Now ye know of the Need of the Niblungs and the end of broken troth,
All the death of kings and of kindreds and the Sorrow of Odin the Goth.”
Interpretation of the Saga.
This story of the Volsungs is supposed by some authorities to be a series of sun myths, in which Sigi, Rerir, Volsung, Sigmund, and Sigurd in turn personify the glowing orb of day. They are all armed with invincible swords, the sunbeams, and all travel through the world fighting against their foes, the demons of cold and darkness. Sigurd, like Balder, is beloved of all; he marries Brunhild, the dawn maiden, whom he finds in the midst of flames, the flush of morn, and parts from her only to find her again when his career is ended. His body is burned on the funeral pyre, which, like Balder’s, represents either the setting sun or the last gleam of summer, of which he too is a type. The slaying of Fafnir is the destruction of the demon of cold or darkness, who has stolen the golden hoard of summer or the yellow rays of the sun.
According to other authorities this Saga is based upon history. Atli is the cruel Attila, the “Scourge of God,” while Gunnar is Gundicarius, a Burgundian monarch, whose kingdom was destroyed by the Huns, and who was slain with his brothers in 451. Gudrun is the Burgundian princess Ildico, who slew her husband on her wedding night, as has already been related, using the glittering blade which had once belonged to the sun-god to avenge her murdered kinsmen.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS.
One of the distinctive features of Northern mythology is that the people always believed that their gods belonged to a finite race. The Æsir had had a beginning; therefore, it was reasoned, they must have an end; and as they were born from a mixture of the divine and gigantic elements, and were imperfect, they bore within them the germ of death, and were, like men, doomed to endure physical death to attain spiritual immortality.
The decline of the gods.
The whole scheme of Northern mythology was therefore a drama, every step leading gradually to the climax or tragic end, when, with true poetic justice, punishment and reward were impartially meted out. In the foregoing chapters, the gradual rise and decline of the gods has been carefully traced. We have recounted how the Æsir tolerated the presence of evil, personated by Loki, in their midst; how they weakly followed his advice, allowed him to involve them in all manner of difficulties from which they could be extricated only at the price of some of their virtue or peace, and finally permitted him to gain such ascendency over them that he dared rob them of their dearest possession, purity, or innocence, as personified by Balder the good.
Too late now, the gods realized what an evil spirit had found a home among them, and banished Loki to earth, where men, following the gods’ example, listened to his teachings, and instead of cultivating virtue became addicted to crime.