sees it, he says, well, now that I know that my brother's dead, I know the secret is not going to get out.
And so I'm not going to tell you anything because with his brother alive, you know, I mean, he wouldn't know if okay, is is he going to give the secret? Is he not? But now that I know I'm the only person with the secret of where the treasure is, well I can hold that securely and know with certainty that if I die, I die. And he's not going
to get this treasure. And so knowing that his brother's dead, he has that sort of that strength to him that he knows it all depends on him, and so he's willing to engage with death just the same as his brother was. And so they die courageous kinds of deaths here, but at the same time they die the death that's associated with the treasure. So I mean, I guess the question is, you know, regarding their legacy could be raised there.
But I thought it was interesting just in the intro talks about in the German tradition, good Wren is determined to kill the brothers or revenge for the death of Sigurd, her husband, and nor she is more loyal to her brothers than her husband. It's just wonder if it like kind of speaks about each of the societies, if they viewed anything different, whether it was like with the brother relationship or the husband relationship.
Yeah, that is interesting and I can't don't really speak to that, but it would be interesting to know that if that's consistent or not. It seems to be based off the things that I've read, at least regarding the Norse tradition. I mean, you know, the fact that sigurd sister is you know, she's loyal to him and not to the foreign king that she marries, and so that that idea does get repeated a couple times here.
One little details. I noticed that there's a lot of mention of mirkwood in the Salon.
Right, which again gives us the Tolkien connection.
Yeah, the only difference being, of course, in this is spelled with a y, right. But yeah, and it seems to take like mirkwood seems to exist in this somewhere in eastern Europe because they they mentioned the River Dinuper as being near it, and that's in Ukraine. So wherever this extensive mirkwood forest is, it seems to be far to the east.
Hm.
I even wonder, just kind of going back to the different areas of like Germanic, if Germanic had more of like a Christ's influence from like Romans and stuff, and Norse maybe had less. So you know, like having Germanic you basically would leave your family to be with your husband, where like in the other ones, maybe your family was a little bit more important than whoever you were with. I don't know, that's just kind of guessing, but.
Yeah, maybe even something throughout there. I don't really know though.
Let's say this is one of the oldest of the poems in the Policetta.
HM. So once the brothers recognize what's going on here, this is a trap lay out for them, they do immediately start fighting, and they kill off a number of people, and obviously they recognize they're not going to get out of here, and so we do get this idea of backs against the wall. We're just going to fight to the death, because well, why not, like why simply submit to this deceit? Why not go down fighting for the
sake of our legacy. And this is the idea that we see in a number of the North text the idea that I know I'm going to die. I know this is kind of feudile in the broad scale, but as long as I have the ability to swing a sword, I'm going to swing a sword. And I do think that there's something in there about the resilience of life over against the futility of mortality.
And you definitely see that kind of warrior ethos continue down to like the present day, and like when you if you read military history and stories of great last stands, there's kind of like, well, why just submit to being captured, especially if we're going to be captured and then killed anyway, we might as well just go down fighting, you know.
And you see that across history from you know, like you know, even to things like you know, in American history, you have the Alamo or customers last Stand or something like that, or you know, like you see that that willingness to die rather than submit to death by torture.
Right, I mean, there's a certain spirited rationality behind that that I think it's particularly play in the Northern text. But yeah, you're right, you see that in a number of different cases.
It's very interesting, uh, contrasted to like Christianity, right, because like it it's interesting how in later like medieval and like later texts, you have this idea of Christ as a warrior, as a fighter, right, and but where he he wrestles with death, you know, on the cross, he
makes it submit to him. Yet at the same time, in the actual facts of the case, you know, he's laying down his life, he's letting himself be tortured to death rather than where he says, I could call a host of angels and end this now, but I'm not going to.
You know, Yeah that I mean that, I mean that, and I think that both of those are true, right, that it's and that's what why even that the word martyr, like it is related to the martial spirit Mars, the god of war, and so the same influence and This gets into like the medieval cosmology idea that Mars this martial influence has a connection both to the just warrior or something like the noble knight, as well as to the martyr, because both the noble warrior as well as
the martyr are victors and as they stand against the forces that would come against them, so both present a different kind of victory, and I think that in the Victory of the Cross, we definitely see both playing out simultaneously. That Christ is the victor standing over against death, standing over against sin. Yet he's also letting himself down, which is another kind of standing against opposing forces.
