Three brothers, Slagfinn,
Egil and Voelund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built
themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, early one
morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, their swancoats lying
beside them. The brothers took them home; but after seven years the
swan-maidens, wearied of their life, flew away to battle, and did
not return.
"Seven years they stayed there, but in the eighth longing seized
them, and in the ninth need parted them." Egil and Slagfinn went to
seek their wives, but Voelund stayed where he was and worked at his
forge. There Nithud, King of Sweden, took him captive:
"Men went by night in studded mailcoats; their shields shone by
the waning moon. They dismounted from the saddle at the hall-gable,
and went in along the hall. They saw rings strung on bast which the
hero owned, seven hundred in all; they took them off and put, them on
again, all but one. The keen-eyed archer Voelund came in from hunting,
from a far road.... He sat on a bear-skin and counted his rings, and
the prince of the elves missed one; he thought Hlodve's daughter,
the fairy-maid, had come back. He sat so long that he fell asleep,
and awoke powerless: heavy bonds were on his hands, and fetters
clasped on his feet."
They took him away and imprisoned him, ham-strung, on an island to
forge treasures for his captors. Then Voelund planned vengeance:
"'I see on Nithud's girdle the sword which I knew keenest and best,
and which I forged with all my skill.
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