I. The Animal–Human Spectrum: Bodily Changes and Behavioural Continuities

Giorgio Agamben’s concept of the ‘anthropological machine’ – the cultural mechanism which strategically produces the category of the human by separating it from the animal – provides a useful framework here.2 Agamben, The Open, p. 26. The anthropological machine illustrates how contingent and mobile the human–animal divide is. This divide is not external but situated within the human itself, a concept Agamben refers to as the ‘intimate caesura’;3 Ibid., pp. 15–16. the categories of animal and human are two sides of the same, ultimately human, coin.

We see this categorical instability at play in the episode in Vǫlsunga saga in which a she-wolf devours Sigmundr’s brothers. While the narrator refers to her as an ylgr (she-wolf), the internal audience speculates that she might be a shape-shifted human: ‘En þat er sǫgn sumra manna at sú in sama ylgr væri móðir Siggeirs konungs ok hafi hon brugðit á sik þessu líki fyrir trollskapar sakir ok fjǫlkyngi’ (‘And some men say that the she-wolf was Siggeir’s mother, who had assumed this form through witchcraft and sorcery’).4 Vǫls., ch. 5 (p. 8). This suspicion dehumanises Siggeir’s mother twice over: first by animalising her, and then by imputing anthropophagy. The extradiegetic aside also reflects a narrative convention: behind animal form, audiences often expect a human agent, a reflex that itself presumes the human underlies the animal (at least in story-worlds).5 It may also reflect the narrator’s familiarity with divergent versions of this episode. Yet the text never resolves the ambiguity: the she-wolf may just as well be a wolf. This doubleness enacts Agamben’s ‘intimate caesura’, exposing the human–animal divide as contingent, and highlighting the tension between the constructed category of the ‘animal’ (which serves the anthropological machine) and the lived reality of nonhuman creatures.

This ‘intimate caesura’ runs throughout the heroic poems of the Poetic Edda. In Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, Sigrún compares her elation at the prospect of reuniting with her dead husband to the eagerness of ravening hawks ‘er val vitu,/ varmar bráðir’ (‘when they detect warm slaughter-meat’).6 HHII 32 (Eddukvæði II, 280). In contrast to Sigrún’s hawk simile, which expresses desire as bestial appetite, in Hamðismál (the manuscript’s closing poem), a dying Hamðir attempts to enforce a distinction between human restraint and animal ferocity:

But the audience has just seen him and Sǫrli murder their half-brother whilst pursuing vengeance on behalf of their kin, thus exemplifying the very in-fighting (‘sjálfir um sakask’) he denounces. Hamðir’s belated disavowal is therefore darkly ironic, exposed as futile by his own deeds. The image is a fitting coda to the Sigurðr-cycle in the Codex Regius, in which characters repeatedly emulate the úlfa dœmi (example of wolves).

At another level, animal bodies can serve as vehicles for human messages. In Vǫlsunga saga and Skáldskaparmál, Randvér, sentenced to death by his father Jǫrmunrekkr, sends him a featherless hawk. In Vǫlsunga saga, the hawk symbolises Jǫrmunrekkr’s dishonour in killing his son,17 Vǫls., ch. 42 (p. 76). whereas in Skáldskaparmál it signals the dynastic consequences of this act: ‘svá sem haukrinn var ófleygr ok fjaðrlauss, ok svá var ríki hans ófœrt er hann var gamall ok sonlauss’ (‘just as the hawk was flightless and featherless, so too was his kingdom immobilised since he was old and heirless’).18 Skm., ch. 42 (p. 49). Animal bodies thus function as malleable signs, equivalent even to the semiotic mode of written language: compare the media by which Guðrún warns her brothers of Atli’s treachery in the eddic poems Atlakviða and Atlamál. In Atlakviða, Guðrún sends her brothers a ‘baug […] varinn váðum heiðingja’ (‘ring, wrapped in wolf’s clothing [i.e., fur]’),19 Akv. 8 (p. 374). which Hǫgni interprets as portending a ‘yflskr’ (wolfish, i.e., dangerous) journey ahead. The counterpart warning sent in Atlamál is linguistic: ‘Rúnar nam at rísta’ (‘She carved some runes’).20 Am. 4 (Eddukvæði II, 383). On this divergence in message-media, see T. Birkett, ‘A Cautionary Tale Reading the Runic Message in Atlamál in grœnlenzko’, VMS 9 (2013), 1–8.

