Literature Review
Written down by an anonymous poet c.1200, the Nibelungenlied, to give it its commonly used Modern German title, is the greatest medieval German heroic poem or lay, a revenge saga on an epic scale, which has justly been compared with Homer and with the Old Icelandic Saga of Burnt Njal. It tells of the heroic dragon-slayer Sivrit’s wooing of the beautiful Kriemhilt and King Gunther’s wooing of the Amazon-like Queen Prünhilt. The brutal murder of Sivrit by the fierce anti-hero Hagen, and the vengeance wreaked by Kriemhilt are recounted in bloody detail. Its origins reach back into the fifth century; it underwent a long genesis in the form of oral poetry before taking on written form. The poem proved hugely popular in the Middle Ages, with some forty manuscripts and fragments surviving. The latest of these is the Ambraser Heldenbuch, a huge two-volume compilation of romances and epics, now in the Austrian National Library, which was compiled between 1504 and 1516 for the emperor Maximilian I. After this last late medieval recording of the text the lay disappeared from sight almost entirely for 200 years.
Rediscovered in 1755, the Nibelungenlied then became central to the nationalist thinking of the Romantics, coming to be regarded, anachronistically, as the ‘national epic’ of the Germans. This nationalistic abuse of the text culminated in its popularity in the Third Reich. The Lay of the Nibelungs was a central inspiration behind Richard Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle. Its greatest cinematic treatment is Fritz Lang’s two-part silent film, Siegfried’s Death and Kriemhild’s Revenge (1922–4), one of the high points of Weimar cinema.
The Thirty-eighth Adventure introduces (and kills off ) a large number of characters who would have been familiar to the audience from the Dietrich epics, in particular Biterolf und Dietleib, which accords a prominent role to Rüedeger. Biterolf was probably first written down in the 1250s, in the Austrian or Styrian area familiar to the Nibelungenlied poet, but may well have been circulating earlier in oral form. The audience would have delighted in recognizing old friends from these epics. They were, like the Nibelungenlied itself, anonymous, a constituent element of the genre.
The Nibelungenlied stands head and shoulders above the Dietrich epics in terms of literary quality. We possess evidence of the popularity both of the lay, and of other heroic epics, before the date of the earliest manuscripts, in Wolfram’s Parzival, where, in the eighth book, the cowardly Sir Liddamus argues for discretion being the better part of valour: ‘What kind of Wolfhart would I make? . . . Even if it never won your favour, I would rather act like Rumolt, who gave King Gunther his advice when he left Worms to go to the Huns — he urged him to baste long cutlets and turn them round in the cauldron.’2 Landgrave Kingrimursel recognizes the allusion to ‘Rumolt’s counsel’ in the Nibelungenlied: ‘you say you act like that cook who advised the bold Nibelungs, who set off, undeterred, for where vengeance was wrought upon them for what had happened to Siegfried in the past.’ Liddamus goes on to refer to other characters well known from the Dietrich epics, Sibeche and Ermenrich.
The Nibelungenlied is divided into thirty-nine ‘adventures’ or chapters. (This division and the adventures’ titles are well preserved in the manuscripts, with the exception of the First Adventure.) In the first two adventures we are introduced, in parallel, to the two central protagonists of the first half of the lay, Kriemhilt and Sivrit. The First Adventure tells us of Kriemhilt, Princess of Burgundy, a kingdom which has as its capital Worms on the Rhine.4 Kriemhilt, daughter of Queen Uote, is under the guardianship of her brothers, the three kings of Burgundy, Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher. A prominent figure at the Burgundian court is Hagen of Tronege, vassal and chief adviser to the kings.
The Second Adventure introduces us to Sivrit, Prince of the Netherlands, and tells of his courtly upbringing. In the Third Adventure he rides to Worms, intending to win Kriemhilt for his bride, and from then on Sivrit’s fortunes are intertwined with those of the Burgundians. He is particularly close to King Gunther, who proves to be a weak king, a roi fainéant, much in the same mould as King Arthur in the Arthurian romances of the twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes and their MHG adaptations by Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach, or King Marke in the various medieval versions of the tale of Tristan and Isolde. Also in the Third Adventure Hagen gives us a retrospective account of Sivrit’s upbringing, telling of his superhuman strength and its origins, and of his acquisition of the priceless hoard of the Nibelungs, a race of dwarves resident somewhere to the north of the Netherlands. Like Sivrit, Gunther is soon intent on wooing.