Right. It's it's the kind of turn the other cheek thing where it's it's a different way of opposition, you know, it's it's not it's not letting yourself be trampled upon. It's literally like it's it's turning your opponent's opposition against himself almost right, You're forcing you're forcing your opponent to recognize the injustice of what he's doing.
Right exactly, which is one reason why it's the blood of the martyrs, that's the seeds of the Church. Yeah, simultaneously, that's how we conquered room, so to speak.
Right, Yeah, it's not done through Like you know, Rome conquers the known world with armies, and yet Rome itself is conquered by these people who are willing to get thrown to lions, impaled, crucified stone to death, you know, for for you know, for something that to them is more important than you know, all the armies and all the power that the emperors have. It doesn't mean anything to these people, you know, right.
It's hard to read something like the Martyrdom of Polycarp and not see strength there. Well, back to the Pagans. Yeah, so you know, she she goes on this rampage of she she gets she gets Atlie to eat their children, and then when he's just thrown off in the horror of what happened, that's basically when she kills him and then burns the place down. And she even considers killing herself here, but she doesn't. She's prevented somehow or another
from from doing that. And I do think it's interesting this this this line stood out to me in thirty nine where it says gold she scattered the gosling bright woman she described as being gosling bright here, you know, which gosling like a goose, I suppose, which made me think of Elwing a little bit from some Earlian who tries to cast herself into the sea, essentially, you know, escaping what's happening around her, trying to make sure the somarill doesn't get into the wrong hands, and so she
dives into the sea to kill herself, but she's prevented from doing so, and she actually ends up getting turned into a bird, right, a white bird. And so I'm wondering if there's some connection here between sort of this scene of you know, she's casting herself away she describes as being gossling bright and now we get the l Wing connection and Tolkien. It's not a clear one to one, but I do think there's some similarity here on a thematic level, which is potentially another Tolkien connection.
Yeah, and the notes mentioned something earlier about swan women. Yeah, yeah, being like an important recurring device in these tas.
Yeah, I mean that came up profoundly in that one poem about that that elf, that trickster elf who I can't remember all the details, but there's swan woman, swan women in that story. But yeah, there's just there's just some terrifying imagery here in for forty one, with a sword point, she gave the bed blood to drink. With a hell bent hand, she loosed the dogs hurled before the hall doors of Flaming Brand, wakening the house servants.
The bride made them pay for her brothers, and this goes on like it's it's terrifying, like a horror kind of imagery that we get played out here. Yeah, anything else from this, well then, I guess moving on to the Greenlandic lay of Attlee, which is a retelling of the story from the Greenlanding tradition, where we're told it's a little bit less courtly, less kind of aristocratic things are a little more sort of like a human focus. I guess it's more of a human story than simply
a terrifying courtly story. So I don't know what what's it up to, guys. From this one.
Voice, that's where I'm thinking I'm getting this. I thought I remember like the runs being corrupted when they were sending a message, but I'm may be misremembering, or that was somewhere else.
That sounds familiar.
It's from one of these yeah, yeah, so so in this tale Gudrun catches wind of what's going to happen, this plot that Athlete is hatching to kill off her brothers, and there's no mention, or at least there's not much focus on treasure in this. For it's the exact motivation of Ali here isn't super clear to me, because I don't know if he just wants to kill off Atlee's or a kill off Gudrun's brothers because they're brothers and they're not getting along very well, and I don't really know.
But she catches wind of this plot that Attlee is hatching, and so she tries to send these this runic message to her brothers, but you know, it gets corrupt, it gets scratched out basically. But there's also this warning that comes from Hockney's wife to not take this invitation of Atli. And you know this recurring theme of like women warning men about their fate, about their foolhardiness, about their pride. I mean, it makes you think of even Pilot's wife, right.
She she gets a dream saying don't do this thing, and so she tries to warn Pilot, and so I just I find that interesting. It's this recording theme even you know, in different contexts.
Yeah, it was, I mean, was this do you think the between them was does at least blame them for the death of Brita Hilde being.
His sister, right, So I don't know if this one is connidering him as her his sister, I don't know. It doesn't really bring it up at all, but.
Yes, I mean potentially it might just be that there's this general bad blood between them, and so if he wants to wipe them out.
