Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
From the days of the "Nibelungenlied," that great epic which, like the Homeric poems, can hardly be credited to any one author, every hamlet has rung with beautiful national songs, which sprung straight from the fervid heart of the people.
In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor feudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason that I wish to compare it with the Nibelungenlied, in order to show how enormously the old epic stuff was altered by the new civilization. The whole social and moral condition of the two versions is different.
The full story of Sigurds ancestry it is unnecessary to deal with here, as it has little influence on the connexion of the story of the Volsungs with the Nibelungenlied. Sigurd came under the tutelage of Regin, the son of Hreithmar and brother of Fafnir, received the magic steed Grani from the king, and then was requested by Regin to assist him in obtaining the treasure guarded by Fafnir.
In so far as the "Nibelungenlied" has forgotten most of the history of the youthful Siegfried, and knows nothing of his love for Brunhild, it is a torso, but so grand withal, that one hardly regrets the loss of these integral elements of the old saga. As it is a working over of originally separate lays, it is not entirely homogeneous, and contains not a few contradictions.
In medieval times, when the Nibelungenlied story was popular, minnesingers and harpers, in an attempt to please their audiences, would cast about for fresh incidents to introduce into the story.
Many painstaking attempts have been made to discover the identity of the writer of our poem, but even the most plausible of all these theories which considers Kurenberg, one of the earliest of the "Minnesingers", to be the author, because of the similarity of the strophic form of our poem to that used by him, is not capable of absolute proof, and recent investigations go to show that Kurenberg was indebted to the "Nibelungen" strophe for the form of his lyric, and not the "Nibelungenlied" to him.
But the Nibelungenlied proper is silent regarding Siegfrieds previous relations with Brunhild. In the Nibelungenlied this ancient myth is either presupposed or intentionally omitted as unfitting for consumption by a Christianized folk, but it is hinted that Brunhild had a previous claim upon Siegfrieds affections.
These are distinctly of a more simple and early form than the German versions, and it is to be assumed that they represent the original Nibelungenlied story, which was preserved faithfully in the North, whereas the familiarity of its theme among the Southern Teutons caused it to be altered again and again for the sake of variety, until to some extent it lost its original outline.
In the famous myth which serves as the basis for the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, the dragon Fafnir steals the Valkyrie Brynhild and keeps her shut up in a castle on the Glistening Heath, until some champion shall be found powerful enough to rescue her.
It is only writers of the last century who practise this archaeological refinement. The authors of Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied, of the Chansons de Geste and of the Arthurian romances, always describe their antique heroes and the details of their life in conformity with the customs, costume, and armour of their own much later ages. But Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking