Nibelungenlied
Introductory Sketch
After Brynhild's death Gudrun in her sorrow flees to the court of King "Half" of Denmark, where she remains seven years. Finally Grimhild learns of the place of her daughter's concealment, and tries to bring about a reconciliation with Gunnar and Hogni. They offer her much treasure, if she will marry Atli. At first she refuses and thinks only of revenge, but finally she consents and the marriage is celebrated in Atli's land. After a time Atli, who is envious of Gunnar's riches, for the latter had taken possession of Sigurd's hoard, invites him to his court. A man named "Vingi", who was sent with the invitation, changes the runes of warning, which Gudrun had given him, so that they, too, read as an invitation. The brothers determine to accept the invitation, and, though warned by many dreams, they set out for Atli's court, which they reach in due time. Vingi now breaks forth into exultations, that he has lured them into a snare, and is slain by Hogni with a battle axe.
As they ride to the king's hall, Atli and his sons arm themselves for battle, and demand Sigurd's treasure, which belongs by right to Gudrun. Gunnar refuses to surrender it, and the fight begins, after some exchange of taunting words. Gudrun tries at first to reconcile the combatants, but, failing, arms herself and fights on the side of her brothers. The battle rages furiously with great loss on both sides, until nearly all of the Nibelungs are killed, when Gunnar and Hogni are forced to yield to the power of numbers and are captured and bound. Gunnar is asked, if he will purchase his life with the treasure. He replies that he first wishes to see Hogni's bleeding heart. At first the heart of a slave is cut out and brought to him, but Gunnar recognizes it at once as that of a coward. Then they cut out Hogni's heart, who laughs at the pain. This Gunnar sees is the right one, and is jubilant, for now Atli shall never obtain the treasure, as Gunnar alone knows where it is hid. In a rage Atli orders Gunnar to be thrown to the snakes. Though his hands are bound, Gunnar plays so sweetly with his toes on the harp, which Gudrun has sent him, that all the snakes are lulled to sleep, with the exception of an adder, which stings him to the heart, so that he dies.
Atli now walks triumphantly over the dead bodies, and remarks to Gudrun that she alone is to blame for what has happened. She refuses his offers of peace and reconciliation, and towards evening kills her two sons "Erp" and "Eitil", and serves them at the banquet, which the king gives for his retainers. When Atli asks for his sons, he is told that he had drunk their blood mixed with wine and had eaten their hearts. That night when Atli is asleep, Gudrun takes Hogni's son "Hniflung", who desires to avenge his father, and together they enter Atli's room and thrust a sword through his breast. Atli awakes from the pain, only to be told by Gudrun that she is his murderess. When he reproaches her with thus killing her husband, she answers that she cared only for Sigurd. Atli now asks for a fitting burial, and on receiving the promise of this, expires. Gudrun carries out her promise, and burns the castle with Atli and all his dead retainers. Other Edda songs relate the further adventures of Gudrun, but they do not concern us here, as the "Nibelungenlied" stops with the death of the Nibelungs.
This in brief is the story of Siegfried, as it has been handed down to us in the Skandinavian sources. It is universally acknowledged that this version, though more original than the Gorman tradition, does not represent the simplest and most original form of the tale; but what the original form was, has long been and still is a matter of dispute. Two distinctly opposite views are held, the one seeing in the story the personification of the forces of nature, the other, scouting the possibility of a mythological interpretation, seeks a purely human origin for the tale, namely, a quarrel among relatives for the possession of treasure. The former view is the older, and obtained almost exclusively at one time. The latter has been gaining ground of recent years, and is held by many of the younger students of the legend. According to the mythological view, the maiden slumbering upon the lonely heights is the sun, the wall of flames surrounding her the morning red ("Morgenrote"). Siegfried is the youthful day who is destined to rouse the sun from her slumber. At the appointed time he ascends, and before his splendor the morning red disappears. He awakens the maiden; radiantly the sun rises from its couch and joyously greets the world of nature. But light and shade are indissolubly connected; day changes of itself into night. When at evening the sun sinks to rest and surrounds herself once more with a wall of flames, the day again approaches, but no longer in the youthful form of the morning to arouse her from her slumber, but in the sombre shape of Gunther, to rest at her side. Day has turned into night; this is the meaning of the change of forms. The wall of flame vanishes, day and sun descend into the realm of darkness. Under this aspect the Siegfried story is a day myth; but under another it is a myth of the year. The dragon is the symbol of winter, the dwarfs of darkness. Siegfried denotes the bright summer, his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winder. When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of winter. Through the symbolization the abstractions gain form and become persons; the saga is thus not a mere allegory, but a personification of nature's forces. The treasure may have entered the saga through the widespread idea of the dragon as the guardian of treasure, or it may represent the beauty of nature which unfolds when the season has conquered. In the last act of the saga, Siegfried's death, Wilmanns, the best exponent of this view, sees again a symbolic representation of a process of nature. According to him it signifies the death of the god of the year in winter. In the spring he kills the dragon, in the winter he goes weary to his rest and is foully slain by the hostile powers of darkness. Later, when this act was connected with the story of Gunther's wooing Brunhild, the real meaning was forgotten, and Siegfried's death was attributed to the grief and jealousy of the insulted queen.
