Editing Valhalla (section)

==== ''Helgakviða Hundingsbana II'' ====

In stanza 38 of the poem ''[[Helgakviða Hundingsbana II]]'', the hero [[Helgi Hundingsbane]] dies and goes to Valhalla. In stanza 38, Helgi's glory there is described:

<blockquote><poem>
So was Helgi beside the chieftains
like the bright-growing ash beside the thorn-bush
and the young stag, drenched in dew,
who surpasses all other animals
and whose horns glow against the sky itself.<ref name=LARRINGTON139>Larrington (1999:139).</ref>
</poem></blockquote>

Prose follows after this stanza, stating a [[Tumulus|burial-mound]] was made for Helgi. After Helgi arrived in Valhalla, he was asked by Odin to manage things with him. In stanza 39, Helgi, now in Valhalla, has his former enemy Hunding—also in Valhalla—do menial tasks; fetching foot-baths for all of the men there, kindling fire, tying dogs, keeping watch of horses, and feeding the pigs before he can get any sleep. In stanzas 40 to 42, Helgi returns to Midgard from Valhalla with a host of men. An unnamed maid of Sigrún, Helgi's valkyrie wife, sees Helgi and his large host of men riding into the mound. The maid asks if she is experiencing a delusion, if Ragnarök is started, or if Helgi and his men were allowed to return.<ref name=LARRINGTON139/>

In the following stanzas, Helgi responds none of these things occurred, and so Sigrún's maid goes home to Sigrún. The maid tells Sigrún the burial mound is opened, and Sigrún should go to Helgi there. Helgi asked her to come and tend his wounds after they opened and are bleeding. Sigrún goes into the mound, and finds Helgi is drenched in gore, his hair is thick with frost. Filled with joy at the re-union, Sigrún kisses him before he can remove his coat of mail, and asks how she can heal him. Sigrún makes a bed there, and the two sleep together in the enclosed burial mound. Helgi awakens, stating he must "ride along the blood-red roads, to set the pale horse to tread the path of the sky," and return before the rooster Salgófnir crows. Helgi and the host of men ride away, and Sigrún and her servant go back to their house. Sigrún orders her maid to wait for him by the mound the next night, but after she arrives at dawn, she finds he is still journeying. The prose narrative at the end of the poem relates Sigrún dies of sadness, but the two are thought to be re-born as [[Helgi Haddingjaskati]] and the valkyrie [[Kára]].<ref name=LARRINGTON139-141>Larrington (1999:139–141).</ref>