ROUTLEDGE

LIBRARY EDITIONS:
GERMAN LITERATURE

Volume 18

HEROIC LEGENDS OF THE NORTH

 HEROIC LEGENDS OF THE
NORTH
An Introduction to the Nibelung and Dietrich
Cycles

EDWARD R. HAYMES AND

SUSANN T. SAMPLES
First published in 1996 by Garland Publishing Inc

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HEROIC LEGENDS OF THE NORTH

GARLAND REFERENCE LIBRARY OF THE HUMANITIES

VOLUME
1403
THE DEATH OF SIEGFRIED (From Lienhart ScheubePs
Heklenbuch, 15th century) MS 15478, Folio 291 recto,
Austrian National Library, Vienna.
HEROIC LEGENDS OF THE NORTH
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NIBELUNG AND DIETRICH CYCLES

EDWARD R. HAYMES
SUSANN T. SAMPLES
Copyright © 1996 by Edward R. Haymes and Susann T. Samples All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haymes, Edward, 1940-

Heroic legends of the North : an introduction to the Nibelung and Dietrich cycles / by Edward R. Haymes
and Susann T. Samples.
p. cm. — (Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 1403)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-0033-6 (alk. paper)
1. German poetry—Middle High German, 1050-1500—History and criticism. 2. Epic poetry, German—
History and criticism. 3. Old Norse poetry—History and criticism. 4. Nibelungen—Legends—History and
criticism. 5. Dietrich, von Bern—Legends—History and criticism.
I. Samples, Susann T. II. Title. III. Series.
PT204.H38 1996
830—dc20 96-5800
CIP

Cover illustration: Sigurd Stabbing the Dragon Fâfnir (from the Hylestad Stave Church) Museum of
National Antiquities, Oslo, Norway.

Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper

Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents

Preface

A Note on Languages and Alphabets

Chronological Chart
Abbreviations

PART ONE: BACKGROUND

The Germanic Legends

The Medieval Literary Versions
The Hero, Heroic Poetry, and the Heroic Age
The Germanic Peoples and Their Heroic Tradition
Germanic Among the European Language Families
The Germanic Peoples
The Heroic Legends
Formation and Transmission of Heroic Legend
The First Stage: Eyewitness Reports
The Second Stage: Oral Epic Poetry
The Third Stage: Medieval Literature

Historical Background
The Roman Empire in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Centuries
Ermanaric
The Burgundians on the Rhine
Attila
Theoderic the Great
Brünhild

Historical Sources
 Primary Historical Sources
Lex Burgundionum
Jordanes
Gregory the Great
Gregory of Tours
Gesta Theoderici
Medieval Chronicles
Quedlinburg Annals
Frutolf von Michelsberg
Kaiserchronik
Other High Medieval Historical Sources

Oral Transmission
Epic Theory from the Nineteenth Century
Oral Poetry
Germanic Oral Narrative Poetry
The Common Form
The Development of the Middle High German Form
The Special Case of Old Norse
The Oral Transmission of Germanic Heroic Legend

PART TWO: LITERARY WORKS

Literary Works

Table of Motifs

Traces in Early Literature

Deor and Widsip
wulf and Eadwacer
Beowulf
Walther and Hildegund
Waltharius
Waldere
Walther und Hildegunt
Valtari (in the Pidrekssaga)
 Wayland (Wleland, Velent) the Smith
Völundarkvida
Velent’s Story (from the Pidrekssaga)

The Dietrich Legend

Pidrekssaga af Bern (The Saga of Pidrek of Bern)
Hildebrandslted, Older and Younger
Das Buch von Bern (Dietrichs Flucht)
Rabenschlacht
Alpharts Tod
The poems in Bernerton
Virginal
Eckenliet
Ekka (in the Pidrekssaga)
Sigenot
Goldemar
Biterolf und Dietleip
Laurin
Walberan
Dietrich und Wenzelan
Der Wunderer
Ermenrikes Dôt
Heldenbuch Prose

The Nibelung Legend

Nibelungenlied
Diu Klage
Sigurd’s Youth and Murder in the Pidrekssaga
Völsungasaga
Nornagests Páttr
Nlflunga saga in the Pldrekssaga
Poetic Edda
Helgi Hundingsbani
Sigurd and Brynhild
Gudrún
Oddrun
 Atli
Hamdismál
Snorra Edda
Rosengar ten zu Worms
Das Lied vom Hurnen Seyfrid

Related Legends
Wolfdietrich-Ortnit
Ortnit
Wolfdietrich D(B)
Wolfdietrich A
Wolfdietrich C
Kudrun
Rother

Glossary of Names

Index
Preface

Most English-speakers have a vague knowledge, probably derived direcdy or

indirectly from Wagner, about the Nibelung legend, while the legend of Dietrich
of Bern, certainly the most popular heroic material in medieval Germany, is
largely unknown west of the English Channel. This book sets out to provide
information for the general reader curious about these legendary matters and for
the student setting out to find an entry into an often impenetrable secondary
literature. The authors have sought to provide reliable information about the
texts themselves and bibliographical guidance that will point the way into the
published research on them.
This book sets out to trace its two major legendary topics from their historical
roots during the last centuries of the Roman Empire to the medieval texts that
make them known to us. There is no attempt to reconstruct lost literary versions
or, except as an aid to orientation, to retell the stories in modem form. We have
also decided to end the book with the last medieval versions of the material. A
treatment of the Nibelung material from the eighteenth century to the present
would be fascinating, but it would have unbalanced this book.
Many of the medieval texts have never been translated into English or even
modem German. For this reason we have included a synopsis of each work so
that the reader can form an idea of the content of the literary works in question.
There are many directions a study of Germanic heroic legend could have
taken, but we have chosen a text-oriented approach that does very little in the
way of situating the works in their social and political historical background. We
have avoided theoretical issues that would have carried us beyond the scope of a
handy orientation for readers and students. We have, however, included much in
our bibliographical listings that will take the reader into the theoretical questions
surrounding the study of these works.
One area of theory we could not avoid is the theory of oral poetic
composition. This was necessary because few of our texts would have come into
being without oral transmission and because the legends themselves are the
product of an oral culture. Insofar as the theory of oral composition is still
controversial, we have tried to cite scholarship offering views different from
those presented here.
The nature of the material and its attendant scholarship makes it inevitable
that a large amount of the bibliographical material cited here is in German.
Although every effort has been made to find texts and secondary literature in
English, we have chosen to include much of die recent and classic treatment of
this area among German-speaking scholars.
Bodi authors have worked on the entire book, so that a clear division of
responsibility is impossible, but the initial work on various parts of the book was
parceled out in a way to make die best use of the authors’ different backgrounds.
The introductory matter and the sections on Old English, Old Norse, Old High
German, and Latin texts were drafted by Edward Haymes, while the studies of
Middle High German literature were prepared by Susann Samples. The authors
are grateful to their colleagues and friends who have read the manuscript in
various stages of development and offered useful suggestions and corrections.
Acknowledgments are due Laura Blanchard and Mary Gustavson Small for
many useful suggestions based on an early draft and to Bernard Bachrach, Bruce
Beatie, and Stephanie Van D’Elden for reading through a penultimate draft. The
authors remain responsible for any errors, of course, but these colleagues and
friends have saved us from many a gaffe. Edward Haymes has been enabled to
carry out some of the work on this book through a sabbatical leave from
Cleveland State University and a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation in Bonn.

A NOTE ON LANGUAGES AND ALPHABETS

The literary works and historical sources discussed in this book are written in
many different languages: Latin, Old and Middle High German, Old English,
and Old Norse. Old English and Old Norse use several letters in addition to the
usual Latin alphabet used for modem English. The most common of these are P
and 1, both of which represent “di” sounds. Modem Icelandic uses the P to
represent the voiceless sound in “thin” and S to represent the voiced sound in
“this.” Old Norse texts generally follow this usage. Old English texts seem to
use the two letters without differentiation. Most vowel sounds in all die
languages used follow the pattern of Latin or modem German. An acute accent
Q is used in Old Norse to mark vowel length. Dieresis (“Umlaut” as in ubet) is
used in Norse and German to mark the rounding of vowels.
When discussing Germanic legend (l.e. legend known beyond a single
national literature) we have used the modem German spelling of the names,
since they are best known in that form. In the discussion of specific literary
sources, we have used the spellings found in die best editions. When discussing
historical figures, die most usual spelling found in historical literature, in English
is generally used. We have indicated the few departures from this practice in
footnotes.

