iuki's, fate guides the wanderer forward. There a
mighty king has a daughter; Sigurd will buy her with a dowry. There
is a hall high on Hindarfell; all without it is swept with fire.... I
know a battle-maid who sleeps on the fell, and the flame plays over
her; Odin touched the maid with a thorn, because she laid low others
than those he wished to fall. Thou shalt see, boy, the helmed maid who
rode Vingskorni from the fight; Sigrdrifa's sleep cannot be broken,
son of heroes, by the Norns' decrees."

Sigrdrifa (dispenser of victory) is, of course, Brynhild; the name may
have been originally an epithet of the Valkyrie, and it was probably
such passages as this that misled the author of _Gripisspa_ into
differentiating the Valkyrie and Brynhild. The last lines have been
differently interpreted as a warning to Sigurd not to seek Brynhild and
an attempt to incite him to do so by emphasising the difficulty of the
deed; they may merely mean that her sleep cannot be broken except by
one, namely, the one who knows no fear. Brynhild's supernatural origin
is clearly shown here, and also in the prose in _Sigrdrifumal. Voelsunga
Saga_, though it paraphrases in full the passages relating to the magic
sleep, removes much of the mystery surrounding her by providing her
with a genealogy and family connections; while the _Nibelungen Lied_
goes further still in the same direction by leaving out the magic
sleep. The change is a natural result of Christian ideas, to which
Odin's Wishmaidens would become incomprehensible.

Thus far the story is that of the release of the enchanted princess,
popularly most familiar in the nursery tale of the Sleeping
Beauty. After her broken questions to her deliverer, "What cut my
mail? How have I broken from sleep? Who has flung from me the dark
spells?" and his answer, "Sigmund's son and Sigurd's sword," she
bursts into the famous "Greeting to the World":

"Long have I slept, long was I sunk in sleep, long are men's
misfortunes. It was Odin's doing that I could not break the runes of
sleep. Hail, day! hail, sons of day! hail, night! Look on us two with
gracious eyes, and give victory to us who sit here. Hail, Aesir! hail,
Asynjor! hail, Earth, mother of all! give eloquence and wisdom to us
the wonderful pair, and hands of healing while we live."

She then becomes Sigurd's guardian and protectress and the source of
his wisdom, as she speaks the runes and counsels which are to help him
in all difficultie