He seeks for his bride Prünhilt, Queen of Iceland, an Amazonian figure of supernatural strength. She and Sivrit are parallel, equally dominant personalities, who have an aura of myth about them, and the lay does indeed hint at their prior knowledge of one another.5 The wooing expedition to Iceland ultimately proves successful, but only because Sivrit has recourse to supernatural means: his massive strength and his cloak of invisibility. Once established as queen in Burgundy, Prünhilt quarrels with Kriemhilt over the relative rank of their two husbands, and this dispute over precedence leads to a conspiracy to kill Sivrit. The second half of the lay tells of the vengeance Kriemhilt seeks to take upon the murderers of Sivrit.
The supernatural is far from being absent in the courtly romance, where
giants, dwarves, fairies, and invisibility are frequently met with, but there is a different feel, a different atmosphere when it occurs in the heroic epic. The prophecy of the water-sprites, for example, which leads to Hagen’s brutal attempt on the life of the chaplain, is integral to the sense of wyrd, of inexorable fate, familiar to the reader of Beowulf, of the Hildebrandslied, and of Icelandic sagas such as the great tale of revenge, the Saga of Burnt Njal.
There is probably no poem of German literature that has excited such universal interest, or that has been so much studied and discussed, as the Nibelungenlied. In its present form it is a product of the age of chivalry, but it reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, and embraces not only the pageantry of courtly chivalry, but also traits of ancient Germanic folklore and probably of Teutonic mythology. One of its earliest critics fitly called it a German Iliad, for, like this great Greek epic, it goes back to the remot¬ est times and unites the monumental fragments of half-forgotten myths and historical personages into a poem that is essentially national in character, and the embodiment of all that is great in the antiquity of the race.
Though lacking to some extent the dignity of the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied surpasses the former in the deep tragedy which pervades it, the tragedy of fate, the inevitable retribution for crime, the never- dying struggle between the powers of good and evil, between light and darkness. That the poem must have been exceedingly popular during the Middle Ages is evinced by the great number of Manuscripts that have come down to us. We pos¬ sess in all twenty-eight more or less complete MSS., preserved in thirty-one fragments, fifteen of which date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Of all these MSS., but nine are so well preserved that, in spite of some minor breaks, they can be considered complete.
The story of Siegfried, his tragic death, and the dire vengeance visited upon his slayers, which lies at the basis of our poem, antedates the latter by many centuries, and was known to all nations whose lan¬ guages prove by their resemblance to the German tongue their original identity with the German people. Not only along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube and upon the upland plains of Southern Germany, but also along the rocky fjords of Norway, among the Andes and Saxons in their new home across the chan- O nel, even in the distant Shetland Islands and on the snow-covered wastes of Iceland, this story was told around the fires at night and sung to the harp in the banqueting halls of kings and nobles, each people and each generation telling it in its own fashion and adding new elements of its own invention. This great geograph¬ ical distribution of the legend, and the variety of forms in which it appears, make it difficult to know where we must seek its origin. The northern version is in many respects older and simpler in form than the German, but still it is probable that Norway was not the home of the saga, but that it took its rise in Germany along the banks of the Rhine among the ancient tribe of the Franks, as is shown by the many geographical names that are reminiscent of the characters of the story, such as a Siegfried spring in the Odenwald, a Hagen well at Lorsch, a Brunhild bed, near Frankfort, and the well-known Drachenfels, or Dragon’s Bock, on the Bhine. It is to Norway, however, that we must go for our knowlege of the story, for, singularly enough, with the exception of the Nibelungenlied and the popular ballad, German literature has preserved al¬ most no trace of the legend, and such as exist are too late and too corrupt to be of much use in determining the original features of the story.
Just when the legend emigrated to Skandinavia we do not know, but certainly at an early date, perhaps during the opening years of the sixth century. It may have been introduced by German traders, by slaves captured by the Northmen on their frequent maraud¬ ing expeditions, or, as Mogk believes, may have been taken by the Heruli on their return to Norway after their defeat by the Langobardi. By whatever channel, however, the story reached the North, it became part and parcel of Skandin avian folklore, only certain names still pointing to the original home of the legend. In the ninth century, when Harald Harfagr changed the ancient free constitution of the land, many Norwe¬ gians emigrated to Iceland, taking with them these acquired legends, which were better preserved in this remote island because of the peaceful introduction of Christianity, than on the Continent, where the Church was more antagonistic to the customs and legends of the heathen period.