CHRONOLOGICAL CHART
This book covers more dian a thousand years of poorly mapped history. In order
to give our readers some help in finding their way through this wilderness, we
have provided a chronological table that puts most of the events and most of the
literary works discussed here in a European and world context. We have not tried
to include die very late works diat are found only in printed materials of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, since the dating of these works is problematic
at best.
The selection of external events and literary works in the table is not intended
to be complete, but only to provide orientation points for the general reader.
All dates are A.D. unless otherwise indicated.
Abbreviations

ABäG Amsterdamer Beitrage zur älteren Germanistik

'Waz sider da geschach:' American-German Shidies on the
Nibebmgmlied. Eds. Werner Wunderlich and Ulrich Muller.
AGSN
Goppingen: Kiimmerle, 1992 Werner Wunderlich and Ulrich
Miiller. Goppingen: Kiimmerle, 1992.
BGDSL Beitrage zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Uteratur
Deutsche Vierteljahresschrijtfiir Uteraturnnssenschaji und
DVLG
Geistesgeschichte
Heldensage und Heldendichtung im Germanischen. ed. Heinrich
HH Beck. Erganzungsbande zum Reallexikon der Germanischen
Altertumskunde 2. Berlin: de Grnyter, 1988.
Hohenemser Studien zum Nibelungenlied, a special number of
HS Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift Jur Geschichte und Gegemvart
Vomrlbergs, 32 (1980). Pagination follows that of the single volume.
I CoUoquio Italo-Germamco sulla tema I Nibelunghi. Atti dei
Nibelunghi convegm Lincei. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974.
JEGP Journal oj English and Germanic Philology
JFI Journal of the Folklore Institute
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MLN Modern Language Notes
MLR Modern Language Retnen>
Nibelungenlied und KJage: Sage und Geschichte, Struktur und
PN Gattung: Passauer Nibehtngengesprache 1985. Ed Fritz Peter
Knapp. Heidelberg: Winter, 1987.
Poetry in the Scandinavian Middle Ages: The Seventh International
PSMA Saga Conference. Ed. Teresa Paroli. Spoleto: Presso la sede del
 Centro Studia, 1990.
WW Wirkendes Wort
ZDA Zeitschrift Jur deutsches Altertum und deutsche Uteratur
ZDP Zeitschrift Jur deutsche Philologie
Part One:

BACKGROUND
CHAPTER 1

The Germanic Legends

The legend of Dietrich of Bern was medieval Germany’s closest parallel to the
legends of King Arthur in Britain and Charlemagne in France. Dietrich became
the central figure in a wide variety of stories, most of which have absolutely no
connection to the historical figure on whom Dietrich is based, the Ostrogothic
king Theoderic the Great (c.453—526)1 The Dietrich of legend is associated
with the Italian city Verona, the name of which appears in medieval texts as
“Bern,” a name which has no connection to the present Swiss capital. The
historical Theodoric made his capital in Ravenna, where his mausoleum can still
be seen.
The story medieval audiences considered to be historical told of Dietrich’s
exile from his rightful lands, his thirty years widi Attila the Hun, and his
eventual return. Far more popular, however, were the fantastic adventures that
featured Dietrich and his chief vassal, Hildebrand, in conflict with giants,
dwarfs, and dragons.
The “Nibelung” legend actually combines several stories. The first of these
involves the youth, marriage, and murder of Siegfried. There is no known
historical source for Siegfried and his story, although there have been numerous
attempts to associate him with various historical figures. The thirteenth-century
poets and their audiences knew that Siegfried was raised in the wilds by a smith,
that he killed a dragon and gained a great treasure, that he had some relationship
to the supernatural princess Brunhild, diat he violated diat relationship and
married the courdy princess Kriemhild, sister of Gunther, Gemot, and Giselher.
As a condition for being allowed to marry Kriemhild, he helped Gunther win
Brunhild. The tension between the two queens, Kriemhild and Brunhild, led to
Siegfried’s murder.
The second story has to do with Kriemhild’s later marriage to Attila the Hun.
Attila invited his brothers-in-law to a great feast and killed them along with all
their entourage when they would not give up Siegfried’s treasure. There are two
mutually exclusive versions of this story, but the result is the same. In the one
version Kriemhild invited her brothers in order to gain vengeance for Siegfried.
In the other she killed Attila and all of his men in order to avenge her brothers,
whom Attila had invited out of avarice.

1 In the following the name Dietrich will be used to refer to the legendary
figure and Theoderic to refer to the historical king. All of the legendary figures
referred to in this introduction are identified in the Glossary of Names at the end
of this book.

These sketchy outlines are already problematic, since the different versions
available in medieval texts vary so much. Many readers will have Wagner’s
version of the stories in the back of their minds as well. Instead of trying to
harmonize the versions into a single unified legend, we will present the medieval
stories in all their diversity. Some of the differences result from the different
historical situations out of which the versions come. A simple example involves
the number of players in each version. The German Nibelungenlied was written
around 1200 against die background of German imperial politics, and the final
batde brings more than twenty thousand men to their death. In one of the Norse
versions of the Attila story, the Atlamal, which may have been composed
somewhat earlier on the lonely shores of Greenland, only two members of
Kriemhild’s family come to Attila’s family to meet their death.
It is also difficult to say why these particular legends became the backbone of
medieval Germanic traditional storytelling. We have evidence that the medieval
storytellers knew other stories, but these are the ones that formed the nexus of
legendary history. As the Middle Ages progressed, most legendary material was
somehow integrated into the Nibelung and Dietrich framework. The story of
Wieland the smith, for example, becomes a part of the Dietrich legend when
Wieland’s son Witige becomes a member of Dietrich’s court. Finally the two
legends are combined in the Nibelungenlied and the PiSrekssaga so that the
Nibelung legend becomes a part of Dietrich’s career.
The one element most of the stories have in common is conflict within
families. If it is not present in the sources, it is added within the poetic tradition.
The oldest surviving legendary poem in any Germanic language (the
Hildebrandslied) tells of a batde, presumably to the death, between father and
son. Dietrich’s enemy is usually portrayed as his paternal uncle, although there is
no historical basis for this idea. Siegfried is killed by his in-laws.
The literary presentations make it clear that there were two very strong bonds
within Germanic society, those of blood relationship and those to the lord of the
war-band. The most powerful tragic situation in the society must have been
conflict between these two kinds of loyalty. We can imagine the tellers of these
stories in oral tradition playing heavily on this kind of conflict in order to
sharpen the effect of the stories, much as Shakespeare personalized the conflicts
within the Wars of the Roses to make his history plays powerful on the human as
well as on the historical level. The conflicts that drive the Nibelung and Dietrich
legends are as universal as those that drive the Greek tragedies or modem soap
operas. It is the individual poetic representation in the medieval works of
literature that makes these legends special and it is those medieval works of
literary art that will occupy much of our attention in what follows. At the same
time we cannot lose track of die tradition and the way die various works relate to
it.

THE MEDIEVAL LITERARY VERSIONS

The first connected written version of the Nibelung legend is the
Nibe/ungenlied, composed in southern Germany around 1200, and the first
connected written version of the story of Dietrich is the Pidrekssaga af Bern,
compiled in Norway approximately a half-century later. Bodi assume something
like the form of the legend presented below.
From thirteenth-century Iceland we have a collection of heroic poems about
the Nibelung legends known as the Poetic Edda?2 The story of Siegfried’s
family is also told in a later (fourteenth-century) prose narrative, also from
Iceland, called the Volsungasaga. There are written traces of Germanic heroic
legend prior to these high medieval literary works, but they do not actually tell
the stories, the sources merely refer to them. An example of this is the reference
to the legend of Sigmund in die Old English epic Beowulf discussed below on p.
60. In the following chapters we shall look at the evidence pointing to earlier
versions of the legends that emerges from historical documents from the fifth to
the twelfth century.

2 The Poetic Edda also contains mythological poems about the Norse gods

and their history. The section dealing with human events, however, is almost
entirely devoted to stories of the Volsungs, the family of Siegfried/Sigurd.

When we speak of die Nibelung legend and particularly of the Dietrich

legend we are actually describing a wide range of stories, most of which
originally had nothing to do with each other. The Pidrekssaga in particular
brings together many different stories, including the Nibelung legend itself, by
relating them to the single figure of Dietrich of Bern. Hie ease with which poets
could refer to these stories makes it clear that not only the singers of tales but
also their audiences knew the outline of what we might call a “heroic history” of
the Germanic past. We shall explore this heroic history as it presents itself to us
in many very different written versions.
Perhaps it will make the task of sorting out the many different versions of our
legends somewhat easier if we lay out in some detail the course of the legendary
“history” that gives structure to the medieval literary versions. Each individual
medieval poem or saga takes its place within this framework. Any medieval
author attempting a Dietrich or Nibelung poem would know where the events of
that poem would fit into die “liistory.” This outline resembles the Pidrekssaga
because that is virtually die only attempt in medieval literature to cover the
whole story from beginning to end. (The names follow the modem German
forms.)
Dietrich of Bern rules over his kingdom in northern Italy. The young king’s
fame spreads far and wide and he attracts die greatest heroes of his time to his
court. He is eventually involved in a power struggle with his uncle Ermanrich,
king of Rome. Ermanrich drives Dietrich and his men from his kingdom.
Dietrich and most of his heroes find refuge at the court of die king of Hunland,
Etzel (Attila). (Hunland is located variously in northern and eastern Europe.)
After many years of exile Dietrich makes an attempt to retake his kingdom. He
is victorious but the loss of Etzel’s young sons and his own brother in the batde
so demoralizes him that he returns to Hunland in apparent defeat.
While Dietrich is establishing himself as the foremost king of his time, Young
Siegfried is being raised by a smidi in the woods. He kills a dragon and wins a
vast treasure. He then finds a warrior princess named Brunhild who predicts his
future. The two heroic figures agree to marry.
Meanwhile the brothers Gunther, Giselher, and Gemot have established
diemselves at Worms on the Rhine as kings of the Burgundians (also called
Nibelungs). Young Siegfried arrives at their court and seeks the hand of their
sister Kriemhild. Gunther agrees to the match if Siegfried will help him win the
warrior maiden Brunhild. Siegfried does so, violating his earlier oadi to marry
Brunhild. Brunhild eventually manages to incite some members of Gunther’s
court to kill Siegfried. The brodiers plot against Siegfried and kill him by
stabbing him in the back with a spear. The murder takes place by a spring in die
forest (or in die hero’s bed). In some versions it is Hagen who kills Siegfried, in
others it is Gemot (who is killed by the dying hero).
The widowed Kriemhild marries Etzel (Attila) and invites her brothers to a
festival diat turns into a slaughter as Etzel seeks to find out where Siegfried’s
treasure has been hidden. Dietrich and his men are eventually brought into the
batde and diey take part on Etzel’s side. After all the Burgundian kings are
killed, Kriemhild exacts vengeance on Etzel for killing her brothers. (In die
Nibelungenlied she exacts vengeance on her brothers for the murder of her
husband, and Etzel is virtually blameless in the matter.)
Several years after the slaughter of the Burgundians, Dietrich decides to
return to his kingdom and retake it from Ermanrich. As the two armies face each
other, Dietrich’s weapons-master Hildebrand encounters his son in single
combat and is forced to kill him (or is reconciled with him). Dietrich recovers
his kingdom and reigns for many years before being spirited off to Hell on the
back of a magnificent black horse that appears next to the pool where Dietrich
had been bathing. The age of heroes is at an end.
This is more or less the backbone of the story as it existed in oral tradition
from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. We have ignored the stories that violate
the basic structure here,3 but we will certainly discuss them as we move from a
general consideration of the legendary world to a discussion of the individual
works that transmit that world to us.
As we shall see below in our treatment of the Volsungasaga and the Poetic
Edday there was a northern branch of this tradition, mainly in Iceland, that
emphasized Siegfried’s family much more than the Burgundians and expanded a
number of episodes far beyond what we see above. The summary of the
Volsungasaga on pp. 114ff. shows the outlines of the Northern versions.

