The poems in the Sigurth tradition begin with a prose piece called Fra dautha Sinfjotla, “Concerning the Death of Sinfjotli,” who is Sigurth’s half-brother by their father Sigmund. The ferryman who takes Sinfjotli’s body away is probably Odin, who takes a great interest in the fortune of Sigurth’s family, the Volsungs (also compare Odin’s appearance as a ferryman in Harbarthsljoth).
Sigmund, son of Volsung, was a king of the Franks. Sinfjotli was his oldest son, and the second was named Helgi, the third Hamund.
Borghild, Sigmund’s wife, had a brother. Her stepson Sinfjotli and her brother both wooed the same woman, and because of this, Sinfjotli killed her brother. When Sinfjotli came home, Borghild told him to leave, but Sigmund offered her compensation for her brother’s death, and she was forced to accept this.
At the funeral for her brother, Borghild was serving beer. She took a large horn full of poison and served it to Sinfjotli. When he looked inside the horn, he saw that there was poison in it and said to his father: “This drink is cloudy, father!” Sigmund took the horn and drank everything in it; it is said that Sigmund was so hardy that he was impervious to poison, whether by skin contact or by drinking it. But his sons were impervious only by skin, not internally.
Borghild brought another hornful to Sinfjotli and told him to drink from it, but it went exactly as before. And then she brought him the horn for a third time, and she mocked him for not wanting to drink from it. Sinfjotli spoke as he had before to his father, but Sigmund said: “Wet your mustache, son!” Sinfjotli drank and fell dead immediately.
Sigmund carried Sinfjotli’s body in his arms for a long time, till he came to a long, narrow fjord, where he saw a little boat and a man standing on it, who offered to ferry Sigmund over the fjord. But when Sigmund put the body of his son on the boat, the ferry was full, and the ferryman said that Sigmund would need to walk around the fjord. Then he shoved off from shore and disappeared.
King Sigmund remained for a long time in Denmark, in Borghild’s kingdom, after he was married to her. But then Sigmund returned to the kingdom he had in France, and there he married Hjordis, daughter of King Eylimi, and their son was Sigurth. King Sigmund fell in a battle against Hunding’s sons, and after that Hjordis remarried to Alf, son of King Hjalprek. Sigurth grew up with him while still a boy.
Sigmund and all his sons were far better than other men in strength and height, in courage, and in all achievements, but Sigurth was the greatest of all, and in the old sagas people say that he was greater than all other men, and that he was the noblest of all warrior kings.