Yet animals in the cycle are not merely passive signs. They are also depicted as living creatures sharing a world with humans, instrumental in the unfurling of the plot. Sigurðr only learns of Reginn’s treachery by eavesdropping on a conversation between birds, while Gunnarr and Sigurðr’s fateful exchange of appearances (in Skáldskaparmál and Vǫlsunga saga’s accounts of Gunnarr’s engagement to Brynhildr) owes to the will of two horses: Gunnarr’s horse refusing to leap through the fire, and Grani refusing to bear any rider but Sigurðr. Sigurðr and Gunnarr must exchange appearances: human fate is entangled with animal life.

In the Poetic Edda, wolfishness is a metaphorical identity ascribed to humans who violate communal norms, especially through kin-slaying, as previous scholars have noted.23 R. Harris, Wisdom of the North: Proverbial Allusion and Patterning in the Icelandic Saga (Ithaca, NY, 2022), p. 80; D. Clark, ‘Kin-Slaying in the Poetic Edda: The End of the World?’, VMS 3 (2007), 21–41 (p. 27); Larrington, ‘Loki’s Children’, in The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature, ed. McKinnell, Ashurst and Kick, II, 541–50 (p. 545). On wolf-symbolism beyond the Sigurðr-cycle, see Su, Werewolves, and Rohrbach, Der tierische Blick, pp. 278–81. In Vǫlsunga saga, this imagery is literalised as metamorphosis, with Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli transforming physically into wolves in the ‘wolf-skin’ episode. This episode has no parallel in the Poetic Edda, though it is often assumed that several details in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I’s senna (flyting) allude to it. I suggest an inverted relationship: the saga’s wolf-skin transformation is an innovation developed by the narrator, building on figurative details from the Helgi senna associating wolfishness with kin-slaying. Read in this light, the saga episode is a prose narrativisation of poetic imagery, envisaging social alterity through bodily metamorphosis.

As symbolic predators, wolves represent the disruption of human social order, illustrating how species-based identities are metaphorically invoked to regulate the boundaries of permissible human behaviour. This conflation of criminal and wolf extends to legal terminology, where a vargr (wolf) denotes an outlaw,24 J. Love, I. Larsson and U. Djärv, A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law (Cambridge, UK, 2020), pp. 358–59. vargdrópi (wolf-dropping) refers to a criminal/outlaw’s child,25 Ibid., p. 358. brennuvargr (fire-wolf) describes an arsonist26 Ibid., p. 58. and morðvargr (murder-wolf) designates a murderer.27 Ibid., p. 244. Several of these legal terms are used in the eddic verses themselves (e.g., HHII 33, Sd. 24). Although wolves were not native to Iceland, their prominence in medieval Icelandic thought may stem from their stereotyped role as beasts of battle (which brought them into proximity with human death) and their predatory nature. As Aleksander Pluskowski observes, wolves are one of the few animals who challenge human domination over the natural world through their carnivorousness,28 Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 15. enhancing their symbolic power in these texts.

In Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, Sigrún curses her brother Dagr, who has killed her husband Helgi, wishing him to become a vargr condemned to the wilderness:

This cluster of images equates outlawry from human community with a rejection of humanity itself, figuring kin-slaying as anthropophagy. The same metaphor runs through Reginsmál and Fáfnismál, where wolf imagery shadows each act of kin-slaying. Hreiðmarr, dying at the hands of his son Fáfnir, urges his daughter to produce an heir to avenge his death, calling her a ‘dís úlfhuguð’ (wolf-hearted woman)31 Rm. 12 (Eddukvæði II, p. 199). – a phrase perhaps suggesting her obligation to produce a sufficiently wolfish offspring, capable of avenging kin-slaying through further kin-slaying. Later, when Sigurðr arrives at Reginn’s house, Reginn is pleased, because

This reveals Reginn’s hope that Sigurðr will avenge the death of Reginn’s father by killing his brother Fáfnir. The wolfish image recurs in Fáfnismál, when the nuthatches advise Sigurðr to kill Reginn before Reginn kills him, using the proverbial phrase ‘þar er mér úlfs vón/ er ek eyru sék’ (‘I expect a wolf when I see his ears’)34 Fm. 35 (p. 310). which could equally apply to Sigurðr or Reginn. Again, a correspondence is established between vicious human character and wolfish form, in anticipation of kin-slaying: wolfishness is not a fixed identity but a potential – anyone poised to betray kin may be recognised as lupine.

