And for him shall these shards be smithied; and he shall be my son,
To remember what I have forgotten and to do what I left undone.’”
Elf, the viking.
While Hiordis was mourning over Sigmund’s lifeless body, her watching handmaiden warned her of the approach of a party of vikings. Retreating into the thicket once more, Hiordis exchanged garments with her; then, bidding her walk first and personate the queen, they went to meet the viking Elf (Helfrat or Helferich), and so excited his admiration for Sigmund that he buried him with all pomp, and promised them a safe asylum in his house.
As he had doubted their relative positions from the very first moment, he soon resorted to a seemingly idle question to ascertain their real rank. The pretended queen, when asked how she knew the hour had come for rising when the winter days were short and there was no light to announce the coming of morn, replied that, as she was in the habit of drinking milk ere she fed the cows, she always awoke thirsty. But when the same question was put to the real Hiordis, she answered that she knew it was morning because the golden ring her father had given her grew cold on her hand.
Sigurd.
Elf, having thus discovered the true state of affairs, offered marriage to the pretended handmaiden, Hiordis, promising to foster her child by Sigmund—a promise which he nobly kept. The child was sprinkled with water by his hand—a ceremony which our pagan ancestors scrupulously performed—received from him the name of Sigurd, and grew up in the palace. There he was treated as the king’s own son, receiving his education from Regin, the wisest of men, who knew all things and was even aware of his own fate, which was to fall by a youth’s hand.
“Again in the house of the Helper there dwelt a certain man,
Beardless and low of stature, of visage pinched and wan:
So exceeding old was Regin, that no son of man could tell