'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.'
'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.'
Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ... there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.'
'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ...
'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'
One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy with man.
References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like panthers--all show it to be of no importance.
Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild:
'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre clouds outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the brightest stars, and suddenly outshining, athwart the clouds appears,' so she excelled all other women.
It has been said that one can hear the sighing of the north wind and the roar of the North Sea in Gudrun, but this is scarcely more than a pretty phrase. The 'dark tempestuous' sea, 'wild unfathomable' waves, the shore 'wet from the blood of the slain,' are indeed mentioned, but that is all.