However, since character traits are depicted as passing down through bloodlines (the ‘genealogical’ body, described above), wolfishness can also be framed as hereditary. As Sigrdrífa advises Sigurðr,

The figurative ungr úlfr (young wolf) reappears too in the context of vengeance in Sigurðarkviða in skamma, when Brynhildr orders the death of Sigurðr’s son following Sigurðr’s murder:

Throughout the heroic eddic poems, humans are ‘lupinised’ when they engage in antisocial behaviours, especially kin-slaying. Such metaphor-based dehumanisation can have a significant effect on how social transgressions are conceptualised and punished:37 Studies show that animalistic descriptions of criminals lead to more severe punishments (P. Goff et al., ‘Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94.2 (2008), 292–306), biasing sentencing decisions by altering perceived recidivism (Vasquez et al., ‘The Animal in You: Animalistic Descriptions of a Violent Crime Increase Punishment of Perpetrator’, Aggressive Behaviour 40 (2014), 337–44). Perhaps lupinising a human in eddic verse serves to justify their murder (a strategy adopted by Brynhildr in Sigurðarkviða 12)? indeed, in legal material, vargar (outlaws) who violate peace are expelled from human spaces to be hunted and killed with impunity, like their namesakes: ‘þa scal hann sva viþa vargr rækr oc rekiN sem menn viþazt varga reka’ (‘then he shall be an outlaw [vargr], expelled and driven out as people widely drive wolves [varga] out’).38 Grágás I, ch. 115 (p. 206).

Figurative lupinisation distances certain acts and mindsets from the human, but in doing so it also paradoxically brings human and wolf into closer proximity: identity becomes determined not by species but by behaviour. This dissolution of ontological boundaries through shared behaviours recalls the perceptual effect of metaphorical skaldic kennings (discussed in Chapters 1 and 3), where the base-word and referent share an analogous function or trait (for example, horse and ship as modes of transport). Both poetic modes emphasise likeness over separation between categories of being, focusing on how entities behave rather than strictly what they are.

In Vǫlsunga saga, the metaphorical wolfishness of humans in eddic poetry is made literal. Where verse deploys animal imagery to mark social transgression, the saga turns it into narrative fact in the wolf-skin episode. This episode begins with the implicit outlawry of Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli, who dwell in the forest in a jarðhús (earth-house), plotting vengeance against kin (Siggeir) for kin-slaying (Siggeir’s murder of Vǫlsung).39 Vǫls., ch. 6 (p. 8). Jarðhús are associated with outlaws in Íslendingasögur (e.g., Þorgerðr’s jarðhús which houses outlaws in Gísla saga Súrssonar). Though neither Sigmundr nor Sinfjǫtli are dubbed outlaws in a legal sense by the narrator, they nonetheless live as such – dwelling in woodland (the abode of vargar)40 Cp. the kenning ‘skógar skœðasǫgn’ (anon., Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar 22, SkP I, 1053: ‘harm-host of the forest [WOLVES]’), which denotes wolves through their association with woodland. and killing men for money.41 Vǫls., ch. 8 (p. 10). This behaviour foreshadows their becoming vargar in the literal sense: they transform into wolves, communicate with wolf-voices, fight humans in the forest and even attack one another.42 Ibid. (p. 11). The transition from figurative to literal wolf reflects the men’s prior antisocial behaviours: as Florian Deichl suggests, ‘the transformation into wolves makes only visible what has been there all the time’.43 ‘“The Very Image of the Völsungs”. The Killer in Wolf’s Clothing’, in Bad Boys and Wicked Women: Antagonists and Troublemakers in Old Norse Literature, ed. D. Hahn and A. Schmidt (Munich, 2016), pp. 215–39 (p. 227). This is comparable to Fáfnir’s dragon-transformation, which scholars interpret as a punishment for his misdeeds (Hancock, ‘Beyond Sorrow and Swords’, p. 119) or a result of his excessive greed (S. Barreiro, ‘The Hoard Makes the Dragon: Fáfnir as a Shapeshifter’, in Shapeshifters in Medieval North Atlantic Literature, ed. S. Barreiro and L. C. Russo (Amsterdam, 2019), pp. 53–82 (p. 62).

