The Nibelungenlied / Revised Edition

by Unknown

The very first of these Northern versions is that contained in the "Elder Edda," a collection of mythological and legendary poems in the Old Norse language, of unknown authorship, whose time and place of origin are alike matters of varying supposition. The subject was the theme of poets for centuries in the North. The oldest of the poems in the "Edda" that has to do with the story of the "Nibelungenlied," from internal evidence, was made as early as the year 900; the latest is from a time not far from 1200. These poems and fragments of poems, some of them even in prose rescript and most of them interspersed here and there with bits of prose, do not make in any sense a connected story. Their unknown collector arranged them as well as might be in connected sequence, but even then their action is not consecutive; they overlap each other, parts of the story are told and retold and not seldom with an inconsistency of detail. There is, accordingly, in the "Elder Edda" no thought of an epic either in matter or manner. There is the material for an epic in the rough, but without an idea in the mind of any poet of the time of actual epical treatment.

The story as contained in the Old Norse poems is by no means identical with the "Nibelungenlied." First and foremost, it is infinitely older in its whole conception, and much more nearly approaches original conditions as they existed in the mode of thought and in the manner of living of the early Germanic people. It is a story, here, of the days when the world was young; when the gods still walked the earth and mixed themselves in with human affairs in which they had an active interest; when motives were clearer and action was more direct; when human passions burned even fiercer than in the "Nibelungenlied," and love and hate together knew no boundaries until they had worked themselves out in the utter destruction of their object. Of the first of these conditions, the "Nibelungenlied" in its character of an epic of the Middle Ages has not kept a trace. In the Eddic poems it is the ring cursed by the gods to all its possessors that motives the entire action; that leads with the certainty of fate to the death of Sigurd, the Siegfried of the "Edda," to all the woes that follow, and to the ultimate utter destruction of the entire race of the Nibelungs.

As most critics have pointed out, the fundamental difference in the treatment of the story consists in the fact that the principal epic interest in the Eddic poems is the relation of Sigurd to Brynhild, the Valkyrie, who is here a heroic figure, who rises immeasurably not only above the other women of the tale, but above most of the other characters in importance of personality. In the "Nibelungenlied" it is Kriemhild, Gudrun in the "Edda," and Hagen who are the principal figures in the action. In the Northern version, Gudrun does not avenge herself upon her brothers as does Kriemhild in the "Nibelungenlied," but Atli, her husband after Sigurd, slays them, and Gudrun then takes vengeance upon him. In the "Edda," too, other saga cycles are brought into connection with this, viz., the Northern legend of Helgi, at the beginning, and the Gothic legend of Ermanrich, at the end.

The Eddic poems are not the only versions in Old Norse literature. An epitome of the story based upon the poems is contained in the "Snorra Edda," a work written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, who lived from 1178 to 1241, to serve as a handbook for poets and which contains in this way the myths and legends of the North.

Next to the Eddic songs the most important of the Northern versions, however, is the long "Völsunga Saga" from the second half of the thirteenth century, which, again, is based upon the Eddic poems and upon others in addition that have now been lost. Like most of the Old Norse sagas, it is prose with the occasional inclusion of verse cited to justify or to embellish its statements. It gives with extraordinary wealth of detail the whole old story in connected form and desires to be called, as it has been called, a prose epic. William Morris, in his superb translation, has deservedly characterized it as "the most complete and dramatic form of the Great Epic of the North." The story is further contained, in some of its details only, in the strange tale of "Nornagest," which has again made use of the Eddic songs and quotes one of them entire.

The Old Norse story is so important for its bearing on the intelligibility of the "Nibelungenlied" that it is absolutely necessary to take it actively into consideration in any discussion of the German poem. The epitome contained in the "Snorra Edda," since it gives the whole story from beginning to end in a form as short as may be, is here given in its entirety:

"Three gods, Odin, Hœnir, and Loki, once went out to explore the whole world. They came to a certain river, and went along the river to a waterfall, and at the waterfall there was an otter that had taken a salmon out of the fall and ate it, half asleep. Then Loki took up a stone and cast it at the otter and struck him in the head. Loki thereupon boasted of his catch that he had got at a blow both the otter and the salmon. They took the salmon and the otter and carried them along with them until they came to a farmstead, where they went in. The head of the household that dwelt there was named Hreidmar; he was a mighty man and much skilled in magic. He invited the gods to lodge there for the night, and they told him that they had with them provisions in plenty and showed him their booty. But when Hreidmar saw the otter he called his sons Fafnir and Regin and said that Otter, their brother, had been killed, and told them who had done it. Thereupon, the father and his sons fell upon the gods and took them and bound them, saying that the otter was the son of Hreidmar. The gods offered as a ransom as much money as Hreidmar himself should determine, and that was agreed upon as a reconciliation and was bound with oaths.

"Then the otter was flayed, and Hreidmar took the otter's skin and said that they should fill it with red gold and should then cover it wholly up with gold, and that should be their atonement. Odin then sent Loki into the land of the black elves and he came to the dwarf who is called Andvari; he was a fish in the water, and Loki took him and laid upon him as a ransom all the gold that he had in his stone. And when they came into the stone where he dwelt, the dwarf brought out all the gold that he owned and that was a very great treasure. Then the dwarf slipped under his hand a little gold ring. That Loki, however, saw and bade him produce the ring. The dwarf begged him not to take the ring from him, and said that he could breed treasure out of it if he kept it. Loki told him that he should not keep back a penny, and took the ring from him and went out. The dwarf said that the ring should be the death of everyone who owned it. Loki replied that that suited him well, and that the condition should be held good, since he would bring it to the ears of them who might get possession of it. He then went away to Hreidmar's and showed Odin the gold; but when he saw the ring, it seemed to him very beautiful and he took it out of the treasure, but paid over to Hreidmar the gold.

"Then Hreidmar filled the otter's skin as full as he could and set it up on its feet when it was full; Odin then went up to cover the skin with gold and said to Hreidmar that he should see whether the skin were wholly covered. Hreidmar looked at it and considered it carefully and saw a whisker, and bade him cover that, also, or else their atonement were at an end. Then Odin brought out the ring and covered the whisker and said that they now were freed from the otter ransom. When, however, Odin had taken his spear and Loki his shoes, and they needed no longer to fear, then said Loki that what Andvari had spoken, that the ring should be the death of him who owned it, should hold good, and it did hold good thereafter.

"Hreidmar took the gold as ransom for his son, but Fafnir and Regin demanded some of it as a ransom for their brother. Hreidmar, however, would not grant them a single penny of the gold. That was the ill-advised deed of the brothers that they killed their father for the gold. Then Regin demanded that Fafnir divide the gold in halves between them. Fafnir replied that there was little chance that he would share the gold with his brother when he had killed his father for the sake of it, and bade Regin to begone or he would fare as had Hreidmar. Fafnir had then taken the helmet which Hreidmar had owned, which was called the Helmet of Awe and which all living things feared that saw it, and set it upon his head, and he took the sword which is called Hrotti. Regin had the sword that is called Refil and he fled away; but Fafnir went up upon the Glittering Heath and made him there a lair, and he took upon himself the shape of a serpent and lay upon the gold.