járn

Put iron in the baby’s cradle to keep it from being carried away. That is what has been done in many times and places. Iron is good against fairy abduction. An iron knife is even better. Put a knife in the child’s bed, and it will be safe against marauding elves, trows, huldrer and hiddenfolk.

Farm girls in the high Norwegian summer meadows, minding the goats and not yet married off, were also vulnerable to being stolen away by fairies, vulnerable especially to the attentions of the young otherworldly men (though who knows how old a young-seeming huldremann might be - these are very strange ancient beings after all). There was some herbal concoction, foul-smelling no doubt, that could be smeared on their braids to keep any demon lover away and prevent a fairy marriage—bryllup—in the old sense of brúð-hlaup—bride-pursuit—in which the suitor simply seized the woman and rode away with her faster than anyone could stop him. Fairy mounts ran swift indeed; no village plough horse would ever catch one.

Sigurðr was blessed with a horse of otherworldy stock; Grani’s sire was Sleipnir, and his sire was Svaðilfari, the horse of giants and the draught beast whose doughtiness at hauling nearly cost the gods everything. With such a grandsire, Grani had the mettle to dare the flame wall when Gunnar’s horse quailed, and Sigurðr, for friendship’s sake, rode the flame in disguise to win Gunnarr his chosen bride. It was to be an arrested sort of bride abduction by proxy, then. The rider would burst in and extract a promise of marriage, but there would be no immediate carrying-away or consummation. And indeed, true to the plan, still in disguise as his friend, Sigurðr showed his comradely loyalty that night by laying his drawn sword between himself and Brynhildr.

The Freudian interpretation is an obvious one, and if you like it, you will be pleased to know that other versions bear that symbolism out inasmuch as they record issue from that night in the form of a girl-child named Áslaug. But I am not talking about those versions. I am talking about the one with the drawn sword.

I imagine Sigurðr this way: he sees her, this disgraced valkyrie, and when her eyes open and flick over his face he swallows hard and thinks again about his errand and his role in this story. Then he draws the longest iron knife he has and places in his own bed before he dares close his eyes to sleep.