If you’ve been following on any of my various channels, this post is broadly old news, though with the notable addition that it now includes the relevant Instagram Reel I made in part to promote my Spotify playlist.
Týr is a folk metal band from the Faroe Islands.
The Faroes are a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, located between Great Britain and Iceland.
Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Regin Smiður, from their 2003 album Eric the Red is, like many of their songs, based on traditional Faroese ballads known as kvæði, themselves drawing on famous episodes from Scandinavian history or mythology.
Notably, actual kvæði have dozens or even hundreds of verses and a repeating chorus. You get a sense of that in Týr’s traditionally-inspired songs, but for obvious reasons, they’re pretty heavily abridged.
Quick aside, I’ve actually found a recording of what I assume is the complete traditional kvæði of Regin Smiður on YouTube. It clocks in at a little under an hour and is only the first of three parts of the complete saga of Sigurd.
Which, incidentally, is the same story that Tolkien tells in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which I’ve done a 100-word book review of, and which I really should do a full write-up on…
The title Regin Smiður translates to “Regin (Black)Smith.” Incidentally, ‘ð’, the letter Eth is historically pronounced as a th sound — though this is apparently not the case in modern Faroese, where it is isn’t voice at all largely only retained for primarily etymological reasons — so, based on my understanding/hearing Smiður sounds like “smee-ur” and not “smee-thur.”
All of this is to say, the relationship between ‘Smiður’ and ‘smith’ becomes pretty clear.
Regin is a major figure in the Völsunga saga, the Norse version of the same story that inspired Wagner‘s Ring Cycle.
Referred to in the chorus, Sigurd (Sjúrður in Faroese), is the central character, the same character as Siegfried in the Ring Cycle. Grani, by the way, is his horse:
“Grani bore the gold down from the heath
With wrath he swung his sword
Sigurd slew the serpent.”
After the death of his father Sigmund, Sigurd is fostered by Regin, whose intentions are, as we see, less than entirely altruistic:
“Fafnir is the dragon’s name
That dwells on Gnita-heath
Regin is a good smith,
But to few is he faithful.”
[Those lyrics are sort of a composite/extrapolation from a few different versions I’ve seen, but the full lyrics are also available translated here.]
Ultimately, Regin is equipping Sigurd to slay Fafnir his own (shape-shifted) brother so he can steal the dragon’s hoard for himself. However, by accidentally tasting Fafnir’s blood, Sigurd learns to comprehend the speech of birds, who warn him about Regin.
But the gold is cursed. Because of course the gold is cursed – when is the gold ever not cursed in a story like this?
And things sort of go downhill for, well, basically everyone involved in the story. But that’s not detailed in the song. When I do a write-up on Sigurd and Gudrún, I’ll go over it in more detail, but you’re probably familiar with the broad strokes of the story.
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© Joel Balkovec — Published by Emona Literary Services.
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