Sigrún- Norse HeroHero

The Valkyrie's Choice

Sigrún appears in the two Helgi Hundingsbani poems of the Poetic Edda as a Valkyrie who does not merely choose the slain but chooses the living. In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, she rides through the sky with her company of Valkyries and finds Helgi on the field after his victory over the sons of Hunding. She reveals that she had watched over him in battle, guiding his fortune, and declares her love openly. But she is already betrothed to Höðbroddr, a king's son, and her choice of Helgi sets two oaths against each other. Helgi gathers his forces and sails to confront Höðbroddr's alliance. Sigrún rides above the battle with her Valkyries. Helgi prevails, and Höðbroddr falls. The marriage her father Högni arranged dies with him.

The Mound

Helgakviða Hundingsbana II tells the aftermath. Sigrún's brother Dagr, bound by kinship loyalty to avenge the deaths from Helgi's war, kills Helgi with Odin's spear. Sigrún curses her own brother with devastating thoroughness. When word reaches her that Helgi has been seen riding to his burial mound with a company of warriors, she goes to him there. Helgi sits in the dark, bleeding from his wounds, and tells Sigrún that each of her tears falls on his chest as drops of blood, that her grief will not let him rest. They spend one night together in the mound. Helgi rides away before dawn and does not return.

Sigrún's grief kills her. The poem states it plainly. She dies of sorrow. The final prose note of the second lay adds that they were reborn: he as Helgi Haddingjaskati, she as the Valkyrie Kára. The poem of their later incarnation, Káruljóð, has not survived.