Wayland lives as a nomadic hunter with his two brothers. One day while passing by a lake, they find three beautiful swan-maidens (women who can turn into swans). They are walkirries. The brothers each take a wife, and they settle down in a valley. They live happily for nine years, but increasingly the swan-maidens are troubled by their abstention from their duty, namely to preside over battles for Woden. A winter day when the brothers are out hunting, they fly away. The three return and find the halls deserted. The two brothers travel in different directions to find their wives, but Wayland alone stays. He forges golden armlets for his wife, and gets increasingly depressed. Somehow the neighbouring tyrant Nithad learns about him, and in the night goes with his heavily armed troupe to Wayland’s house. He sees the rings, and takes a single one for his daughter. Wayland returns with a caught she-bear to roast, and as he sits by the hearth-fire he counts his rings. He finds that one is missing, and thinks that it might be his wife who is come back. He falls asleep weeping, looking into the fire. When he wakes he is bound, and asks who has bound him. Nithad asks him where he stole the gold, but Wayland replies that he’d give all of it to see his wife and brothers again. When Nithad’s cunning wife sees him being taken out of the forest to the royal residency she is frightened, and so tells him to hamstring him and place him on a small island. Wayland is forced to stay on the island, forging jewelry and weapons for Nithad. One day the two sons of Nithad (affectionately called his ‘bear-cubs’) go to the island to see the rings. Wayland tells them to return another day, and they wake up early, excited for the trip. When they arrive and look into the chest, he beheads them, and then makes bowls out of their skulls, gemstones out of their eyes and brooches out of their jaws, which Nithad gives to his wife and daughter.
Later Nithad’s daughter, Beadhild breaks a ring (the same one Nithad originally stole), and fearing her father’s anger she asks Wayland to repair it. He tells her that he will, but then drugs and rapes her. After this he equips the mechanical wings he has made, and takes off laughing, while Beadhild leaves the island weeping.
Meanwhile (it’s now late at night) Nithad’s wife finds her husband still awake. She asks her why he doesn’t sleep, and he tells her that since his sons disappeared he is always awake, powerless (the same word used when describing Wayland when he awoke, captured). “My head is freezing; cold are thy counsels. I wish only that I with Wayland may speak.”
He goes to the island, where he sees Wayland hovering above him. He asks him what happened with his healthy bear-cubs, which Wayland, after asking him to swear an oath not to injure his child with Beadhild, tells him.
Nithad curses his own lack of power; “There is no man so tall that he may reach thee from horse-back, nor so strong that he may shoot the down, there as thou jeerest, high in the sky.”
Wayland then flies away laughing.
Nithad returns home:
‘Is it true, Beadhild, as they said to me? Stayed ye, thou and Wayland, together in the island?’
‘It is true, Nithad, as he said to thee. I and Wayland stayed together in the island, for a single heavy moment; it should never have been. I knew not struggle against him; I could not struggle against him.’