The Great Lacuna - The missing texts of the Poetic Edda
One of the most striking and significant features of the Codex Regius is what it does not contain. In the middle of the manuscript lies the so called Great Lacuna, a gap where eight parchment leaves are missing. This loss is not a minor accident or an unfortunate tear at the edge of a page - it is a major break in the heart of the text. The missing section falls in the heroic poems, right at the turning point of the Völsung–Niflung cycle, the most dramatic and interconnected sequence of stories in the manuscript. The gap occurs immediately after the end of Sigrdrífumál (The Lay of Sigrdrífa), which recounts Sigurd’s encounter with the Valkyrie Brynhild and the bestowal of her wisdom. From there, the narrative would have moved directly into the tragic downfall of Sigurd, Brynhild, and the cursed Niflungs.
Because of this missing portion, we are left with an incomplete record of the Codex’s most important legendary cycle. Scholars must reconstruct what was lost by comparing later prose retellings in the Völsunga saga, fragments in other manuscripts, and echoes of the same traditions in German and English sources.
What Was Likely Contained
The lacuna begins just after Sigrdrífumál breaks off. This poem tells how Sigurðr awakens the Valkyrie Brynhildr from an enchanted sleep. She shares her wisdom with him (lessons about runes, victory, and proper conduct) but the surviving manuscript cuts off before she finishes. The missing leaves would almost certainly have continued with the deepening of their bond. Here, their oaths of loyalty and promises of marriage were likely recorded, a crucial moment in the love story. Later saga versions, like Völsunga saga, describe how they pledged themselves to one another, but those details are absent in the surviving poetry because of the lacuna.
The most important poem believed to have been lost in the lacuna is the so-called Sigurðarkviða in meiri (The Longer Lay of Sigurðr). Based on fragments, citations, and later prose retellings, scholars think this poem was one of the lengthiest in the entire Eddic tradition - possibly over 250 stanzas. It likely told in detail how Sigurðr was drawn into the royal house of the Gjúkings and ensnared by Queen Grímhildr’s magic potion, which made him forget his love for Brynhildr and marry Guðrún instead.
Central to this missing poem is the famous “flame ride.” When Gunnarr, Sigurðr’s sworn brother, could not win Brynhildr himself, Sigurðr disguised himself as Gunnarr and rode through the wall of fire that surrounded her hall. This act, one of the most iconic moments in all of Norse legend, must have been described here in its fullest poetic form. Later versions add key details: Sigurðr and Brynhildr shared the same bed for three nights, but he placed his sword between them to remain chaste, proving his loyalty to his brother even as he betrayed Brynhildr’s trust.
The next stage, now lost in the lacuna, likely told of the unraveling of this tragic web of oaths. Brynhildr, realizing she had been deceived, turned her fury not only against Sigurðr but also against Gunnarr and Högni, who conspired with her to bring about Sigurðr’s death. Later prose texts describe how Sigurðr was slain in his bed, stabbed while lying beside his wife Guðrún. Only hints of this episode survive in Brot af Sigurðarkviðu (The Fragment of the Lay of Sigurðr), a remnant that follows after the lacuna, leaving us with the barest glimpse of what was once a powerful, detailed account.
The missing section also seems to have included the dramatic account of Brynhildr’s suicide after Sigurðr’s death. Later poems such as Helreið Brynhildar and Guðrúnarkviða I allude to her fate, but the full poetic description of her last act is lost with the lacuna. According to saga tradition, Brynhildr ordered a funeral pyre built for herself and Sigurðr, so that they would share death if not life. This image (the hero and the Valkyrie consumed together in flame) became one of the most haunting motifs of medieval legend and inspired retellings from the Middle Ages through Wagner’s operas and beyond.
The loss of these eight leaves is not just a physical gap in a manuscript - it represents the disappearance of the emotional and narrative core of the entire heroic cycle. The Codex Regius preserves the beginning of the Sigurðr story and the aftermath, but the middle (the love, betrayal, and deaths that define the tragedy) is missing. Scholars piece together the story from sagas, German epics like the Nibelungenlied, and later ballads, but the original Eddic poetry is gone.
Location of the Lacuna
The mystery of the Great Lacuna has puzzled historians and philologists for centuries. Since the manuscript otherwise preserves the Poetic Edda in such a careful and orderly way, it is clear that the scribe originally copied a full exemplar. The break we see today, where Sigrdrífumál cuts off mid-speech and the text resumes abruptly in Brot af Sigurðarkviðu, is too sudden and too neat to be explained by error or omission in the copying process. What, then, became of those vanished leaves?
Most scholars believe the loss was physical rather than deliberate. Manuscript experts point out that the lacuna corresponds exactly to a standard quire (a gathering of folded vellum sheets). This makes it highly likely that one whole quire worked itself loose from the binding at some point in the Codex’s long history. Medieval manuscripts were vulnerable at the seams where gatherings were stitched together, and if a gathering was heavily used, dampened, or mishandled, it could detach cleanly. The neatness of the gap strongly supports this theory.
Some historians add that the Sigurðr–Brynhildr cycle may have been among the most frequently read sections of the manuscript. These poems tell the dramatic story of love, betrayal, and death at the heart of the heroic tradition - material that would have been attractive to medieval audiences. If readers returned to those pages again and again, the constant handling may have weakened the binding right at that point, making it more likely to break away. In this view, the very popularity of the poems may have doomed them to loss.
