@Steve: 456 verses- WOW!

Not related to anything, but does anyone have a theory on why these long ballads are so long?.

These Sigurd ballads were composed in the Middle Ages, when the legend was at its height of popularity in Scandinavian countries. It still is popular in Scandinavia; Sigurd is a common male Scandinavian name and the story's known in the folk tradition.

This Faroese Sigurd of the Volsungs is slightly different from the Icelandic version and the German Siegfried von Xanten; he's much rougher and wilder and almost unsympathetic. (Seriously, hitting your friends with an oak branch Thorin-style) Also, he doesn't grow up with Regin, the dwarf, but at the court of King Hjalprek(who's his stepfather here,rather than stepgrandfather,as he married Queen Hjördís, Sigurd's mother. In the version I know, it's Hjalprek's son Alf who marries Hjördís) But all the familiar elements from the other Scandinavian versions are there; the broken sword, Sigmund's death before Sigurd's birth, the reforging of the sword on the third try.