16. "Gunnar, I dreamed | a dream full grim:
In the hall were corpses; | cold was my bed;
And, ruler, thou | didst joyless ride,
With fetters bound | in the foemen's throng.

17. ". . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
Utterly now your | Niflung race
All shall die; | your oaths ye have broken.

18. "Thou hast, Gunnar, | the deed forgot,
When blood in your footprints | both ye mingled;
All to him | hast repaid with ill
Who fain had made thee | the foremost of kings.

19. "Well did he prove, | when proud he rode
To win me then | thy wife to be,
How true the host-slayer | ever had held
The oaths he had made | with the monarch young.

20. "The wound-staff then, | all wound with gold,
The hero let | between us lie;
With fire the edge | was forged full keen,
And with drops of venom | the blade was damp."

[16. Mogk regards stanzas 16 and 17 as interpolated, but on not very satisfactory grounds. On the death of Gunnar cf. Drap Niflunga.

17. No gap is indicated in the manuscript, and some editions attach these two lines to stanza 16. Niflungs: this name (German Nibelungen), meaning "sons of the mist," seems to have belonged originally to the race of supernatural beings to which the treasure belonged in the German version. It was subsequently ex tended to include the Gjukungs and their Burgundians. This question, of minor importance in the Norse poems, has evoked an enormous amount of learned discussion in connection with the Nibelungenlied.

19. Footprints: the actual mingling of blood in one another's footprints was a part of the ceremony of swearing blood-brother hood, the oath which Gunnar and Sigurth had taken. The fourth line refers to the fact that Sigurth had won many battles for Gunnar.

20. Regarding the sword episode cf. Gripisspo, 41 and note. Wound-staff: sword.]

17. Fót nam-at hræra, fjölð nam-at spjalla,
hitt herglötuðr hyggja téði,
hvat þeir í bölvi báðir sögðu
hrafn ey ok örn, er þeir heim riðu.

18. Vaknaði Brynhildr Buðla dóttir,
dís skjöldunga, fyr dag litlu:
"Hvetið mik eða letið mik
- harmr er unninn -
sorg at segja eða svá láta."

19. Þögðu allir við því orði,
fár kunni þeim fljóða látum,
er hon grátandi gerðisk at segja
þat er hlæjandi hölða beiddi:

20. "Hugða ek mér, Gunnarr, grimmt í svefni,
svalt allt í sal, ætta sæing kalda;
enn þú, gramr, riðir glaums andvani,
fjötri fatlaðr, í fjánda lið;
svá mun öll yður ætt Niflunga
afli gengin, eruð eiðrofa.