Others have speculated about more dramatic causes. Could the leaves have been deliberately removed? The Sigurðr cycle contains scenes of deception, violence, and even Brynhildr’s ritual suicide - subjects that might have troubled later Christian readers. A few scholars have wondered if an owner might have cut out the section intentionally. Yet there is no evidence of censorship elsewhere in the Codex: no erasures, no blotted names, no alterations. For this reason, most experts reject the censorship theory and see the lacuna as an accident of survival rather than moral editing.
As for when the loss occurred, historians disagree. Some suggest it happened early, in Iceland, long before the Codex was rediscovered in 1643 by Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson. They point out that no early modern report mentions seeing the missing poems intact. If true, this means the manuscript had already suffered its loss by the time it left local hands. Others think the leaves may have been lost later, perhaps during its transport to Denmark in 1662 or in the centuries it spent in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The fact that the missing portion is such a clean quire, however, makes an earlier loss seem more likely.
In the end, most scholars agree on the essentials: the lacuna represents a missing gathering that once held the poetic heart of the Sigurðr–Brynhildr tragedy. Whether it slipped loose through use, was damaged by damp or rough handling, or vanished long before the Codex came to scholarly attention, the result is the same: we have an incomplete record of the most famous heroic cycle in Norse tradition. Its absence haunts every reading of the Codex Regius, reminding us how fragile the survival of medieval literature truly is.
The Consequences of the Loss
The Great Lacuna cuts through the very center of the Sigurðr–Brynhildr cycle, leaving a story that feels broken at its core. Perhaps the greatest consequence is that we lose the full poetic account of the love triangle between Sigurðr, Brynhildr, and Guðrún. This love triangle is not a minor subplot - it is the beating heart of the entire Nibelung legend across all its traditions, whether in Norse, German (Nibelungenlied), or Anglo-Saxon (Waltharius, fragments of Beowulf). The betrayal of Brynhildr, Sigurðr’s forced marriage to Guðrún, and the unraveling of their sworn oaths drive the tragic logic of the cycle. Without the missing poems, we see only the beginning (the awakening of Brynhildr) and the aftermath (Sigurðr’s death and Guðrún’s grief), but not the drama in between.
The lacuna also robs us of the psychological depth of Brynhildr’s character. In the surviving verses she appears first as a noble Valkyrie, a bestower of wisdom and a figure of destiny. In later material, she is remembered as the instigator of Sigurðr’s death, consumed by fury and betrayal. What is missing is the crucial transition: how her devotion hardened into vengeance, how the deception of her flame-ride and broken oaths transformed her from Sigurðr’s partner into his destroyer. This is not simply a gap in narrative detail it is a gap in our ability to understand one of the most complex female figures of medieval European legend.
Most painfully, the missing leaves deny us a poetic version of Sigurðr’s murder. Later prose sources describe how he was stabbed in bed beside his wife Guðrún, one of the most shocking betrayals in heroic storytelling. But in the Codex Regius, where the event would have been sung in verse, we have only fragments and hints. If the lost lay truly spanned hundreds of stanzas, then we have lost what could have been one of the great tragic death-scenes of world literature, standing alongside Achilles or Roland.
Because of this loss, scholars are forced to rely on later and more interpretive sources to bridge the gap. The Völsunga saga, a 13th-century prose retelling, provides the fullest continuity, but its style is narrative prose, not eddic poetry, and it often compresses or rationalizes older material. The Thidrekssaga, a Norwegian compilation of German heroic tales, offers alternative traditions, but these are filtered through different cultural lenses. Snorri’s Prose Edda provides mythological allusions but only touches the heroic legends in passing. Each of these sources is valuable, but they are later, less direct, and more interpretive than the verse of the Codex Regius. The lacuna means our clearest window onto the earliest poetic telling of these events is half-shuttered.
Scholarly Reconstruction Efforts
Scholars have long tried to rebuild the missing poems about Sigurðr. One way is by looking closely at the stanzas that survive in Brot af Sigurðarkviðu and comparing them with the Völsunga saga. The saga is written in prose, but some of its sections are so rhythmical that they almost certainly come from lost poetry. By working backward from these prose passages, researchers try to guess the shape of the missing verses.
Another method is to compare the Norse material with the German Nibelungenlied. This poem tells the same basic story, but in a very different style - more about knights, courtly honour, and chivalry than fate and myth. Even though the tone and details differ, it helps scholars see which story elements were shared across Germanic culture and which were unique to the Norse tradition.
From this kind of study, most experts agree that the missing part of the Codex once contained at least one very long heroic lay, Sigurðarkviða in meiri (The Longer Lay of Sigurðr), and perhaps some shorter poems as well. They estimate that between 250 and 300 stanzas have been lost. This is an enormous gap - bigger than the combined length of Völuspá, Hávamál, and Þrymskviða.
Why It Matters
The Great Lacuna is not just a technical problem for editors it represents a lost centerpiece of Northern heroic poetry. Had those leaves survived, we might possess a continuous poetic account of Sigurðr’s life, betrayal, and death on a scale comparable to the Homeric epics or the great medieval chansons de geste. Instead, we have fragments stitched together from prose summaries and later traditions. The absence leaves our understanding of the Norse heroic worldview incomplete.
The Great Lacuna is one of the most frustrating absences in all of medieval European literature. It denies us not only information but also the poetic artistry that once gave the Sigurðr-Brynhildr tragedy its full shape and power.