Yet the episode is also framed narratorially as an initiation of sorts. Before the wolf-skin ordeal, we learn that ‘Sigmundi þykkir Sinfjǫtli of ungr til hefnda með sér ok vill nú fyrst venja hann með nǫkkut harðræði’ (‘Sigmundr thought Sinfjǫtli too young to perform vengeance with him, and wanted first to test him with some hard plight’).44 Vǫls., ch. 8 (p. 10). After the transformation, we see Sinfjǫtli kill his half-brothers and help murder Siggeir (his stepfather and uncle-in-law). Wolfish embodiment functions as a medial state through which the men pass in preparation for kin-slaying.45 In this respect, Sinfjǫtli’s ‘maturation’ via wolf-flesh is comparable to Guttormr’s consumption of wolf-meat later in Vǫlsunga saga, which emboldens him to kill his brother-in-law. In materialising wolfishness through transformation, the saga dramatises the thematic nexus of wolf, vengeance and kin-slaying that runs throughout eddic verse.46 Wolfish form, vengeance and kin-slaying are also linked in mythological narrative: when the gods punish Loki in Gylfaginnning (ch. 50), one of Loki’s sons is transformed into a wolf, which tears apart his brother.

The episode appears to have been developed specifically out of details concerning Sinfjǫtli in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I’s senna. Scholars often treat the senna as evidence for the ‘originality’ of the wolf-skin episode to the story-cycle,47 Kommentar IV, 288; Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda, rev. ed. (Oxford, 2014), pp. 298–9 (notes 36, 41); Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Óláson, Eddukvæði II, 254–5 (notes 36 and 41). but the eddic insults themselves describe wolfish behaviour in connection with fratricide, not bodily transformation. I argue that the saga-narrator – who knew the tradition of the senna, since it is paraphrased in chapter 9 of the saga – expanded this imagery into plot, converting metaphor into metamorphosis.48 Other factors potentially influencing the development of the wolf-skin episode in Vǫlsunga saga include the identification of Sinfjǫtli and Sigmundr with the Ylfingar (Wolfings) dynasty, and Marie de France’s werewolf-lai, Bisclavret. Carol Clover has suggested that the saga-compiler was acquainted with Marie de France’s lai Eliduc (‘Vǫlsunga saga and the Missing lai’, in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 65th Birthday, 26th May, 1986, ed. R. Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson and H. Bekker-Nielsen (Vienna, 1986), pp. 79–84). The compiler therefore may also have known Bisclavret (which was circulating in Norway in the thirteenth century, since it is included in the Strengleikar collection, De la Gardie 4-7). See E. M. Goeres, ‘Translating Romance in Medieval Norway: Marie de France and Strengleikar’, in A Companion to Medieval Translation, ed. J. Beer (Amsterdam, 2020), pp. 75–84.

