this showed up in a dream

It's a Greek chorus, which means that before the play's central tragedy they perform an energetic, high kicking version of "There's No Scenae like Mycenae (There's No Scenae I Know)."

a sword age an axe age a wolf age till the world ruins

I figured I knew the Volsungssaga from Wagner and a child-friendly version I read as a kid.

The original turns out to be a lot less coherent. Gods and heros drift in and out seemingly at random in ways that only confirm the spiritual kinship between mythology and superhero comics.

First, there's an Isaac-like late-life pregnancy thanks to a magic apple and where the kid is born after six years of pregnancy like Musashibo Benkei. Then Odin kicks off a rivalry between two royal houses by showing up and sticking a sword in a tree, which Sigimund and only Sigimund can draw. This results in a story about a she-wolf eating Sigimund's nine brothers which is sort of like Greek myths and a little like part of Reynard the Fox. Then Sigimund's sister exchanges form with a powerful sorceress and sleeps with Sigimund, bearing him his son, and nephew, Sinfjolti.

Sinfjolti is a serious badass. The two cut their way out of a sealed tomb, find enchanted wolfskins and get into badass fights in Crinos, and eventually get into a big fight where Sigrun, a shield-maiden and possibly a valkyrie, entreats them and their lord, King Helgi, to save her from marriage to King Hodbrodd, who's one of King Granmar's sons. Sigimund and Granmar get into insulting each other viciously enough that eventually King Helgi steps in and says something equivalent to "shit, guys, if you're going to fight, do it already, but please stop saying this stuff, it's really vile." Granmar and Hodbrodd and their family are wiped out, Helgi and Sigrun get married and live happily ever after in some complete other storyline, and instead of being the saga's main badass, Sinfjolti dies thanks to some dumb machismo where he drinks some beer he knows is probably poisoned. The body disappears with a ferryman, presumably Odin, very much the borne-off-to-Avalon story.

This is where Marvel would swap out editors and restart the series, because that whole story arc with Sigimund and Sinfjolti? They retconned that. That didn't happen. Sigimund dies in battle after Odin again shows up and shatters the sword, and his young wife gives birth to Sigurd, who trains with Regin, a master swordsmith who wants Sigurd to kill his brother Fafnir, who's currently a dragon. There's several issues a flashback where Regin explains how the gods started this whole mess off by killing a third brother and then killing some dwarf in the form of a magic talking fish, as weregild. Then Sigurd gets the shattered sword re-forged and kills Fafnir. Rambling and incoherent but okay, I knew this stuff from Wagner and the prose Edda.

... except for the part where, after mortally wounding Fafnir, Sigurd and Fafnir sit down and have a long-winded riddle contest. Then there's the dungeon crawl part where Sigurd gets the Helm of Terror, golden chainmail, a badass magic sword (uh... Sigurd already has this totally badass sword) and so on. Dude, level up. Sigurd finds Brynhild, a shield-maiden who also might or might not be a valkyrie, on a pyre surrounded by impenetrable fire. He wakes her, they chat for a while, she decides that despite insisting that she really likes fighting she's actually okay with boys after all, they fall in love, and he gives her a ring.

Then we get to learn what Sigurd actually looks like.

Fast forward a bit. Sigurd is in the service of King Gjuki, whose daughter falls for him, and goes through the ring of impenetrable fire around the tower where Brynhild lives, and gets her to prophecy about how falling in love with Sigurd and marrying Sigurd is a terrible idea. Sigurd and Gjuki's son, Gunnar, swap forms, and while disguised, Sigurd wins Brynhild as Gunnar's bride. He rides through the ring of impenetrable fire, they Get Busy, there's some Freudian stuff about why Sigurd leaves his sword unsheathed in bed during sex, she decides that despite insisting that she really likes fighting she's actually okay with boys after all, they fall in love, and he gives her a ring. Brynhild finds out she's been deceived and gives a prophecy about disaster. Again.

Clearly the earlier version was the What If? issue introduced by Uatu the Watcher.

About this time Sigurd gets betrayed and killed, and the remainder of the story is this tangle of history-inspired figures including a brief cameo by Attila the Hun.