3 There are, for example, many stories of Dietrich’s youth, such as the
Hckenlied and the Virginal, that do not clearly fit into the generally accepted
biography of Dietrich the king.

THE HERO, HEROIC POETRY, AND THE HEROIC AGE

Virtually all the poetry and prose discussed in this book belongs to the category
generally called “heroic” poetry. The center of heroic poetry is the extraordinary
individual, the hero, who stands above his contemporaries in physical and moral
strength. There may be slight differences in the code of behavior expected of
heroes in different cultures, but physical courage and strength seem to be
common to all of them. Some cultures place more emphasis on the mental
ability of the hero, his ability to outwit his enemies (Odysseus, Leminkainen),
but this is probably a secondary phenomenon and it is by no means universal.
Heroes are the products of narrative. This means that the study of literature
that is identified as heroic literature must be to some extent a study of the
transformation of a historical human being into a hero. The process is, of course,
lost to us in most cases described in this book, but we can observe the
widespread existence of hero patterns in literatures around the world.
A number of scholars have observed the similarities in biography among
heroes in many different literatures. Archer Taylor has given a convenient
summary of these patterns in his essay “The Biographical Pattern in Heroic
Literature.” We can observe that many heroes have a questionable or marvelous
birth and youth. Siegfried’s birth is told in several different ways in different
sources, but most versions include his youth as an apprentice smith in the forest
where he eventually kills a dragon. Hagen is said to be born as the result of a
visitation of his royal mother by an incubus.
Heroic behavior can lead to disaster as well as success, and much heroic
narrative is tragic in its tone and outcome. Achilles, Leonidas, Hagen (in the
Nibelungenlied), Roland, Custer, and Davy Crockett all share the tragic qualities
that mark the doomed hero. They are men of great courage—in fact they seem
to mock death—and they know that they are doomed to die. They can only be
overcome by overwhelming forces, and their deaths often inspire their
respective peoples to vengeance and victory. Siegfried is, as we shall see,
something of an exception to most of these generalizations, but the general
notion of hero applies to him as well as to the others.
In his study of the development of the Custer legend, Bruce Rosenberg has
shown that the hero is developed not in his actual deeds, but in the narratives of
those deeds. Custer’s story quickly took the form of what Rosenberg calls the
“epic of defeat” as it made its way into newspaper accounts and popular books
on the batde. The facts of the battle fitted themselves quickly into the narrative
pattern expected of a heroic defeat, and soon Custer’s Last Stand was a part of
the heroic tradition of the United States.
There are numerous explanations for the similarities among heroic stories
around the world. They have been seen as continuous narrative traditions, as
expressions of archetypal story patterns, as expressions of the human condition,
and so on. What is important for our study here is to recognize that these
patterns exist and that they shape heroic stories as they make their way from
history into narrative art.
One of the most extensive studies of the hero archetype is by the comparative
mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Campbell’s book is easily available, so we will not repeat his conclusions here.
The important point for our study is that heroes are a product of narrative, not of
deeds and events. Many persons have performed heroic deeds, but they become
heroes only if their stories are told in heroic form. This heroic form may be epic
poetry or television reportage, but it must present the actions of the hero in a
form the audience will recognize as heroic.

THE GERMANIC PEOPLES AND THEIR HEROIC TRADITION

The Nibelung and Dietrich legends are the product of a long process of
transmission that reaches from the events of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries
to the literary works of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Some
parts of the stories are based on recognizable historical events, while others
cannot be identified with any recorded events or personalities. In order to
understand the place of Germanic legend in European literary history, we must
first locate the Germanic peoples in early European history.

Germanic Among the European Language Families

The Germanic peoples entered recorded history during the last millennium B.C.
and established themselves throughout much of what is now Central and
Eastern Europe. They were speakers of a family of Indo-European languages
that was clearly separated from the Italic (Latin) spoken in Italy, the Greek
spoken throughout the Hellenic Empire, and the Celtic languages spoken
throughout most of Western Europe and the British Isles at the time.
All of these European language families are related as members of the Indo-
European language family, and so, we presume, are most of the peoples who
spoke them. Scholars disagree on the existence of a single common Indo-
European parent language, but there is no disagreement on the relatively close
relationship of the languages spoken traditionally from.Iceland to India. Some
scholars have suggested a common fund of myths and legends among all the
Indo-European peoples going back to the time when a single language was
spoken, while others have argued for contamination spreading the legends from
one people to another at a later date.
When we narrow our focus to a language group within the Indo-European
family, such as the Germanic, the task becomes easier, because there are clearly
common legends that have spread throughout the group. The Nibelung and
Dietrich legends form die most important complex that was known down
through the Middle Ages throughout the parts of Europe in which Germanic
languages were and are spoken.

The Germanic Peoples

Before proceeding we need to clarify the two common terms for this family of
peoples. In modern usage Germanic and Teutonic refer to the same grouping of
peoples. “Germanic” is derived from a Latin term of the Classical period of
undetermined origin. “Teutonic” is derived from the Latin name for a
population group first mentioned in historical sources as originating in what is
now Denmark. This name is presumed to be derived from the Germanic
root*theocft4 meaning “the people,” the same root from which the German
word Deutsch and the Italian Tedesco (both meaning “German” in the modern
sense) are derived. These synonyms are used by scholars and others to
designate the same groups of peoples, the linguistic ancestors of today’s
Germans, Dutch, English, Scandinavians, and so on.5
Roman historians provide us with tantalizing glimpses of the Germani as
they became known during the early Empire. The litde book Germanid6 by
Tacitus is the best known of these materials. We need to read Tacitus with a
grain of salt because his main purpose was exposing the decadence of the
Roman Empire rather than giving a clear picture of the Germanic whom he
knew only through second-hand reports. He had no reason, however, to invent
his few short references to Germanic poetry, which portray an oral epic of
clearly historical bent.

4 We will follow the established practice of historical linguists of marking

unattested (i.e. reconstructed) forms with an asterisk.
5 In the following we will refer to the members of these population groups

that spoke Germanic languages either as Germani (using the Latin word) or as
Germanic peoples. We will not adopt the practice common among historians of
referring to Goths, Franks, Burgundians, and so on of the late Roman imperial
period as “Germans.” This term will be reserved for the ancestors of modern
Germans in the Middle Ages, i.e. from the Carolingian period on. We will, of
course, retain the usage of passages quoted from other sources.
6 Throughout this book we will follow Tacitus’s example and refer to the

totality of the Germanic peoples (and their descendants) together as

“Germanta.” This unity is suggested by the close relationship of the languages
and by the spread of traditional stories throughout the area. It is not meant to
suggest a single group of peoples linked by blood. Many “non- Germanic”
individuals (and even groupings) were absorbed into the linguistic community
in the course of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
In the traditional songs which form dieir only record of the past the Germans celebrate an earth-
 born god called Tuisto. His son Mannus is supposed to be the fountain-head of their race and
himself to have begotten three sons who gave dieir names to three groups of tribes. . . . (Tacitus,
102)

Tacitus also mentions a fear-inducing war chant called barditus or baritus,

although he makes no suggestion diat there were any texts, historical or
otherwise, attached to them.
The stories treated below generally emanate from a somewhat later period,
the so-called Period of Migrations (Volkerwanderungseit) that began in the
fourth century and continued into the sixth. During this period virtually every
Germanic people changed its position on the map. The Goths7 of southeastern
Europe in particular swept across southern Europe, establishing themselves in
kingdoms in southern Gaul (Visigoths), Spain (Visigoths), and Italy
(Ostrogoths). Several Gothic leaders of the fourth to sixth century (e.g.
Ermanaric, Theoderic ) found their way into the legends we know from
literature written in the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The Burgundians, a
Germanic people that may have originated on the island Bomholm (the names
is supposed to derive from “Borgundarholm”) in the Baltic Sea, moved first to
the shores of the Rhine and then, following the great batde diat is reflected in
the Nibelung legends, to their present location in Burgundy. The Alamans and
Franks moved from the North Sea through what is now Germany to establish
themselves in what is now northern France, Switzerland, and southwest
Germany.
The Huns, a nomadic folk from Asia, entered the picture during the last third
of the fourth century. This group was led at its peak by Attila (d. 451), a man
whose name has become synonymous widi ferocity and ruthlessness. This name
was not his real one, however. It is a Germanic nickname meaning “Litde
Father.” It seems clear from the legends that Attila had a very different and far
more positive image among the Germanic peoples he encountered than he did
in the Church-centered Latin histories that inform our school history books.
The Germanic tribes gradually formed into the major groupings we know
from later history. Hie leading group in die West was the Frankish kingdom,
first united under Clovis (r. 481—511) in die late fifth century. The Frankish
custom of dividing die holdings of a leader, including die king, among the male
heirs led to a fluid shape for die Frankish kingdom until it passed into the
kingdoms that were to become France in die West and the Holy Roman Empire
of the Germans in the East in die ninth century.
We shall not attempt to recount the fate of each of the Germanic tribes during
the period of migrations. In the first place it is far too complex a matter, and in
the second there is a great deal of uncertainty about the facts.8 We shall,
however, recount the probable historical backgrounds of several of the stories.