Sennur-insults serve multiple purposes: they are a verbal overture to physical battle, they establish an interlocutor’s rhetorical dominance, and they negotiate cultural norms and gender models by marking specific behaviours as transgressive. In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, the senna between Sinfjǫtli and Guðmundr brims with accusations of indolence, kin-slaying, gender-swapping, ‘receptive’ homosexuality,49 D. Clark, Gender, Violence and the Past in Edda and Saga (Oxford, 2012), p. 46. impotence and servility – traits deemed incompatible with idealised masculinity. Sinfjǫtli feminises Guðmundr as various lustful women (sts 37–8), while Guðmundr animalises Sinfjǫtli as a wolf and a mare.50 It is not always clear who is speaking in the senna; I follow Larrington’s punctuation of the dialogue, which attributes the mare-insults to Guðmundr. These animal forms signify social misconduct rather than literal transformation: when Guðmundr calls Sinfjǫtli ‘brúðr Grana/ á Brávelli’ (‘Grani’s bride on Bravǫll plain’),51 HHI 42 (Eddukvæði II, 255). he implies cowardice (since mare’s hearts are associated with fearfulness),52 See, e.g., the Mǫkkurkálfi episode in Skáldskaparmál (ch. 17). subservience and perhaps sexual passivity, imagining himself as Sinfjǫtli’s rider – ‘hafða ek þér móðri/ margt skeið riðit’ (‘I have ridden you to exhaustion over many tracks’).53 HHI 42 (p. 255).

Guðmundr also likens Sinfjǫtli to a wolf in several verses, in association with his fratricide:

The imputation of eating wolves’ food here is tantamount to anthropophagy, a motif also tied to kin-slaying in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 33 (as quoted earlier in this section).55 Similarly, Olley observes a link between anthropophagy and fratricide in the figure of Atli (who kills his brothers-in-law), observing that Guðrún ‘treats him [Atli] like the wolf he has figuratively become in her eyes, serving up more human flesh for him to feed upon, literally this time’ (‘Co-Presence and Consumption’, p. 507). These images align betrayal and fratricide with predatory animality, using the figure of the wolf to demarcate kin-slayers as social pariahs. This image cluster is evoked in mytho-poetic contexts too, in Vǫluspá:

Social misconduct (lines 3–6) is mirrored in the predation of animals upon humans (lines 7–9), and the stanza’s repetition of vargr, referring first to a criminal and then to a wolf, emphasises this correspondence. Guðmundr’s reference to ‘sár sogin’ (‘sucked wounds’) is also reminiscent of Vǫluspá’s ‘saug […] nái’ (‘sucked corpses’) – both poems employ the verb sjúga57 Where the Hauksbók-version of Vǫlsupá has the third-person singular past saug here, the Regius-version has the first-person singular present sv́g (also from sjúga, typically emended by editors to saug on syntactical grounds; Kommentar I, 313); Vsp(SnE) 14 (Eddukvæði I, 319) has kvelr (from kvelja ‘torment, torture’). – a lexical echo suggesting that Guðmundr may be portraying Sinfjǫtli not only as a wolf, but also a snake (like Níðhoggr), which would explain the use of the verb skriðna (to slip/slide) in the last line of his verse.58 See further Kommentar IV, 288–9, which supports this reading.

In a later stanza, Guðmundr plays on the double meaning of vargr, reinforcing the lupine-fratricidal link:

The first four lines turn on Sinfjǫtli’s detachment from civilisation (living in animal spaces, hearing wolf howls), while the last six lines focus on the infamy of his fratricide. These charges parallel specific details in the wolf-skin episode: Sinfjǫtli’s familiarity with wolf-song (vargljóðum) in the poem resembles his understanding of wolf-voices (vargsrǫdd) in the saga, while both poem and saga stress that Sinfjǫtli’s wolfish deeds bring notoriety: ‘í þeim óskǫpum unnu þeir mǫrg frægðarverk í ríki Siggeirs konungs’ (‘under that misfortune [the wolf-skins] they performed many famous deeds in king Siggeir’s kingdom’).60 Vǫls., ch. 8 (pp. 11–12).

The depiction of Sinfjǫtli in the senna thus belongs to a wider network of imagery employed across the Poetic Edda, and need not be interpreted literally. Where eddic poetry often oscillates between literal and figurative representation – for instance, the dragon Fáfnir and the human Brynhildr both ‘snort poison’ (eitri fnœsa) (Fáfnir, perhaps literally, Brynhildr, presumably metaphorically)61 584 Fm. 18, 19; Gðr. I 27. – the saga insists on narrative concreteness. As R. Finch observes, its narrator systematically avoids poetic diction when paraphrasing poetic sources, leaving ‘surprisingly few traces of poetic style or vocabulary’;62 ‘The Treatment of Poetic Sources by the Compiler of Vǫlsunga saga’, Saga-Book 16 (1965), 315–53 (p. 353). the literalisation of metaphor as metamorphosis in the wolf-skin episode therefore aligns with the narrator’s preference for material event over poetic imagery. Yet despite these differences, verse and prose converge on the same point: wolfishness marks the human who transgresses communal order, above all the kin-slayer.

