The Saga of the Volsungs left me with many opinions about the story. It left me wondering about who the real hero was in the story. I also began to wonder if there was really only one hero or if there were many. But when I went through the book the second time it made more sense to me. I feel that the most heroic character was Sigurd. You can see this by following Raglan's pattern of the life of a hero. I believe that the pattern drawn out by Raglan of what a hero goes through in his lifetime is very accurate when coming to characterizing a Norse hero.
As Raglan starts off he says that the first characteristic of the hero is that the hero's mother is usually a royal virgin. She is in fact a virgin, being given a magic apple which when she eats it she conceives, Hjordis was a queen, making her royalty, and had given birth to Sigurd. And of course by being birthed of a queen his father, Sigmund, was the king. When comparing Sigurd to the having a near relative of his mother take care of him, he was taken care of by a close relative, his foster father Regin. As we move along the line to the conception of the hero, and it being unusual, you could put to fact that he was born after his father had died. This coincidence could be considered unusual. Although Sigurd was not reputed to be the son of God, or a son of a God, for that matter, you could put in to consideration that the whole Volsung line stems from Odin. Odin in the story was the foremost of the Norse gods. An attempt is made to try to kill Sigurd but his mother in search of protection of her son disguises herself to protect him. As the story progresses Raglan says the hero is then spirited away, which he was. In the story of the Volsungs, Sigurd is sent to live with Regin. He is then raised by Regin until he finds out Regin's treachery and kills him. This follows along with the statement of being reared away to live in a far country with foster parents, although foster parents he is not reared away to live in a far country.