7 The term “Goth” has become problematic in recent research. It denotes the
Visigoths and the Ostrogoths and occasionally other groups who allied
themselves with them. For a discussion of the terminology and references to
recent literature see Wolfram, History of the Goths, 19-35.
8 For examples of this complexity see Wolfram, History of the Goths, and

James, The Franks.

THE HEROIC LEGENDS

A literalist view of history has difficulties with a heroic history in which
historical personages from different centuries appear side by side. Dietrich
appears in the legend as a guest of Attila, who certainly died (453) at about the
time the Gothic King Theoderic was bom (c. 451). Hagen, die killer of Siegfried
at Gunther’s court, is a friend of Dietrich in the legends, while die historical
Gundaharius (and his brodiers) died in 436, more than a decade before
Theoderic’s birth. Theoderic’s historical opponent Odoacer, who died in 473, is
replaced in virtually all medieval versions by Ermanaric, who died in 375, three-
quarters of a century before Theoderic was bom. Clearly die medieval legends
are not much use as historical sources.
Still we are on a better footing in seeking historical roots for our Germanic
legends than the students of Arthurian legends with theirs. We can identify the
historical figures behind many of our figures with relative ease, while the
historical Arthur remains a tantalizing mystery.

Formation and Transmission of Heroic Legend

It would be a mistake to confuse the process of identifying historical personages
in our stories with an interpretation of the legends or of the literary works that
transmit the legends. We are dealing with at least three levels of story formation
here: (1) eyewitness reports of the historical events, (2) oral heroic poetry based
on the historical events, and (3) written literary adaptations of the oral heroic
poetry. Parallel to (2), the oral epic poetry, were probably some form of reports
circulating among people who had head about the historical events. These
reports are perhaps the most obscure element in the transmission of history. One
such report is described in the dialogues of Gregory the Great (see below p. 26),
but it narrates what was already historical legend. These reports and the
historically based oral poetry make up what we will be calling “oral tradition.”
The non-poetic reports were still subject to the distortions characteristic of oral
narrative, so that they are no more intrinsically reliable as sources of “history”
than were the more “literary” songs. As we shall see, historical writing from the
Middle Ages used oral tradition as a source along with the written histories
available to them. This is an interesting process in itself, and we will be looking
at it in more detail as we consider the ancient and medieval historical sources
that treat our materials. What interests us here is the development of historically
based narrative, mainly in the verse form of heroic epic. Let us look in a little
more detail at the three stages involved.

The First Stage: Eyewitness Reports

As soon as the events took place there were reports circulating among the
communities involved. Some of these may have circulated in report form for a
long time before being written down (if, indeed, they ever were). We know
from modern examples how unreliable eyewitness reports can be, yet they are
the most direct source of information about historical events.9

9 For a general discussion of the problems of oral tradition as historical

record, see Vansina, Oral Tradition as History.

The Second Stage: Oral Epic Poetry

If the events were appropriately heroic, these reports quickly found their way
into oral poems, heroic narratives that idealized the events and their
participants. This oral poetry represents die second level of story formation.
The period of oral transmission is in many ways the most important part of the
history of heroic legends. It is in the form of oral epic poetry that historical
events combined with traditional heroic patterns to form die stories we would
recognize as the Nibelung and Dietrich legends. During the period up to about
1050—1100 the stories were transmitted in the alliterative verse-form we find
in virtually all Germanic languages. This form will be described in more detail
in the chapter on oral transmission.
Heroic poetry in this verse form was composed by aristocratic singers among
the warriors in the small warrior bands known in modern English only through
their Latin designation comitatus. The comitatus consisted of warriors bound
by personal loyalty to a war leader. We have a remarkable literary depiction of
life within the comitatus in the scenes at Hrothgar’s court in Beowulf. The
passages are too long to quote here, but we find the warriors surrounding their
leader, the lady of the hall passing among diem witii refreshment, and the scop,
or singer of tales, regaling diem widi stories from dieir heroic past. These tales
have the double function of keeping the deeds of past warriors alive and of
providing illustrations of exemplary behavior for the living warriors.
An important point of contention within the study of Germanic heroic
tradition is the question of die stability of die text. We know from comparative
studies that the contents of heroic songs are tighdy bound by tradition. No
singer would dare knowingly change die major events of a story from the past,
but each performance is not so much a repetition of all past performances as it
is a recreation. The poems exist in a tension between tradition and the
exigencies of living composition. Each singer has a wide repertoire of
stereotyped scenes, secondary figures, descriptions, and so on that can find
their way into virtually any heroic song. The language is also formulaic. There
is scarcely a verse that does not have coundess parallels elsewhere within the
song or within the wider tradition. The combination of formulaic language and
type-scenes allows singers to produce narratives of considerable breadth
widiout memorizing them word for word. This mode of performance, half
tradition-bound and half improvised, is almost certainly the way our heroic
stories were passed down from generation to generation.10

10 The best description of the operation of an oral epic tradition remains Lord,

The Singer of Tales.

The use of formulaic and type-scene elements in die transmission of these

stories meant that they all tended toward the typical. Only the most powerful
images could survive the decades of oral performance without becoming
another typical motif or type-scene. Siegfried’s deadi by a spear in the back is
variously set in the woods by a spring and in the hero’s bed, but the very
specific element of a spear through the back remains through all versions. At
the same time Siegfried appears as a medieval knight in the Nibelungenlied and
as a Norse warrior in the Volsungasaga and the poems of the Edda. We shall
have occasion to refer to the leveling that takes place in all traditional narrative
as we look at specific texts derived from the oral tradition.

The Third Stage: Medieval Literature

The third stage of our stories is die artistic formation of the orally transmitted
legends into the works of medieval literature we know. Although all these
works represent a reception of an oral tradition, they also represent the more or
less effective reshaping efforts of a literary artist. Without question, the greatest
of these was the anonymous Nibelungenlied poet of thirteenth-century Bavaria.
His poem deals with dioroughly contemporary social and political concerns
having to do with the transformation of chivalry and the legitimacy of dynastic
power as much as it does with the ancient stories of the murder of Siegfried and
the fall of the Burgundians. No other literary work derived from Germanic
heroic legend composed in the High Middle Ages can match die artistic power
of the Nibelungenlied\ but all literary treatments of heroic materials transform
their oral- traditional sources in an attempt to make them worthy of being
preserved on parchment. The compiler of die Pidrekssaga, for example,
arranges his materials in such a way as to produce a monkish world history in
which a heroic paradise is destroyed by die pernicious desire for women.
Aldiough it is not always clear what the motivation for a specific re-formation
of legend is, it is doubtful that any medieval collector of ancient stories had the
kind of antiquarian interest we feel when approaching these legends today.

LITERATURE CITED AND FURTHER READING

The Nibelungenlied. Tr. Arthur T. Hatto. Baltimore: Penguin, 1965. The most
accessible English translation.
Poems of the Elder Edda. Tr. Patricia Terry. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
The Saga o/Thidrek of Bern. Tr. Edward R Haymes. New York: Garland, 1988.
Campbell, Joseph. Hero With a Thousand Faces. Cleveland: World, 1956.
Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Hoffmann, Werner. Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung.. Berlin: Schmidt, 1974.
Excellent introduction to all Middle High German heroic poetry. Extensive
bibliography.
James, Edward. The Franks. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1988.
Lord, Albert Bates. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1960. The essential primary source for the theory of oral formulaic
composition.
Tacitus, Cornelius. The Agricola and the Germania. Tr. H. Mattingly and S. A.
Handford. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970.
Taylor, Archer. “The Biographical Pattern in Traditional Narrative.” JFI1
(1964): 121-129.
Todd, Malcolm. The Early Germans. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992.
Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1985.
Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Tr. Thomas J. Dunlap. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
CHAPTER 2

Historical Background

Many events and details of the Germanic legends treated in this book have their
roots in historical events. These events are no longer easy to reconstruct, since
the historical sources from late antiquity are scarce and contradictory.1 The main
historical events we need to consider take place during the period of “barbarian”
invasions of the Roman Empire from die fourdi to the sixth century. In this
chapter we shall consider them in a roughly chronological sequence.

