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We see from this account that the Volsunga Saga presents in many respects an older form of the Nibelungenlied story. Sigurd is the same as Siegfried; Gunnar, Hogni, and Gudrun are parallels with Gunther, Hagen, and Kriemhild although, strangely enough, that name is also borne by Gudruns mother in the Volsunga Saga.
The bright-haired lady will offer thee her daughter." Völsunga gives additional details: Brynhild knows her deliverer to be Sigurd Sigmundsson and the slayer of Fafni, and they swear oaths to each other.
Mr. Morris took the form of the story which is most archaic, and bears most birthmarks of its savage origin the version of the "Volsunga," not the German shape of the "Nibelungenlied." He showed extraordinary skill, especially in making human and intelligible the story of Regin, Otter, Fafnir, and the Dwarf Andvari's Hoard.
Then, in the "Younger Edda," the story is repeated in the myth of the Niflungs and the Gjukungs. It is told again in the "Volsunga Saga" of Iceland. It is repeated and re-repeated in various forms and different languages, and finally appears in the "Nibelungen Lied," a grand old German poem, which may well be compared with the Iliad of the Greeks.
There is also the inevitable deterioration in the character of Brynhild, without the compensating elevation in that of her rival by which the Nibelungen Lied places Chriemhild on a height as lofty and unapproachable as that occupied by the Norse Valkyrie; the Brynhild of Völsunga Saga is something of a virago, the Gudrun is jealous and shrewish.
On the other hand, a reference in Völsunga Saga, that "Haki and Hagbard were great and famous men, yet Sigar carried off their sister, ... and they were slow to vengeance," shows that there is confusion somewhere.
Atlis last request was that his obsequies should be such as were fitting for a king, and to ensure that he had proper funeral rites Gudrun set fire to his castle and burnt his body together with those of his dead retainers. The further adventures of Gudrun are related in certain songs in the Edda, but the Volsunga Saga proper ends with the death of Atli. Comparisons between the Epics
Morris had shown, in various ways, the strength of his sympathy with the heroic sagas of Iceland. He had rendered one into verse, in "The Earthly Paradise," above all, "Grettir the Strong" and "The Volsunga" he had done into English prose. His next great poem was "The Story of Sigurd," a poetic rendering of the theme which is, to the North, what the Tale of Troy is to Greece, and to all the world.
Sigmund, dying, left the fragments of the sword to be given to his unborn son, and Sigurd's fosterfather Regin forged them anew for the future dragon-slayer. But Sigurd's first deed was to avenge on Hunding's race the death of his father and his mother's father. Völsunga tells this story first of Helgi and Sinfjötli, then of Sigurd, to whom the poems also attribute the deed.
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.
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