The cord snapped. It had stretched across the past, but it could not touch the future. It was, indeed, too short.
“It breaks!” wailed the Norns, crouching in dread, as the faint light of day appeared.
“At an end is our wisdom!” they murmured in chorus, and wound the broken bits of the rope about their gray-shrouded bodies; then fled like mist into the earth, down to their mother, Erda, the all-wise one, she who had first prophesied the Dusk of the Gods.
When she had taught him all the wisdom that she knew, and given him all she had, Brünnhilde bade her hero go forth into the world and win fame and honor by great deeds. He must journey to the far lands peopled by brave men and high heroes and prove his courage and his strength. She would wait for him patiently, and he would come back to her when he had made all men know and honor him.
She gave him Grani, her stanch war-horse, and he placed on her finger as a parting love-gift the beautiful bright Ring that he had won at Hate Hole, and then he bade her farewell, and blithely passed down the mountain-side, blowing a clear, merry blast on his horn.
Brünnhilde stood on the Walküres’ rock and gazed yearningly after him, and the young hero went forth into far lands to know men and do great deeds, and find at last that strange place called the world.
Motif of Brünnhilde