There's a lot in this about more about how they can't escape their fate and like even with the dreams, and you know, they try to blow them off, but then later one of them is like, it's too late to speak. Thus all is now arranged. I cannot escape these fateful, poor tense since we intend to go. Everything seems to show that we haven't long to live. So he put whatever, Yeah, it's like he knows he's going to his death, you know. And then when they they
they later they part from their wives. Their wives go a little bit on the journey on them and are with them and are still trying to convince them to go home, and then when they finally part, it's like a long time they gazed before they turned away from each other. I think their fates were laid down there when their ways parted.
Yeah, And I love just these pretty natural relationship we get here between men and women, where the women say, you don't go this, it's dangerous. You know, things aren't going to go well. At thirteen, Hugby says, all women think the worst. Women just worry too much. It's fine. I just found that kind of funny.
Interesting detail that when again that they are very clear eyed about going to their fate, that when they arrive at this place they had to travel by ship to get there, they don't tie the boat up, so presumably the boat would just drift away on the current. And they're like, oh, we're not going to need it anymore.
You're right, We're going to our fate.
It's fine where it's like I guess like for a viking, like your viking ship has to be one of the most like sacred and valuable things you own, and they're just like, Eh, we're not going to need it where we're going.
Yeah. And it's interesting that so this guy Vingy is the messenger who brings them to at least court, and even as they start to approach even VINGI says, Okay, hold on, guys, this is a trap, Like he tells them. I don't know exactly why. I don't know. If it's some you know, prick of his conscience, I don't know. But suddenly as they approach at least territory, then he tells them what's about to happen, and then they respond
by killing him. Uh. I love the language here. It says after he reveals what's about to happen, it says, they push Viggie down and knocked him into hell. Such intense language. Uh. They set about him with axes while he struggled for breath, and so they just knock him into hell. And then they, as in the last poem, they start fighting, but in this version, Gudran actually picks
up a sword and starts fighting alongside them. Which it's a great scene, right, You get get all these siblings working together here knocking down a bunch of people.
Sometimes I feel like the different different poets and stuff that wrote all these like just maybe there was the original one and then each one like picked the character that they liked because like some of the ones you read like Guduran is not a good one because she kind of like makes a cigared forget and that causes all the trouble, and then other times it wasn't her fault and she actually cared for everybody and just wanted love. And you're just like, who do I vote? Who do
I vote for? I don't even know.
It does seem that way.
Yeah, Like the it's clear that the ancient pagan authors were not and the later compilers were not as obsessed with cannon as storytellers are today.
Yeah, that's that's very true. That they have no problem taking Texas there and just changing it.
Yeah, and where they completely contradict one another, it's just even in major details.
Yes, it kind of makes sense because like this is Greenland, and then like another one's in Germany, another ones like Norse. So they're just like, no one's ever gonna find out what I just said.
Yeah, So what you're telling me is that the Rings of Power is just fine. Yeah, it's just a different take on it.
Right, We're just too connected, That's what I'm saying. Yep.
And the here it comes up the fate again. This is in forty eight. It's Gudron speaking to her brothers. I think I tried to remedy this by keeping you at home. I think she's referring to the ruins, she said, Yet no one defeats fate, and so you still came here. She spoke common sense to them to try to make peace between them, but they would not agree at all. Both sides said no. So there's like a brief parley here.
But it doesn't go anywhere, right, both sides are just going to keep fighting, and this is fate. This is no getting around it. And then even after this, we get some bickering between Atlee and Gudrun, which at this point Atlee would just have her killed or something like seeing that she took up a sword against his men, but he doesn't.
And they just.
Sit at different ends of the hall. That's all.
Yeah, So there's things are just a little bit heated between them, that's about it. And they just started fighting with each other. Like Gudrun says, I think the gods when for it when things go badly for you, And then you know, he says, yeah, to his people, do all you can to make Gudrun sob so that I might see her without a vestige of joy. And so like they're still together, but they just absolutely hate each other.
This one makes explicit the murder of the children. It's very terrifying, very metal.
Yeah, this is the one where she makes a goblet out of one of their skulls, right, yes, yes, horrifying.
And like you know, she slits their throats and it's just like, but even the children, you know, is being Viking children, I guess go courageously to their deaths.