1 A critical overview of the most important sources can be found in Goffart.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH CENTURIES

In the year 476 the last “Roman” emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed.
This relatively unimportant event has provided historians with a convenient date
for the “Fall of the Roman Empire.” (This simplification also ignores the fact
that the “Roman Empire” continued in Constantinople for another thousand
years.) The decline of the Western Roman Empire was, however, scarcely
something that could be observed in the day-to-day life of most of the people
involved. The city dwellers carried on their businesses and trades, and the
numerous landholders and their farmworkers tried to provide enough for their
own needs and for the taxes levied by die cities. The ordinary people paid litde
attention to who was ruling them, since diey had no say in the matter. They were
primarily interested in survival and avoiding being plundered. Any leader who
could offer protection against marauding armies would be welcome. This helps
to explain the success of many of the so-called barbarian kings, such as
Theoderic and Clovis, who were often generous with those they had conquered.
In addition, the conquest of a region did not usually involve much more than a
defeat of die defending army and a replacement of die military magnates in
charge. The greatest damage to die civilian population was generally done by
the army itself as it passed through a region, feeding itself on the stores the
locals had planned to use through the winter and picking up any gold, silver, or
glass trinkets that might strike dieir fancy.
The Germanic invaders remained a minority of die population as a whole,
and, although they left dieir mark in many areas, their success did not really lead
to the establishment of Germanic states on the ground formerly occupied by the
Roman Empire. The invading “hordes” are reported to have numbered at most
50,000—100,000 people, while the established Roman population numbered in
the millions. At the time of Theoderic’s rule over Italy, the general population
was a mixture of every people that had ever lived, fought, or been enslaved in
Italy, and the Ostrogodiic king made full use of die existing Roman bureaucracy.
He was, in fact, sent to Italy as an officer of the [Eastern] Emperor to return
Italy to Imperial rule. As late as the Carolingian period there was capital to be
made of a pretense that the Empire still existed and diat the Frankish king
Carolus Magnus (Charlemagne, r. 768—814) could be crowned in Rome as its
emperor in the year 800 and recognized as such by the Eastern Emperor
reigning at Constantinople.2 Germanic kings occupied the office of Roman
Emperor intermittendy until 1805.
The survival of Vulgar Latin as the major language in most of these areas is
an indication of die numerical proportions between the Germanic-speaking
Goths, Burgundians, Franks, or members of other, smaller groupings, such as
the Gepids on the one side and die local population on the other. The Germanic
languages contributed a few words, having mainly to do with war and with
political administration and a few place-names in the wide areas they ruled, but
by the eighth century Gothic, Lombard, and the other Germanic languages
spoken south of the Alps had completely disappeared. Only in those areas where
the Germanic population was numerically superior to the Latin-speaking
colonials do we find Germanic languages spoken. The linguistic border in the
eighth century was relatively close to where it is today, running through the
middle of Belgium, along the Vosges mountains of Alsace, and through the
Alpine valleys of today’s Switzerland and northern Italy.

2 Whether the gain was for Charlemagne or for the Church is still a matter of

debate. In many ways the Roman Church functioned as a "successor state" of

the Western Empire, and its use of the Imperial coronation as a device to
influence secular rulers is an important part of medieval history, but this
development is peripheral to the matters that concern us in this chapter.

The adoption and spread of Christianity throughout the Empire was also a
major factor in this period of history. The Council of Nicaea defined orthodox
Catholic Christianity in 325, making all those with doctrinal differences into
heretics. The strongest “heresy” in the regions concerning us here was that of
Arius (256?—336), who taught that Christ was created by God and was thus not
coeval with the deity as taught in the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. The vast
majority of Goths, Burgundians, and other Germanic invaders were at least
nominally Arian Christians by the time they entered Roman territory. The
tension between the Arianism of the invaders and the Catholicism of the Roman
population probably slowed the integration of the Germanic minorities into the
Roman majorities, but it did not prevent it. The adoption of Catholic
Christianity by the Frank king Clovis in 496 was a major factor in the success
both of the Roman Church and of the Frank kingdom.
The Empire was much weakened by the division into two parts, and the
armies of the barbarians often found themselves in the service of one half of the
Empire against the other. Hie period is one of great complexity, and it is not
necessary to recapitulate Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire here
in order to understand the historical events that gave rise to heroic legends.
Although there had been considerable jockeying for position in the Balkans
during the fourth century, the first successful invasion of Italy was by the
Visigoths under Alaric in die first decade of the fifth century. This climaxed in
the “Sack of Rome” in 409-410. Alaric’s deadi in 410 robbed the movement of
its momentum, and die Visigoths reoriented their attention to what is now
Southern France and Spain. They established a kingdom in Toulouse that lasted
a few decades and later established a kingdom in Spain that lasted until the
Muslim invasion in the early eighth century.
The invasion of die Empire by a confederation of barbarians dominated by
the Huns under Attila was brought to a stop in the battie of Chalons in 451. The
connections between the Huns and the Goths is a matter of considerable
controversy. The next few decades saw the end of the Western Empire
mentioned above and the installation of a Germanic king, Odoacer, in Italy.
The Ostrogoths under Theoderic were sent by the Eastern Emperor Zeno to
take the Italian kingdom of Odoacer in 493. After defeating and murdering
Odoacer, Theoderic established himself as king in Ravenna. He reigned very
successfully until his deadi in 526. His successors were unsuccessful in fighting
off attempts by Byzantium to retake Italy in the middle of the sixth century, and
the Ostrogothic kingdom was eventually destroyed.
The Lombards made use of the resulting power vacuum in 568 and invaded
Italy, establishing a kingdom that lasted until it was finally defeated by
Charlemagne and incorporated into the Carolingian kingdom of the Franks in
774. Although the Lombards play no identifiable role in the origination of the
surviving Nibelung and Dietrich legends, they may have played a role in its later
formation, transmission, and dissemination.3

3 The Lombard king Rothari was apparendy the source of the name of the
eponymous hero of the poem Konig Rother; discussed below, p.140, but there is
no appparent echo of the historical king in the poem's story. The bride winning
tale of an earlier Lombard king, Authari, may have been attached to Rothari to
provide the kernel of this story.

The Franks were a loose federation of Germanic warrior bands that gradually
coalesced into a group that could be unified by Clovis at the beginning of the
sixth century. Clovis and Theoderic were contemporaries and sometime rivals,
but they managed to maintain a balance of power diat prevented the Franks from
evicting the Goths from Soudiem Gaul and Italy.

ERMANARIC
Ermanaric was a king of the Ostrogoths during die second half of the fourth
century. Jordanes (see below, p. 25) reports that he extended the domain of the
Ostrogoths from the Black Sea to die Baltic before being defeated by the Huns.
He is important to heroic legend because a story that is told of him found its
way eventually into die Haw dismal of the Poetic Edda and die Volsungasaga.
Jordanes speaks of the “faithless tribe of die Rosomoni” who brought Ermanaric
to his end. The king had had a woman of this tribe ripped apart by horses
because of her husband’s “flight,” one assumes either desertion or a joining of
the other side. The brothers of the woman, Ammius and Sarus, attacked the king
and left him with a severe wound in the side. The Huns used die king’s
incapacity to attack and defeat die Ostrogoths. The king, “who could bear
neither the pain of his wound nor the defeat by die Huns,” died in his “110th
year.” Ammianus Marcelinus, who lived much closer in time to the events, does
not refer to the Rosomoni, but he describes Ermanaric’s deadi as a result of the
“horror of the impending dangers]. H]e put an end to his fear of these great
perils by a voluntary death.”4 Historians have suggested both suicide and ritual
regicide. Whatever his age, he probably died in 375. Beyond the cryptic
narrative in Jordanes, there is litde historical information from which to
construct a life of Ermanaric.
 4 Ammianus Marcelinus xxx. 3, 2

THE BURGUNDIANS ON THE RHINE

After several centuries of wandering from the Baltic to central Europe, an East
Germanic tribe known as die Burgundians established themselves in 413 as
foederati, or troops allied to die Romans, on the Rhine. It is possible that their
capital (if one can use such a word in this context) was Worms, but this is far
from certain. In 435 the Burgundians attempted to extend their influence into the
region of modem Belgium, where they were stopped by the Roman general
Aetius. The Burgundian army was then virtually destroyed in a batde with the
Huns in 436. All of the royal family were killed in this batde, in which 20,000
Burgundians are said to have fallen. After these events the tribe resumed its
wandering until the Romans setded them in the Savoy, the region we associate
today with the name Burgundy. Later Burgundian tradition speaks of kings
named Gundaharius, Gislaharius, Godomar, and Gibica. All of these names
appear in later versions of die Nibelung saga. Gundaharius is clearly
Gunther/Gumiar and Gislaharius is Giselher. Godomar may reappear as the
Norse Guttorm, and Gibica appears as Gibech/Gjuki, the father of die other
three in both Norse and German legend (die Nibelungenlied,, however, changes
his name to Dancrat). Virtually nothing more is known about the Burgundians
on the Rhine.

ATTILA
Attila5 is much better documented dian Ermanaric or die Burgundians, but the
information about him is still sketchy. The Huns were an Asiatic nomadic folk
active in the region north of the Black Sea during the fourth century. They
subjugated the Ostrogoths under Ermanaric to a large extent around 375. Two
generations later, under Attila, they swept through what is now Austria and
southern Germany until they met Aetius at the batde of the Catalaunian Fields
(Chalon) in 451. The batde was inconclusive, but the Huns were stopped in their
westward surge. Until the death of Attila (453) the Huns played an important
role in the military politics of the northern reaches of the Roman Empire.
Attila had been dead for almost a century when Jordanes penned his famous
description of the Hun leader in 551, but it is die oldest physical description we
have. It is possible that the description derives from Priscus, who did see Attila
face to face. Jordanes is known to have used his history as a source and this
description may have been in the portions that have otherwise been lost.6
He was a man bom to shake the races of die world, a terror to all lands, who in some way or other
frightened everyone by the dread report noised abroad about him, for he was haughty in his
carriage, casting his eyes about him on all sides so that die proud man’s power was to be seen in
the very movements of his body. A lover of war, he was personally restrained in action, most
impressive in counsel, gracious to suppliants, and generous to those to whom he had once given
his trust. He was short of stature with a broad chest, massive head, and small eyes. His beard was
diin and sprinkled with grey, his nose flat, and his complexion swarthy, showing thus the signs of
his origins.7

This description is not entirely negative, and it probably reflects the

ambivalent attitude of Attila’s Germanic neighbors and sometime allies. He was
both feared and respected by Germanic and Roman opponents, and he could be
a valuable ally. There were positive and negative characteristics enough to feed
one-sided portrayals of his career on both sides.

5 This name should be emphasized on the first syllable, but most English

speakers accent the second and make it rhyme with villa.

6 Cf. “Einleitungf’ in Jordanis Gotengeschichte, tr. Wilhelm Martens (Essen:
Phaidon, 1986), 11.
7 Quoted in Gordon, The Age efAttila, 61.

