00:00:28.000Guthron Arkvitha I is immediately followed in the Codex Regius by a long poem which in the manuscript bears the heading Sigrth Arkvitha, but which is clearly referred to in the prose link between it and Guthron Arkvitha I as the short lay of Sigrth.
00:00:49.520The discrepancy between this reference and the obvious length of the poem has led to
00:00:56.480many conjectures, but the explanation seems to be that the long Sigurðle, of which the
00:01:03.880Brot is presumably a part, was materially longer even than this poem.
00:01:11.640The efforts to reduce the short Sigurðle to dimensions which would justify the appellation
00:01:19.420in comparison to other poems in the collection, either by separating it into two poems or
00:01:26.240by the rejection of many stanzas as interpolations, have been utterly inconclusive.
00:01:35.860Although there are probably several interpolated passages, and indications of omissions are
00:01:42.940not lacking, the poem as we now have it seems to be a distinct and coherent unit. From the
00:01:51.120narrative point of view it leaves a good deal to be desired, for the reasons that the poet's
00:01:57.060object was by no means to tell a story with which his hearers were quite familiar, but
00:02:04.340to use the narrative simply as the background for vivid and powerful characterization. The
00:02:11.820The lyric element, as Malk puts out, overshadows the epic throughout, and the fact that there
00:02:19.940are frequent confusions of narrative tradition does not trouble the poet at all.
00:02:27.700The material on which the poem was based seems to have existed in both prose and verse form.
00:02:35.220The poet was almost certainly familiar with some of the other poems in the edit collection,
00:02:41.060with poems which have since been lost, and with narrative prose traditions which never