Yeah, I mean it's horrifying, like this is their mother who just calls them over and kills them, Like I can't imagine that. But it's just it's part of this scorned woman motif that we've been getting in these various poems from breen Hill to Gudrun, that you know, they that the things that they've most prized been taken away, and so they're just going to see things burned down around them, even their own children, their own kin. It's almost like these aren't her kids, right, her kid came
from Sigurd. These are at least kids, not hers. That's sort of the way that she sees it.
I think it's the kids who say to her sacrifice, if you wish your children, no one will prevent you, but brief will be your respite from rage when you find out what results. So this isn't gonna say her rage. It's like, you know, vengeance is vain, it's empty, you know, like there's gonna be no your respite will be very brief and then you'll just it's going to drive you to do something else.
Right, you can, you can sacrifice your children if you want to, but it's not going to get what you're trying to purchase here. M m man. There's a pro life message right there.
It's interesting because this one is like written later with verse one of three where it says I'll buy a ship and a painted coffin, just because it's like two different ways of bearying them, the Christian and the Pagan. So definitely more influence there.
Yeah. I think that the death of Hogny is significant here when he's told that he's going to die and as he already knows, and he responds by saying, do as you wish. I'll cheerfully, await it my courage. You can test. I've borne sharper trials before you met some resistance when you were unwounded. Now we are so injured, do as you please. So he's injured, he can't fight back at this point, and so he says, just kill
me and I'll cheerfully wait for it. So he's not just going to stoically embrace his death, which idea that I'm going to laugh my way to death. I'm going to embrace this cheerfully. And I think that really gets into this Viking kind of spirit of laughing even in the face of death.
Or even the martyr Saint Lawrence, who's cracking jokes while he's being fried on this hot iron griddle. He's like, he says something the effect of turn me over. I'm not done on the other side.
Right right, right, right. Yeah. It's like when you're so when you embrace life to that degree, death itself almost becomes a joke, or at the very least, the vile forces that would bring it about are a joke because they're they're weak, they're vain. That's what's vain. Your death isn't vain. The forces that are bringing about your death
are ultimately in vain. And I think that we even see that sort of mentality here in this to the extent we can't see it in the Pagan hero and we get this contrast between this guy Hyali and Hogney. So Kali is this guy who dies as a coward, and so when they rip out his heart, it's still quivering with fear. Whereas when they rip out Hogney's heart, it's steady, even as it was in his death. And so when they present it to Gunar, he recognizes this steady heart.
Reminds me of how you're judged in the Egyptian afterlife by your heart. Right, they judge how your heart looks and they weigh it, and that determines whether you're obliterated for eternity or get to enjoy eternity with the gods.
H Yeah, so there's a thematic connection there. Another great line here, when Gudrun starts to hatch her plot, she says, a demon I've seen before, now I'll improve on that. Yeah, going to be worse than a demon here.
So do we think the Temple of Doom heart removal scene was that a steady or a quivering heart? Watch?
Yeah, And so, unlike some of these other women that we've read about so far, we are told that she tries to kill herself, but her fate wasn't to die at that time, that she would die another day. We were told here towards the end, and so her fate
was to live on her fate wasn't to die. So she survives this just terrible situation here to go on with her daughter Zanhild, who isn't mentioned here, but I don't know if she's going to company these other eedic texts, but she does go on in the Volson saga, and then we're told as just an encapsulation or a I guess solidification of the legacy of Gudrun and her brothers at the end. Fortune is any man who afterwards can father such heroic children as Gooki fathered after them in
every land. Their defiance lives on wherever people hear of it, and so they have this living legacy that even as they all died ultimately in courageous situations in defiance of you know, their killers, that they, you know, inspire this
legacy of defiance wherever people hear it. And so there's this noble legacy even from these doomed people, which I mean potentially we could draw another Tolkien connection there when you when you look at you know, the number of noldor despite the the doom placed upon them that you know, die in heroic ways, and so even though there's this kind of futility, that futility doesn't necessarily defined the entirety of their legacy and the life that they lead.
And the grin like follows their you know, their heroic deeds, like is interested and still keeps up with them compared to the others.
Right, you could even think about someone like Turin turn Bar, which I mean I haven't gotten there yet, Chase, but that he has this doom placed upon him and he has this tragic ending, yet nonetheless he still is one of the great heroes of the Legendarium. And so two things can be true at once. There's this great sorrow and great tragedy, great doom, but that doom itself can actually be that it can be great into there's still significance that can be born out of this cursed kind of life.
