Völundarkviða

thumb|right|180px|From Ardre image stone VIII. Vǫlundr's smithy in the centre, Níðuðr's daughter to the left, and Níðuðr's dead sons hidden to the right of the smithy. Between the girl and the smithy, Vǫlundr can be seen flying away, apparently in bird form. thumb|Völundr and his two brothers see the swan-maidens bathing. Illustration by [[Jenny Nyström, 1893.]] thumb|"The three smith boys spy and later marry three valkyrie maidens" (1882) by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. Vǫlundarkviða (Old Norse: 'The lay of Völund'; modern Icelandic spelling: Völundarkviða) is one of the mythological poems of the Poetic Edda. The title is anglicized in various ways, including Völundarkvitha, Völundarkvidha, Völundarkvida, Volundarkvitha, Volundarkvidha and Volundarkvida.

==Manuscripts, origins, and analogues== The poem is preserved in its entirety among the mythological poems of the thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, and the beginning of the prose prologue is also found in the AM 748 I 4to fragment.