Opposed now to the mythological interpretation is the other view already spoken of, which denies the possibility of mythological features, and does not seek to trace the legend beyond the heroic stage. The best exponent of this view is R. C. Boer, who has made a remarkable attempt to resolve the story into its simplest constituents. According to him the nucleus of the legend is an old story of the murder of relatives ("Verwandienmord"), the original form being perhaps as follows. Attila (i.e., the enemy of Hagen under any name)is married to Hagen's sister Grimhild or Gudrun. He invites his brother-in-law to his house, attacks him in the hope of obtaining his treasure, and kills him. According to this view Hagen was originally the king, but later sinks to a subordinate position through the subsequent connection of the story with the Burgundians. It is of course useless to hunt for the date of such an episode in history. Such a murder could have frequently occurred, and can be localized anywhere. Very early we find this Hagen story united with the Siegfried legend. If the latter is mythological, then we have a heterogeneous combination, a mythical legend grafted on a purely human one. This Boer thinks unlikely, and presents a number of arguments to disprove the mythical character of the Siegfried story, into which we cannot enter here. He comes, however, to the conclusion, that the Siegfried tale is likewise purely human, and consisted originally of the murder of relatives, that is, a repetition of the Hagen title. Siegfried is married to Hagen's sister, and is killed by his brother-in-law because of his treasure. The kernel of the legend is, therefore, the enmity between relatives, which exists in two forms, the one in which the son-in-law kills his father-in-law, as in the "Helgi" saga, the other in which Hagen kills his son-in-law and is killed by him, too, as in the "Hilde" saga. The German tradition tries to combine the two by introducing the new feature, that Kriemhild causes the death of her relatives, in order to avenge her first husband. Boer is of the opinion that both the Norse and the German versions have forgotten the original connection between the two stories, and that this connection was nothing more nor less than the common motive of the treasure. The same treasure, which causes Hagen to murder Siegfried, causes his own death in turn through the greed of Attila. There was originally, according to Boer, no question of revenge, except the revenge of fate, the retribution which overtakes the criminal. This feeling for the irony of fate was lost when the motive, that Hagen kills Siegfried because of his treasure, was replaced by the one that he does it at the request of Brunhild. This leads Boer to the conclusion, that Brunhild did not originally belong to the Siegfried story, but to the well-known fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty ("Erlosungsmurchen"), which occurs in a variety of forms. The type is that of a hero who rescues a maiden from a magic charm, which may take the form of a deep sleep, as in the case of Sleeping Beauty, or of being sewed into a garment, as in No. 111 of Grimm's fairy tales. By the union of the two stories, i.e., the Hagen-Siegfried saga with the Sleeping Beauty tale, Siegfried stands in relation to two women; on the one hand his relation to Sigrdrifa-Brynhild, the maiden whom he rescues on the rock, on the other his marriage with Grimhild-Gudrun and his consequent death. This twofold relation had to be disposed of, and since his connection with Grimhild was decisive for his fate, his relation to Brunhild had to be changed. It could not be entirely ignored, for it was too well known, therefore it was given a different interpretation. Siegfried still rescues a maiden from the rock, not for himself, however, but for another. The exchange of forms on the part of Siegfried and Gunther is a reminiscence of the older form. It gives the impression, that Siegfried, and yet not Siegfried, won the bride. This alteration probably took place when the Burgundians were introduced into the legend. With this introduction an unlocalized saga of unknown heroes of ancient times became one of events of world-wide importance; the fall of a mighty race was depicted as the result of Siegfried's death. To render this plausible, it was necessary on the one hand to idealize the hero, so that his death should appear as a deed of horror demanding fearful vengeance, and on the other, to make the king of the Burgundians an active participator in Siegfried's death, for otherwise it would not seem natural, that the whole race should be exterminated for a crime committed by the king's brother or vassal. As the role of Brunhild's husband had become vacant, and as Gunther had no special role, it was natural that it should be given to him. Boer traces very ingeniously the gradual development of this exchange of roles through the various sources.
Another method of explaining away Siegfried's relation to two women is to identify them, and this has been done by the Seyfrid ballad. Here the hero rescues Kriemhild from the power of the dragon, marries her, and then is later killed by her brothers through envy and hatred. As Brunhild and Kriemhild are here united in one person, there is no need of a wooing for the king, nor of vengeance on the part of Brunhild, accordingly the old motive of greed (here envy) reappears.
As to the fight with the dragon, Boer believes that it did not originally belong to the saga, for in none of the sources except the popular ballad is the fight with the dragon connected with the release of Brunhild. If the Siegfried-Hagen story is purely human, then the dragon cannot have originally belonged to it, but was later introduced, because of the widespread belief in the dragon as the guardian of treasure, and in order to answer the question as to the provenience of the hoard. This is, however, only one answer to the question. Another, widespread in German legends, is that the treasure comes from the Nibelungs, that is, from the dwarfs. Many identify the dwarfs and the dragon, but this finds no support in the sources, for here the dwarfs and Fafnir are never confused. The "Nibelungenlied" describes an adventure with each, but the treasure is only connected with the dwarfs. The "Thidreksaga" knows only the dragon fight but not the dwarfs, as is likewise the case with the Seyfrid ballad. Only in the Norse sources do we find a contamination. The story of Hreithmar and his sons, who quarrel about the treasure, resembles that of Schilbung and Nibelung in the "Nibelungenlied", and probably has the same source. One of the sons, because of his guarding the treasure, is identified with the dragon, and so we read that Fafnir becomes a dragon, after gaining the treasure. Originally, however, he was not a dragon, but a dwarf. These two independent forms can be geographically localized. The dwarf legend is the more southern; it is told in detail in the "Nibelungenlied". The dragon legend probably originated in the Cimbrian peninsula, where the "Beowulf" saga, in which the dragon fight plays such an important part, likewise arose.
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