The story, as given in the older Norse versions, is in most respects more original than in the JVibelung- enlied. It relates the history of the treasure of the Nibelungs, tracing it back to a giant by the name of Hreithmar, who received it from the god Loki as a compensation for the killing of the former’s son Otur, whom Loki had slain in the form of an otter. Loki obtained the ransom from a dwarf named Andwari, who in turn had stolen it from the river gods of the Rhine. Andwari pronounces a terrible curse upon the treasure and its possessors, and this curse passes from Loki to the Giant Hreithmar, who is murdered when asleep by his two sons Fafnir and Regin. The latter, however, is cheated out of the coveted prize by Fafnir, who carries it away to the Gnita heath, where he guards it in the form of a dragon. This treasure, with its accompanying curse, next passes into the hands of a human being named Sigurd
(the Norse form of Siegfried, as we have seen), a de- scendant of the race of the Volsungs, who trace their history back to Wodan and are especially favored by him. The full story of Siegfried’s ancestry is far too long to relate here, and does not especially concern us, as it has little or no influence on the later develop¬ ment of the story. It is sufficient for our purpose to know that Siegfried was the son of Siegmund, who was slain in battle before the birth of his son. Si¬ gurd was carefully reared by his mother Hjordis and the wise dwarf Regin, who taught him the know¬ ledge of runes and of many languages.1 At the sug¬ gestion of Regin, Sigurd asks for and receives the steed Grani from the king, and is then urged by his tutor to help him obtain the treasure guarded by the latter’s brother Fafnir. Sigurd promises, but first de¬ mands a sword. Two, that are given him by Regin, prove worthless, and he forges a new one from the pieces of his father’s sword, which his mother had preserved. With this he easily splits the anvil and cuts in two a flake of wool, floating down the Rhine. He first avenges the death of his father, and then sets off with Regin to attack the dragon Fafnir. At the advice of the former Sigurd digs a ditch across the dragon’s path and pierces him from below with his sword, as the latter comes down to drink. In dying the dragon warns Sigurd against the treasure and its curse, and against Regin, who, he says, is planning
Sigurd’s death, intending to obtain the treasure for himself. When Regin sees the dragon safely dead, he creeps from his place of concealment, drinks of the blood, and, cutting out the heart, begs Sigurd to roast it for him. While doing so, Sigurd burns his fingers, and, putting them in his mouth, understands at once the language of the birds and hears them say that Sigurd himself should eat the heart and then he would be wiser than all other men. They also betray Regin’s evil designs, and counsel the lad to kill his tutor. This Sigurd then does, cutting off Regin’s head, drinking the blood of both brothers, and eating Fafnir’s heart.1 On the further advice of the birds Sigurd first fetches the treasure from the cave, and then journeys to the mountain Hindarfjail, where he rescues the sleeping Valkyrie, Sigrdrifa (Brynhild, Brunhild’), who, stung by the sleep thorn of Wodan, and clad in full armor, lies asleep within a castle that is surrounded by a wall of flame. With the help of his steed Grani, Sigurd succeeds in penetrating through the fire to the castle. The sleeping maiden awakes when he cuts the armor from her with his sword, for it was as tight as if grown fast to the flesh. She hails her deliverer with
great joy, for she had vowed never to marry a man who knew fear. At Sigurd’s request she teaches him many wise precepts, and finally pledges her troth to him. He then departs, after promising to be faithful to her and to remember her teachings.
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 sim¬ plest constituents. According to him the nucleus of the legend is an old story of the murder of relatives ( Verioandtenmord), 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.
She marries for a second time, her husband now being Etzel, King of the Huns. Although Etzel owes his historical roots to Attila the Hun, he proves to be another weak king. Hagen shifts from being a brutal murderer to a stoic hero (or anti-hero), the ‘hope of the Nibelungs’. The name Nibelungs is transferred to the Burgundians, as they make their fatal journey to Hungary. Kriemhilt undergoes a character change, transformed from the innocent maiden of the early adventures to a ‘she-devil’. The supernatural elements found in the first half of the lay are for the most part lacking in the second half, with the exception of the water-sprites, the wise women who foretell to Hagen the fate of the Nibelungs.
Instead, a whole host of new characters are introduced. The marriage between Kriemhilt and Etzel is promoted by Rüedeger, Margrave of Pöchlarn, a powerful and magnanimous Austrian exile at Etzel’s court. Also in exile at the court are Dietrich of Bern and his retinue of warriors. Foremost among these is old Hildebrant, Dietrich’s master-at-arms. Both Dietrich and Hildebrant figure in the oldest surviving German heroic poem, the Old High German Hildebrandslied, whose manuscript dates from the early ninth century. (In the Hildebrandslied, however, Dietrich and Hildebrand are on opposite sides.)
As the lay moves towards the final catastrophe, Volker of Alzey, the bloodthirsty minstrel, comes to play a prominent role on the Burgundian side. King Gunther now shakes off his weakness and becomes a heroic figure. Other characters on the Hunnish side make brief appearances in the battles: these include Blœdelin, Etzel’s brother, and Irinc, Margrave of Denmark. Ultimately, though, it is the central characters, Kriemhilt, Hagen, and Gunther, who determine the outcome and the doom of the Nibelungs
Reference:
https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780191572685_A23535778/preview-9780191572685_A23535778.pdf
https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/nibelungenliedtr00bost/nibelungenliedtr00bost.pdf