Attila does not seem to have been involved in the defeat of the Burgundians
described above, but the presence of Huns in the opposing army would have
been enough to associate him with the defeat in die popular mind. In all
medieval literary versions of die fall of die Burgundians, Attila plays the role of
opponent to Gunther and his brothers.
The one event in Attila’s life diat did find its way into the heroic tradition was
his death. Jordanes reports diat Attila died of a hemorrhage (probably nothing
worse than a serious nosebleed from which he could have drowned) during his
bridal night widi a young Germanic woman named Ildico. When his attendants
broke into the bridal chamber the next day, they found their leader dead in a
pool of blood and die woman weeping. Very soon die story was abroad that the
woman had killed Attila as vengeance for kinsmen.

THEODERIC THE GREAT

After Attila’s death die Huns soon ceased to be a major force in Europe. The
Ostrogoths, who had been subjugated by and allied widi die Huns, began to
establish their power in die lower Danube region near die Black Sea. One of
three brothers who led diis resurgence was Thiudirner, whose son, Theoderic,8
grew up as a hostage at die imperial court in Constantinople. We can assume
that he enjoyed the best education of his time and that he was as comfortable in
the Roman civilization of late antiquity as he was among his Gothic
countrymen. When he reached his majority, Theoderic assumed an important
role in the Ostrogothic army. After defeating his major rival for power in the
region, a man also named Theoderic (who is differentiated by being called
Theoderic Strabo, “the Squinter”), Theoderic led his armies against Odoacer9 in
Northern Italy. He was sent on this mission by the emperor Zeno with the idea
of returning Italy to Imperial control. He defeated Odoacer and subsequendy
murdered him with his own hands10. From 493 on he was undisputed king in
Italy and over a wide region including eventually even die Visigodiic kingdom
in Southwestern Gaul and Spain. There is considerable evidence that his reign
was one of the more bearable periods for the civilian population of the region
during the centuries following the fall of the Western Empire. Shordy before his
death in 526, Theoderic was misled by slanders to imprison and eventually
execute the philosopher Boethius (who wrote his Consolation of Philosophy in
prison) and Boethius’s fadier-in-law, Symmachus. He also had Pope John I
imprisoned for failing to carry out a mission to his satisfaction. The Pope died
while in prison, so his death was also blamed on Theoderic. The murders of
Odoacer at the beginning of his reign and of Boethius at the end have left a
somewhat bloodthirsty image of a man who was among the more capable rulers
during an era that was otherwise sadly lacking in good leadership.
Theoderic’s reputation was further blackened for succeeding generations by
his adherence to what had become the religion of the Goths, the Arian heresy.
Orthodox Roman Catholicism saw the Gothic adherence to this sect as one more
piece of evidence that they were barbarians and beyond the pale of civilization.
Most of our historical material from die period comes from the pens of Catholic
historians who were opposed to the Goths because of their heresy. The major
exception is the Getica by Jordanes, a Goth of die later sixth century. He was an
orthodox Catholic, but his sympathies are generally with his people. This book
will be discussed in the next chapter.
At the same time a clerical tradition against Theoderic was being established,
the oral tradition of heroic poetry spread an entirely different image of the
Ostrogothic king. In die poetic versions Odoacer became a usurper who had
forced Theoderic into exile and die conquest became a reconquest of lands
legally his. Eventually Odoacer11 was replaced in the story by Ermanaric, a king
who presumably had a much more unsavory reputation in the oral tradition, and
the legend of Theoderic gradually became the story we know from the later
Middle Ages.

8 Many history books in English spell this name Theodoric, presumably under
the influence of the Greek-derived name Theodore. There is no connection
between the two names, and the spelling used here reflects that of the Latin
sources, which usually Latinize the name as Theodencus. The name should
actually be stressed on the initial -e- rather than the following -o-, but, as in the
case of Attila, this is probably too much to hope for.
9 Also spelled Odovacer. He was a member of another East Germanic tribe,
the Scin, and had been set up as king of Italy after the last Roman emperor,
Augustulus, was deposed in 476.
10 The scene is narrated in gory detail by John of Antioch. See the translation

in Gordon, The Age of Attila, 182f.

11 The early ninth-century Hildebrandsbedthe sole Old High German relic of
heroic epic, still speaks of "Otachre" as Dietrich's opponent.

BRUNHILD
The Merovingian Franks maintained a custom of dividing a king’s holdings
among his sons. After the uniting of the Franks under Clovis (r.482—511), the
large kingdom (extending over most of modern France and beyond) was divided
among his four sons. The youngest son of Clovis, Chlothar I, ruled over a united
Frankish kingdom after his brothers had died. Chlothar’s death in 561 led to a
renewed division into four parts, each ruled by one of Chlothar’s sons. The wars
and treacheries within the family would carry us far beyond the scope of this
sketch. Two of the four kings, Chilperic and Sigibert, are the main figures in the
struggle that seems to have contributed to the Nibelung legend.
Chilperic held the smallest of die four kingdoms but was spurred by ambition
(and almost certainly by his concubine, and later wife, Fredegund) to scheme
against his brothers and to try by all means military and political to expand his
territory. Chilperic’s brother Sigibert sought and won the Visigothic princess
from Spain named Brunichildis, usually referred to in our histories as Brunhild.
Chilperic tried to match his brodier by seeking and marrying Brunhild’s sister
Galsuintha. Gregory of Tours reports that Fredegund had Galsuintha murdered
shordy after her arrival. Fredegund was, in any case, clearly back in charge of
matters at Chilperic’s court.
 Sigibert, for his part, was successful in strengthening his power and even
brought heathen Germanic troops from across the Rhine to attack Chilperic. At
the height of his military success, Sigibert was murdered, and Gregory of Tours
again blames Fredegund. When Sigibert’s older brother had died, his kingdom
had been divided among the remaining brothers. Sigibert, however, had a young
son named Childebert and the kingdom was passed on to him, much to the
chagrin of Chilperic and Fredegund, who had hoped to add Sigibert’s kingdom
to their own. When Childebert reached his majority, he ruled with the support
and advice of his mother, Brunhild. Chilperic died a few years later and
Fredegund managed to rule in his place. Shortly after her husband’s death she
revealed that she was pregnant with Chilperic’s child. He was named Chlothar II
and Fredegund later ruled as his regent. Many years after her death in 597,
Chlothar finally managed to capture Brunhild and have her drawn and quartered
(613). Brunhild must have been close to seventy at that time. Gregory of Tours
saw much of the political evil of his age as the result of Fredegund’s
machinations, and there is a good chance that he is right in many of the cases.
The two powerful women, Fredegund and Brunhild, were certainly among the
most interesting figures of their age, and it would be indeed strange if their
deeds had not found their way into some kind of popular narrative.
Hie events of this period of Merovingian history provide at least one name
(Brunhild) and several examples of intra-family intrigue and violence that could
be incorporated into heroic legend. The name Sigibert is also the only ’sigi-’
name in a story that probably did influence the development of the legend, but it
would require a great deal of rearranging to make him into Siegfried. If,
however, the legend-makers switched Brunhild and Fredegund (as they seem to
have), the identification of Sigibert with Siegfried becomes somewhat less
problematic. The replacement of Odoacer with die totally unrelated Ermanaric
in the Dietrich legend demonstrates how easily figures can change places in
legends.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Ammianus MarcelHnus. Tr. John G. Rolfe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1938.
Bachrach, Bernard S. “The Hun Army at the Battle of Chalons” (451): An Essay
in Military
Demography Ethnogenese und Ubertieferung: Angewandte Methoden der
Fruhmittelalterforschung.
Ed Karl Brunner and Brigitte Merta. Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1994. 59-67.
Brady, Caroline. The Legends of Ermanaric. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1943. Burns, Thomas S. A History of the Ostrogoths. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1984.
Goffart, Walter. The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550-800): Jordanes,
Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988.
Gordon, C. D. The Age of Attila: Fifth Century Byzantium and the Barbarians.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960.
James, Edward. The Franks. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1988.
Musset, Lucien. The Germanic Invasions: The Making of Europe AD 400-600.
Tr. Edward James and Columba James. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1975.
Todd, Malcolm. The Early Germans. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992.
Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Tr. Thomas J. Dunlap. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1988.
CHAPTER 3

Historical Sources

PRIMARY HISTORICAL SOURCES

In this chapter only a selection of those historical sources that touch on our
subject matter will be described. The term “historical sources” refers to
documents that were understood by their authors to be histories. This is not the
place to go into questions of historiography, but the writing of history consisted
then as now of collecting information about the past. Written information was
generally given precedence, but we must keep in mind that ancient and medieval
historians often considered oral tradition, including not only narrative reports,
but also poetically formed material, to be a reliable source for information.
Scholars have discovered more than one “heroic lay” hidden in the Latin prose
of these texts.1

Lex Burgundionum
During the reign of Theoderic die Great the Burgundians were led by a king
named Gundobad. One of his contributions was the first book of laws for the
people, which would be of litde interest to us if this book had not contained the
names of some of the kings who preceded him. These names are given in the
forms Gibica, Godomar; Gislaharius, and Gundaharius. All of these names
appear in one form or another in numerous versions of the Nibelung legend. See
the Glossary of Names under Gibech, Guttorm, Giselher, and Gunther.

Jordanes
Cassiodorus was a high official in the government of Theoderic the Great, and
his history of the Godis would presumably have been a great treasure of
Germanic history if it had survived. Jordanes, a Goth at the court in
Constantinople, wrote his own history of the Goths based on Cassiodorus’s
work, which he claims to have had in his possession for only three days. He
must have had a very good memory to be able to reconstruct as much as he did,
but it remains an unreliable text.2 It is, however, die only source we have for
many events in Gothic history, such as die story of Ermanaric’s difficulties with
the Rosomoni. Jordanes’s Getica, as it is called in Latin, was composed in 551.

