Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXVI. How Sigmund was A...

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This is a chapter from Donald A. Mackenzie's 1912 retelling of Norse/Germanic myth, drawn from the Völsunga saga tradition, recounting the revenge plot of Sigmund the Volsung against the treacherous King Siggeir. The narrative follows Sigmund's decades-long exile in a forest hut while his sister Signy secretly breeds and tests sons capable of carrying out the blood vengeance owed for their father Volsung's death — twice having her own children killed for lacking courage, and ultimately conceiving Sinfjotle with Sigmund himself through a disguised tryst. The central episode involves Sigmund and Sinfjotle living as were-wolves, training in violence and outlawry, before they infiltrate Siggeir's hall, are buried alive, escape by sword, and burn the hall down with Siggeir inside. The most striking element is Signy's farewell: she reveals that Sinfjotle is both her son and her nephew (the product of incest with Sigmund), explains she engineered everything — including her own children's deaths — solely for vengeance, and then walks back into the fire to die with the husband she despised, declaring her purpose complete. Mackenzie retells the saga in plain, archaic-flavored prose that stays close to the source material's brutal moral logic, where loyalty to kin and the obligation of vengeance override all other values including maternal love and self-preservation.

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXVI. How Sigmund was A...

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