Home of the Eddic Lays
Chapter 26
CONCLUSION
We have seen that the stories of Helgi, Sigrún's husband, and of Helgi Hjörvarthsson, are much influenced by, and in many ways connected with, the stories of the Völsungs and Niflungs. German scholars, above all Müllenhoff, long ago exploded a theory, which earlier had been pretty generally accepted in Scandinavia, that the story of Sigurth Fáfnisbani and the Niflungs belonged in the beginning to the Scandinavians as well as to the Germans. It is certain that the story of Sigurth, Sigmund's son, and of the Niflungs was originally a West Germanic story, foreign to the Scandinavians.
Most German investigators of popular tales think that the form of the story of the Völsungs and Niflungs which is known in Scandinavia, especially from the Eddic poems and from the Völsungasaga, went from Germany northward; but they express themselves in general very vaguely, and give no definite information as to the way in which they suppose the story to have travelled. (1)
On the contrary, I have, I think, shown in what precedes that the Scandinavians adopted the story of the Völsungs (which influenced the Helgi stories) in the West, especially in the British Isles, and particularly by association with Englishmen. They became familiar with these stories partly through poems which were composed in the Anglo Saxon language; but they also heard stories, originally Frankish, of other saga heroes, e.g. Merovingian kings.
At another time I hope to be able to show that other Völsung stories in the poetic Edda and in the Völsungasaga were in like manner first composed by Scandinavians in the West, partly with Anglo Saxon poems as models. I shall endeavour to prove that the oldest Norse poem which mentions the story of the Völsungs, viz. the Lay of Wayland, gives evidence that it arose in England. (2)
It is probable that Danish poets in the West had to some extent treated the West Germanic heroic stories before the Norwegian poets began to work them up, and that the Norwegians learned the foreign stories partly from Danes.
Further, I hope to be able to prove the falseness of a notion which many cling to---viz. that the Edda comprises poems from the most different quarters of the North: some, perhaps, from the northern part of Norway; several, it may be, from the south-western part of Norway; others from the Scottish Isles, or Greenland, or Iceland. Many imagine that these poems existed exclusively in oral tradition, and were not brought into connection with one another before they were finally written down, all at the same time, by some one in Iceland, who in so doing relied either on his own memory or on communications made to him by others.
I believe, on the contrary, that it is susceptible of proof that the majority of these poems have belonged together from the time of their origin, so that the younger presuppose the older. The majority of them represent different sides of one and the same tendency, and were composed under practically the same conditions and external impulses. When it has been proved of certain Eddic poems that they were composed in the West by Norwegian poets who travelled among the English and Irish, we may believe the same to be true of many others. It seems, therefore, not only possible but even probable that the nucleus of the poetic Edda was not first gathered in Iceland, or even in the Shetland Islands, or in the Orkneys, but that the Norwegians who travelled now in England, now in Ireland, possessed the oldest and indeed most of the Eddic poems, already united into one collection, perhaps even as early as the middle of the eleventh century (cf. above, p. 65). This collection doubtless came to Iceland by way of the North Scottish Isles. Afterwards, most likely in Iceland, certain later poems, the so called Greenland Atlamál, for example, were added.
It was in the Scandinavian settlements in the British Isles, among Anglo Saxons and Celts, that the Scandinavian mythic heroic poetry waxed strong. It is this truth I would gladly see generally acknowledged; and this truth, to which Karl Müllenhoff was blind, the Icelander, Gudbrand Vigfusson, first saw clearly on English soil.
What the master of critical method at the University of Berlin could not perceive, because the German descendants of Tacitus's Germanic tribes formed the centre of his considerations, was seen by the unmethodical but sharp sighted Icelander, because from childhood up he had lived through the outer and inner history of his people as revealed in the sagas and skaldic lays, because he himself with open eyes had wandered in the wide paths of his fathers, and, under the guidance of P. A. Munch and Konrad Maurer, had come to understand the way in which the Scandinavian peoples have developed, to realise how much they have been influenced by the culture of the West.
The district about the Breithifjord on the western coast of Iceland, pre-eminently the home of saga composition, Vigfusson has called Iceland's Attica.
I would name the Scandinavian settlements in the British Isles the Scandinavian Æolia.
Iceland was the Ionia of the North: there the Northern Herodotus was born.
An Attica the ancient Northern era never had.
Why did Norway not become the Northern Attica?
Was it because the North never had a Persian War?
1.
The usual idea is expressed thus by the Dutch scholar Sijmons (in Paul's
Grundriss, II, 23): 'Die nordische [Form] der älteren Eddalieder,
die aus ihrer fränkischen Heimat vermuthlich durch sächsische
Vermittlung nach Scandinavien kam.' Mogk has recently (in Forschungen
zur d. Phil., Festgabe für Rudolf Hildebrand, 1894, p. 1), expressed
himself thus: 'Unerschütterlich fest steht vor allem das eine: die
Heimat der nordisch-deutschen Heldensage ist Deutschland; von hier ist
sie nach dem Norden gekommen.' Mogk thinks, as I believe incorrectly,
that the story of the Völsungs and Niflungs was brought to Gautland
shortly after the year 512 by the Erulians, who had heard the story from
the East Goths, who in their turn learned it from the Franks. Back
2. The theory most closely connected with mine is
that of Golther, in Germ., XXXIII, 469 and 476. He thinks that knowledge
of the story of the Niflungs first came to Danish and Norwegian Vikings
in France; that that story spread among the Vikings in the west and came
over Ireland to Iceland. Yet Golther does not mention Englishmen or English
poems as intermediaries. Back
<< Previous Page
© 2004-2007 Northvegr.
Most of the material on this site is in the public domain. However, many people have worked very hard to bring these texts to you so if you do use the work, we would appreciate it if you could give credit to both the Northvegr site and to the individuals who worked to bring you these texts. A small number of texts are copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Any text that is copyrighted will have a clear notation of such on the main index page for that text. Inquiries can be sent to info@northvegr.org. Northvegr™ and the Northvegr symbol are trademarks and service marks of the Northvegr Foundation.
|