The content of fuglsrǫdd in the Poetic Edda is often tied to human fortunes. Birds comment on human affairs, provide counsel or offer prophetic knowledge: a raven foretells Helgi’s greatness in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I; a bird in Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar informs Atli of Sigrlinn’s beauty and advises orchestrating her marriage to Hjǫrvarðr; the nuthatches in Fáfnismál urge Sigurðr to eat Fáfnir’s heart and kill Reginn; and in Brot af Sigurðarkviðu, a raven portends Gunnarr and Hǫgni’s deaths at Atli’s hands. As detached observers, talking birds also offer poets novel opportunities for interpreting events and commenting on characters’ actions (as in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and Brot af Sigurðarkviðu).

Bourns has observed how comprehension of bird-speech in the Poetic Edda marks exceptional wisdom or divine descent, so interspecies communication functions both as a narrative device and an index of human calibre.72 ‘The Language of Birds in Old Norse Tradition’, JEGP 120.2 (2021), 209–38. These episodes suggest that bird sounds are not irrational, but merely opaque to most humans: the limits of communication lie less in animal incapacity than in human perception. This idea is reinforced in Vǫlsunga saga, when Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli converse using vargsrǫdd rather than human mál: language itself shifts with form, suggesting that rational communication is not the exclusive preserve of humankind. Yet this access remains largely asymmetrical: inter-species communication typically involves human access to animal language rather than vice versa, implicitly preserving an anthropocentric tilt.73 Elsewhere in Norse literature, animals are occasionally able to produce human speech, though not without magical intervention and not without limitations: e.g., Saurr, the dog-king in Hákonar saga góða (ch. 12).

Non-verbal interactions can also convey profound emotional connections between species. After Sigurðr’s death, Guðrún addresses his horse Grani:

This stanza sharpens the emotional impact of loss with a portrait of mutual grief. Grani mirrors human traits, like emotional responsiveness through gesture (‘þá hnipnaði Grani’),75 Hnípa appears elsewhere as an indicator of human grief (Bourns, ‘Animal Emotionality and Selfhood’, p. 102). intelligence (the horse knew – ‘vissi’ – Sigurðr was dead) and implied language comprehension (‘við Grana rœða’).76 Medieval Aristotelian philosophers recognised that animals, through their sensory souls, possessed cognition and emotions. However, these were seen as passive responses to external stimuli rather than the active formation of representations in the brain. Thus, animals lacked cognitive autonomy; their emotional responses were directly tied to external objects, unlike the interpretative and ‘self-determined’ nature of human emotions. See D. Perler, ‘Why is the Sheep Afraid of the Wolf? Medieval Debates on Animal Passions’, in Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. M. Pickavé and L. Shapiro (Oxford, 2012), pp. 547–65 (pp. 49–50). Indeed, the Vǫlsunga saga-narrator acknowledges this human-like behaviour in his prose paraphrase of Guðrún’s verse: ‘rœdda ek við hann sem við mann’ (‘I spoke with him as if he were human’). Yet even as Guðrún’s verse blurs the human/animal boundary, it does not fully dissolve it – with the term eigendr (owner) invoking a hierarchical relation of servitude between man and animal.77 Grani’s semi-divine status may grant him greater personhood than other animals. Nonetheless, comparable saga-animals with human-like intelligence or linguistic abilities include the horse Dúlcifal in Gǫngu-Hrólfs saga, ch. 1, who ‘kunni manns mál’ (p. 165: ‘understands human language’) and the dog Sámr in Brennu-Njáls saga, ch. 70, who ‘hefir manns vit’ (ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson, p. 173: ‘has human intelligence’). Even some objects respond to human verbal commands (e.g., the ship Elliði in Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar and Friðþjófs saga frøkna).