1 See, for example, Andersson, Preface, 7.

2 Just how unreliable is a matter of great contention. See Goffart for a
discussion of the contention and a realistic assessment of Jordanes’s reliability
as a source for Cassiodorus. Many writers continue to quote Jordanes as if they
were dealing with Cassiodorus. See Theodore M. Andersson, “Cassiodorus and
the Gothic Legend of Ermanaric,” Euphorion 57 (1963): 28-43.

Gregory the Great

Pope Gregory I wrote a number of Dialogues in the years 592—594. One of
these retells an incident that had been passed on to an acquaintance over several
generations. The original narrator had been an official who had been sent with
others to Sicily to collect taxes. On the island Lipari they were told that King
Theoderic was dead. A hermit told diem what he had seen the day before:
“Yesterday at the nindi hour he was led here without belt or shoes and with
bound hands between Pope John and the patrician Symmachus and thrown into
the crater of the volcano nearby.” The travelers noted the date and discovered
that it was precisely the death-day of die king.
The transmission of this story is probably typical of much oral tradition in a
period of limited literacy and even more limited availability of expensive
writing materials. Pope Gregory was told the story by a certain Julian, who was
an official of the Roman Church and who had died seven years before the
incident was written down. Julian had heard the incident from the fadier of his
father-in- law, who had been the tax official in the story. Most such
transmission is not so well documented. A recent study,3 however, has cast the
authorship of the Dialogi into question, so that the well-established provenance
of this story might be only a fable itself.

Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours (c. 539—594) became bishop of Tours in 573 during the reign
of King Sigibert. He wrote numerous works of Church history, and his Ten
Books of History, widely known as the History of the Franks, is the richest
source of information about the first century of Merovingian Gaul. He had a
powerful ecclesiastical bias against die violent and treacherous world around
him, and he praised Guntram as the one king of the Franks who stayed above
most of the feuding between the houses of Chilperic and Sigibert. He attributes
saintlike qualities to the king and tells of miracles brought about by the king
while he was still alive.
For the period after Gregory’s deadi we are dependent on a chronicler whom
later historians called Fredegar. ’Tredegar” assembled materials from several
different sources to make up a history of die world. He began his history of the
Franks with a summary of Gregory and then continues the history from the last
decade of the sixth century on.4 His chronicle is the major source for the last
days of Fredegund and Brunhild as well as the so-called Gesta Theoderici.

3 Clark, who also cites the questionable theology of the scene, which
interprets the volcano as the actual mouth of Hell, 645—646.
4 The portion of Tredegar” that functions as a continuation of Gregory is

contained in Wallace-Hadnll.

Gesta Theoderici
A fascinating glimpse of the early development of a legendary history of
Theoderic is provided in die life of the Gothic king included in Fredega/s
chronicle.5 This text was incorporated in revised and expanded versions in later
writers’ histories, so that we have three texts that vary strongly from one
another but are clearly versions of the same history. Since this text is not well
known and is unavailable in German or English translation, we are including a
more extensive synopsis of this interesting document than of some others.6
The childless patrician couple Idatius and Eugenia have two servants from Macedonia,
Theudorus and Lilia. They are in love, and when a child arrives they are allowed to wed. Lilia is
supposed to tell her dream of the first night. She dreams diat a tree grows from her and that it is
so large that it touches die clouds. Her husband commands her to tell die dream differendy: she
should say she had seen a stallion and a mare, both of great beauty, and a foal followed them.
A son is born. He is named Theoderic [Theudericus in original] and is
adopted by die patrician couple, who raise him lovingly.
After the death of the patrician couple, Theoderic is given military
training by Emperor Leo. He is very popular with die Emperor and with
the Senators.
Finally, however, envy arises. The Senators seek a way to get rid of him
through a command of die Emperor. Only Ptolomaeus remains a true
 friend who protects him. The Godis attack Rome, but then bow to Leo’s
command. The Romans and the Goths ask the Emperor for help against the
continual attacks by Odoacer and others. Leo sends Theoderic to Rome,
where he becomes patricius.

5 This text is unfortunately not in the portions translated by Wallace-Hadnll.

It is available in the German translation of the entire work on 50—67.
6 This synopsis of TredegarY’ version is translated directly from Roswitha
Wisniewski, Mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichdichtung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), 61
—64.

During the battles with Odoacer, Theoderic has to flee. His mother appears to
him and calls on his courage because diere is no escape. He batdes, defeats,
pursues, and kills Odoacer.
His enemies spread die word in Constantinople that he wishes to take over
the Western Empire as king. Emperor Leo commands Theoderic to come. He
comes widi 12,000 Godis. The Senate plans to separate him from his men and
kill him as soon as he enters the palace. Theoderic’s friend Ptolomaeus warns
him of the ambush. Instead pf killing him, they decide to take him captive and
report back to the Gothic camp that he has fallen in disfavor and deserves death.
The Goths are supposed to determine whether he is to be beheaded or thrown to
die wild beasts. Before this, however, Ptolomaeus had sent a boy widi the
message for the Goths to take the senators captive and use them to force the
release of Theoderic. This is done with the four senators. Theoderic is freed and
returns to Italy. There he fights with Avars and Huns.
One night Theoderic goes out of his camp with four men and encounters the
Avar Xerxes. Theoderic commands his men to take him captive since he is
alone. Xerxes, however, is able to kill all of Theoderic’s men by feigning flight.
Then Theoderic fights with him and takes him captive. He tries to win him over
to his side but Xerxes refuses. Threats accomplish nothing. Theoderic frees him
and he swims across the Danube. When he arrives on the other shore, he
declares that he will now voluntarily follow Theoderic. He becomes
Theoderic’s best protector.
Renewed calumny causes Emperor Leo to command Theoderic to return to
Constantinople. A boy is sent to Ptolomaeus, who—prevented by an oath from
warning Theoderic outright—tells a fable: When the lion was elected king, die
hart appeared to honor him. The lion seized the harts anders in order to capture
and devour him. The hart fled, leaving the anders behind. The fox was sent out
to invite die hart to come back. He did so and was devoured by the lion. The
fox managed to steal the hart’s heart, which the lion particularly desired. Asked
if he had stolen the heart, the fox said that the hart would not have returned if he
had had one. Theoderic recognizes die sense of the fable and returns to Italy.
For forty years Theoderic rules in Italy over a kingdom that stretches from
Pannonia to the Rhone and from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Piedmontese Alps
and Isere.
Alarich, the Visigothic king, and Clovis, the Frank king, are at war. At a
peace conference the Gothic emissaries carry daggers instead of staves. The
negotiations are broken off and Theoderic is supposed to bring about a peaceful
settlement. He gives a solution that he is certain will not bring peace: a rider
should be covered in gold up to the point of his lance. Alarich has no gold.
Clovis defeats and kills Alarich and extends the Frank kingdom over Alarich’s
kingdom.
Theoderic condemns the innocent Pope Johannes to death and has the patrician Symmachus
killed, also for no reason. Because of these crimes divine retribution strikes him and he is killed
by his brother Geiserich. In the dialogues of St. Gregory it is told how Pope John and
Symmachus lead die defeated Theoderic bound into a volcano in Sicily.

Although ’Tredegar’s” version of this text comes from only a little over a
century after Theoderic’s death, we can see clearly the working of traditional
narrative patterns in restructuring the historical facts. This story may contain the
germ of the exile story in the events leading up to the death of Odoacer. This is
a valuable glance into the development of heroic legend at a point early enough
in the process to retain many elements of historical fact.

MEDIEVAL CHRONICLES
As has already been noted, written sources are not the major carriers of heroic
narrative through the Middle Ages, but diere is a continuous interaction between
various Latin (and vernacular) chronicles and contemporary orality. Some
chroniclers criticize the oral narratives for their “historical” inaccuracy, while
others attempt to integrate what they know of legendary history into the
framework provided by such written sources as Jordanes. We have no way of
knowing to what extent written chronicles influenced the course of oral tradition
itself, but most literary works that make use of oral legend seem blissfully
unaware of the criticism leveled at them in contemporary Latin chronicles or of
the corrections they apply to the stories they are using. The chronicles
themselves form a continuous tradition, each one adapting the material of
several of its predecessors so that it is often difficult to tell what part of a
chronicle is new and what part is from another source. The following examples
are only selected stations in this tradition.