Even the doom of fayan Or doesn't include a line where it's like, despite everything that happens and all the tragedy he causes, that even the Valor will marvel at the courage in the face of death that the Knolldor show.
Mm hmm, right exactly. Yeah, I definitely think that in the not too distant future. We need to do the Children of Turin following up on this. Children of Urin following up on this. I think there's such strong theomatic connection there. Who knows me. One day we'll do the Summarillion if we have the demotion for that.
Oh yeah, No, it takes a long time to do it in episodes. We've been doing it on the Secrets of Middle Earth, and we're we're just getting to the Battle of Unnumbered Tiers.
So.
I'll have to go back and listen to that. Yeah, it's that's that's an investment, but I don't know. At some point, maybe it's something worth doing, like a year long Patron series.
Right, Yeah, I mean like we and we we had to break some of them up. We did Baron and Luthian in two parts just because they're so and the chapter on Turin, I think we're gonna do a three parter.
You just have to.
There's so much there.
Yeah, for sure, next time we will finish the poetic Eta with the remaining text, So we're getting close there. It's just then a number of different angles here at tragedy and cannibalism and just absolute darkness, and so we'll see if things get lifted up at all, probably not that that's kind of the I guess the necessity of a pagan story that there is this courage and heroism and these positive legacies we can take from it. But
in the end there's this haunting futility. There's this haunting doom, which of course it gets really pronounced in something like Beowulf. But well, I guess I'll save more closing thoughts for after the next section, but we'll go in to wrap it there. So thanks again and we will do it again next month.
Jeliu.
Yeah, thank you for listening or for watching if you're on YouTube right now, and thank you for your support, especially to my patrons. I really couldn't do this sort of thing without the financial support that you offer me. And we've been growing as Mythic Mind, as this fellowship, We've been growing in some exciting directions, and this is going to be a very big year for Mythic Mind.
And so if you want to get in on that action, if you want to get on the ground floor, get behind the scenes a little bit, and have some say as to what that direction looks like, then you can head over to patreon dot com, slash Mythic Mind and you can join the other currently fifty two active patrons and a special thank you to all my Tier three patrons and higher and so that is Mark, Amanda, Chase, Chas Clinton, Aaron Evy, Jamie, Justin and Justin Kyle, Mariah
Tyler and William and so again. If you want to get in on this action, then you can go to Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and sign on at any level and I'll get you full access to the discord as well as some other things, add free episodes to the podcast. And as a reminder, we also do have a free book club coming up on Augustin's Confession that'll be beginning at the end of April, and so you don't have to pay anything for that. All you need to do is just become at least a free
level patron on Patreon again Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. No, I mean a few dollars in support is definitely appreciated, but it's not necessary in order to participate in One more reminder, if you sign on with an annual Tier three membership, I will give you access to all of my courses that begin within the term of your payment, so the rest of the year into the beginning of
next year. And so right now, that includes a brief history of ideas, Plato Stoicism, until we have faces and the Elder Scrolls and philosophy, and they'll probably one more course at the beginning of twenty twenty six that if you were to do this option now, that would be included as well. That's it for now. I'll see you again next week. Well, actually, don't get to worried about that. I won't be seeing you. You'll see me again next week.
But until then, godspeed. When you go to the roots of the word philosophy, you find the love of wisdom, which unfortunately is not what you find at the roots of all who call themselves philosophers. Now, how do we get here? What are the ideas that shape our world? And what can the old world tell us in response to the perennial questions of what it means to be human, what is our purpose? And what, if anything, ought we
aspire to? In a brief history of ideas, we will navigate major epics of thought and survey some of the most important figures in the Western canon, including Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine Anselm, Aquinas Descartes, Nietzsche, Sart and Caca guard And of course we will consider even more names. But these are the thinkers that will supply our primary readings. Each week will include primary sources that will be provided as PDFs, although these are all texts that do belong in your
personal library. You will be recommended some secondary texts. You'll be provided with some recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing discord chats, and weekly live meetings to discuss the readings. I've been teaching philosophy for many years, and I can say with confidence that you will leave this six week course with a better understanding of the
foundation to Western thought than most contemporary philosophy majors. Enroll today by going to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the shop. Or you can gain access to all courses past present in any course that begins during the term of your subscription by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. So again, purchase a Tier three annual subscription, and I will give you a special code that gives you access to all courses that either have taken place
or do start in this term. Sincerely hope to see you there