Hindarfjall

Hindarfjall is the fire-ringed mountain where the valkyrie Brynhild lay in enchanted sleep until Sigurd woke her — one of the most luminous scenes in Norse legend. Pricked with a sleep-thorn by Odin for her disobedience and shut behind a wall of flame, she slept on the height until a man brave enough to ride through the fire should come; and the man was Sigurd, who crossed the flames on his horse Grani, cut the byrnie from the sleeping woman, woke her, and pledged her his troth. Hindarfjall is the legend's image of the threshold of love and doom — the flame-girt mountain where the hero wakes the valkyrie and the two pledge a love that fate and a potion will betray, the bright high place where the Volsung tragedy's most beautiful and most fatal promise is made.