But there is no parallel to the essential features of the
Volsung cycle, and such likenesses between the two stories as are not
accidental are due to the influence of the more favoured legend; this
is especially true of the names. The prose-piece _Sinfjoetli's Death_
also makes Helgi half-brother to Sinfjoetli; it is followed in this
by _Voelsunga Saga_, which devotes a chapter to Helgi, paraphrasing
_Helyi Hundingsbane I_. There is, of course, confusion over the
Hunding episode; the saga is obliged to reconcile its conflicting
authorities by making Helgi kill Hunding and some of his sons, and
Sigurd kill the rest.
If the theory stated below as to the original Helgi legend be correct,
the feud with Hunding's race, as told in these poems, must be
extraneous. I conjecture that it belonged originally to the Volsung
cycle, and to the wer-wolf Sinfjoetli. It must not be forgotten that,
though he passes out of the Volsung story altogether in the later
versions, both Scandinavian and German, he is in the main action
in the earliest one (that in _Beowulf_), where even Sigurd does not
appear. The feud might easily have been transferred from him to Helgi
as well as to Sigurd, for invention is limited as regards episodes,
and a narrator who wishes to elaborate the story of a favourite hero
is often forced to borrow adventures. In the original story, Helgi's
blood-feud was probably with the kindred of Sigrun or Svava.
The origin of the Helgi legend must be sought outside of the Volsung
cycle.
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