1 1 o Norway and the Norwegians 



* What monster is it within the fore-court standing, 

 And hovering round the burning flame ? ' 



And a little later he asks the same guardian giant — 



' How name they this hall that is girt round 

 With a certain flickering flame ? ' 



The house girt round by flame occurs again in one of 

 the poems belonging to what is called the Volsung 

 Cycle/ because it tells the story of Sigurd or Sigrod, 

 who corresponds to the Siegfried of the Niebelungen 

 legend. In the lay I speak of, called the lay of 

 Sigrdrifa, we find a maiden, Sigrdrifa,- who has been 

 cast into a magic sleep, which is really the sleep of 

 death, lying in a hall ringed about by fire ; and through 

 that fire Sigurd has to ride on his liorse Grani to 

 awaken her, or to rouse her to fresh life — 



' I know that on the fell a war-maiden sleeps ; 

 Around her flickers the linden's bane ; ^ 

 With his sleep-thorn Odin has pierced the maiden, 



Who the god's chosen dared in battle to bring low.' 



This act is the counterpart of Daj'-swoop's in bringing 

 back the Lady of the Necklace. — That is the meaning 

 of the name IMenglod.'* 



Now we come to a third story similar to the foregoing 

 ones, a third Hell-ride told in the poem called Skirnir's 

 Journey (Skirnisfor). Skirnir is a lesser god, who is 

 sent by Frey to woo for him a maiden called Gerd. 

 Gerd, like Menglod, lives either in the land of the 

 giants, or under the earth in the land of the dead. 



1 The cycle of poems which tell the same story as is told by the late 

 German poem the Nihelunge-not, and which to many modern readers 

 will be best known through Wagner's opera cited above. 



- Another name of Brynhild, apparently. 3 Fire. 



* And Menglod is really Freyja. 



