Voices, Memory, and Identity in the First Lay of Guðrún: A Narratological Analysis

Abstract

Abstract

The First Lay of Guðrún ( Guðrúnarkviða I ) is one of the most intense and moving poems of the Poetic Edda. It is distinguished by its polyphonic structure and its exploration of individual grief through the interplay of multiple female voices. At the centre of the poem is Guðrún, wife of the hero Sigurðr, who confronts the trauma of his death and the betrayal of her brothers. An extradiegetic narrator introduces the mourning scene and presents Guðrún as initially silent and paralysed by grief. She is gradually prompted to speak through the interventions of other female figures, who recount their own experiences of mourning and suffering. Among them, Gullrǫnd plays a crucial role: by unveiling Sigurðr’s body and recalling the love that once bound Guðrún to him, she enables the heroine to confront her loss and recover her voice. The succession of female voices thus creates an empathic chain in which individual experiences of suffering become part of a shared narrative of grief. This process moves Guðrún from silence to speech and from being the object of the narrator’s gaze to becoming an active speaking subject. Her subsequent speech reconstructs the memory of her relationship with Sigurðr and articulates the loss of both her emotional and social identity. This article argues that the interaction between narrative voice, silence, memory, and female subjectivity constitutes a central structural principle of the poem. A narratological approach makes it possible to illuminate the different levels of discourse embedded within the lay and to interpret its multivoicedness as a form of poetic polyphony.