Quedlinburg Annals
The eleventh-century annals of Quedlinburg (a small city in Saxony-Anhalt
about 45 miles northwest of Halle) survive only in a sixteenth-century copy.
There is much debate about how much is original and how much is later
interpolation. Most of the entries are in short sentences or even sentence
fragments, so that it will probably remain impossible to determine finally what
belonged to the original document, but recent research has restored much of
what was earlier thought to be interpolated. Not only is it difficult to isolate
genuine eleventh- century material from later interpolations, but the original
text itself represents a compilation from many sources, including Bede’s world
chronicle.
The Annates quedlinburgensis remain valuable for our purposes because they
form the earliest surviving chronicle to show extensive influence from the oral
tradition that led to the vernacular literary works of the thirteenth century.
The relatively brief passages involved are easier to quote in translation than
to summarize:
[...] After the death of Bleda, his brother Attila devastated almost all of Gaul until, as promised
by God, the patrician Egidius [Aetius] and Thurismod, Gothic prince from Rennes [Toulouse?],
drove him to flight. At that time Ermanric ruled over all the Goths; he was most skillful in fraud
and most liberal in gifts. After the death of his only son, Frideric, by his own will, he hanged his
nephews Embrica and Frida. In the same way—incited by his nephew Odoacer—he drove his
nephew Theoderic out of Verona and into exile with Attila. The patrician Aetius, savior of the
people in the East and terror to King Attila, was killed by Valentinian the younger. With him the
kingdom in the West fell and it has up to now not been able to be reinstated. [. . .]
Zeno ruled seventeen years. Odoacer, king of the Godis, took Rome.
Anastasius ruled twenty-seven years. Bishop Fulgentius is proclaimed.
The killing of Ermanric, the king of the Goths, by the brothers Hamidus,
Serla, and Adacarus, whose father [Ermanric] had killed, cutting off his
arms and legs in a foul manner, as was fitting. Theoderic, called the
Amlung because his ancestor was called Amul, was judged the most
powerful of the Godis. And this was Thideric of Bern, about whom the
rustics once sang. Theoderic returned to die dirone of die Goths with the
help of King Attila and forced his cousin Odoacer out of Ravenna.
Through the intervention of Attila, Odoacer was not killed but exiled. He
was given a small holding near the confluence of the Albia [Elbe] and the
 Sala [Saale]. [. . .]
When Justinus had ruled nine years, Theoderic reigned over Rome,
where he held the holy pontiff of the Romans John in prison in Ravenna
until he died; he also killed the most illustrious consuls Symmachus and
Boetius[sic]. The same Theoderic in truth died suddenly ninety-eight days
after the death of Pope John; his grandson Athalric succeeded to his
dirone.
[There follows here a long story about the Thuringian king Irminfrid,
after which we are told about Attila’s death.]
Attila, king of the Huns and the terror of all Europe, was killed with a
small knife by a certain girl, whom he had taken forcibly from her
unfortunate father.

This chronicle brings Attila, Theoderic, Ermanaric, and even Odoacer

together into one generation, clearly reflecting the chronology of legend. Attila
is given an extremely long life so that all events of heroic legend take place
within his lifetime.
The sentence in which we are told that Theoderic was the Dietrich of Bern,
about whom the rustici once sang is often thought to be a late interpolation
under the influence of the early fifteendi-century chronicle (in German) by
Jakob Twinger von Konigshofen, a member of a prominent Strasbourg family.
Twinger’s chronicle speaks of “Dietrich of Bern, about whom the peasants sing
and tell so much.” It would be easy to imagine how the phrase could have found
its way into the manuscript tradition of the Quedlinburg Annals, but it should be
mentioned diat Twinger’s chronicle draws on many sources, some of which
drew ultimately on the Quedlinburg Annals as their sources. The source and age
of the remark will never be resolved beyond doubt unless an early manuscript
of the Quedlinburg Annals turns up. It is important here because it is one of the
few references to the performance of Dietrich poems outside of the stories
themselves.
A secondary problem is the appearance of both Odoacer and Ermanaric in the
same narrative. Ermanaric has not yet clearly occupied the position of
Dietrich’s nemesis, but he is shown as a cruel ruler in the brief references to the
killing of his son, Frideric, and the hanging of his nephews. He is also
responsible for the expulsion of Dietrich from his lands in a sentence in which
Odoacer appears as the evil advisor. The exile of Odoacer is unique to this
source and seems to be there to link the stories to the geographical areas near
Quedlinburg. This also seems to be die reason for the extensive interpolation
about the Thuringian king Irminfrid.
Frutolf von Michelsberg
Frutolf was a priest at the monastery of Michelsberg in Bamberg. He died in
1103. His chronicle, which was widely read and copied in the later Middle
Ages, draws on chronicle texts available to him (including some form of the
Quedlinburg Annals), early histories (Jordanes, Gregory), and heroic legend,
presumably received direcdy from oral tradition. He was disturbed by the
problems of chronology that arose when the reports of Jordanes were placed
alongside those of later chronicles and the “facts” of heroic legend. He realized
that Ermanaric, Attila, and Theoderic could not possibly have been
contemporaries but suggests that it was possible that other men bearing the
same name as the historical figures could have lived at the time of Attila.
Beyond pointing out the chronological problems he makes no attempt to
harmonize the reports or to take sides in deciding who was right or wrong.
Frutolf is also responsible for introducing die story of Theoderic’s end related
by Gregory the Great (in which Theoderic is ushered into the mouth of a
volcano by Pope John and Symmachus) into medieval German chronicle
tradition.

Kaiserchronik
An anonymous German verse chronicle composed in Regensburg shortly after
1147, the Kaiserchronik is the first vernacular chronicle to tell a version of
Dietrich’s life. The author accepts the suggestions first put forward by Frutolf
that another man named Dietrich had been a contemporary of Attila. The two
Dietrichs are differentiated by calling the invented figure “old Dietrich.”
The account begins widi “Old Dietrich’s” refusal to pay tribute to Attila, who is later said to have
“drowned in his own blood.” “Old Dietrich’s” son is Dietmar, who defeats Attila’s sons when
they demand tribute from him. Later Dietmar’s son Dietrich is given as hostage to the emperor
Zeno as part of a peace settlement. We are told that he later took up the emperor’s standard and
forced many lands to pay him tribute.
The story then turns to Aetius. After an unreasonable demand on the part of the empress that he
come and pluck wool with her handmaidens, Aetius turns to Styria, where he meets with
Odoacer, whom he invites to come and rule Rome in defiance of Zeno. Odoacer advances to
Rome, where he receives the crown. Zeno accepts Dietrich’s offer to go and set things right.
Dietrich assembles an army from all over the known world (from Russia to Africa), and it is said
that except for Julius Caesar no one had ever assembled such an army, which is reported to have
numbered 200,000 men. Aetius leads the Romans, and the two armies meet before Ravenna,
where Dietrich soon beheads Aetius in batde. Dietrich besieges Odoacer in Ravenna until the
latter challenges him to single combat, in spite of the fact that Dietrich is not legitimately born.
Dietrich defeats him and takes the throne over Italy. Boethius and Seneca (Symmachus) and Pope
John complain to Zeno that it is improper that an illegitimately bom man should rule over Italy.
 Dietrich has John imprisoned in Pavia, where he starves to death. He is avenged when Pope John
commands devils to carry Dietrich to die mountain Vulcan.
The account closes with diis swipe at die legendary tradition: “Whoever maintains that Dietrich
ever saw Etzel, let him look into the book and see that it was forty-diree years after Etzel was
buried in Ofen before Dietrich was bom. He was raised in Greece, where he also achieved his
knighthood, he was sent to Rome, and was buried in Vulcan. Here the lies must have an end.”
(14176—14187)

The poet overshoots die mark with his forty-diree years, since it was only a
matter of a year or two between Attila’s deadi and Theoderic’s birth, but he
makes his point that the two were not contemporaries. Almost more important
than the facts themselves is the insistence on die primacy of written historical
records over the universally known Dietrich legends.
The Kaiserchronik differs from the Latin chronicles we have been
considering in its lively presentation of history. In place of dry sequences of
facts we find imagined dialogue carrying the most dramatic moments forward.
There are no set scenes in the passage under consideration, but the characters
break out into speeches reflecting their thoughts and course of action. The verse
is rough and the rhymes frequendy impure, as one would expect of a work
composed at that point in the development of German narrative verse.

Other High Medieval Historical Sources

Most late medieval chronicles base their treatment of Dietrich on one or more
of the earlier chronicles mentioned above. Frutolf is a major source for many
assemblers of chronicles, and his version—more or less influenced by heroic
legend—is probably the one most widely used. Additional elements are added
from various sources as time goes on. The Cologne Kings’ Chronicle, for
example, reports the appearance of a giant phantom 011 a black horse along the
banks of the Moselle who identified himself as Dietrich of Bern and warned of
calamities that would be visited on die Empire. This apparition was reported to
have taken place in 1197, some mondis before die death of the emperor Henry
VI, an event that plunged die Empire into several years of unrest.
Many later chronicles tell some version of die story of Dietrich’s being tossed
into a volcano, and most seem concerned to emphasize that he will never return.
The repeated emphasis on this point suggests that there was a widespread belief
that Dietrich would return at a time of great need. This motif is, of course,
attached elsewhere to Arthur, Charlemagne, and Barbarossa. The appearance of
a gigantic ghost of Dietrich in the Cologne Kings’ Chronicle mentioned above
may be related to this expectation.
The version of the Dietrich’s end we find in the Pidrekssaga (Dietrich is
carried away on the back of a mysterious black horse) leads naturally to his
association with the Wild Hunt. This legend is widespread in Europe, and
different historical and mythical figures are reported as the leader of the
nocturnal hunt. In late medieval sources Dietrich is repeatedly mentioned as its
leader.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Clark, Francis. The Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1987.
Includes Latin text of the Dialogi.
“Fredegar.” Die vier Bticher der Chroniken des sogenannten Fredegar. Tr.
Andreas Kusternigg. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982.
Goffart, Walter. The Narrators of Barbarian History (AD 550—800):]ordanes,
Gregory oJTours, Beds, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988.
St. Gregory the Great. Dialogues. Tr. Odo John Zimmerman. New York: Fathers
of the Church, 1959. A sometimes free translation. The passage concerning
Theoderic occurs on 228.
Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks. Tr. Lewis Thorpe. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin, 1974.
Grimm, Wilhelm Die deutsche Heldensage: Unter Hinufiigung der Nachtrage
von Karl Mullenhoff und Oskar Jdnicke aus der Zeitschrift jur deutsches
A.ltertum. Supplements by Karl Mullenhoff and Oskar Janicke. 4th ed.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957. Extensive collection of
material from chronicles and other medieval texts referring to heroic legend.
Contains the relevant passages of most of the texts under consideration in this
chapter.
Gschwantler, Otto. “Frutolf von Michelsberg und die Heldensage.”
Philologiscbe Untersuchungen gewidmet Elfriede Stutum 65. Geburtstag. Ed.
Alfred Ebenbauer. Vienna: Braumiiller, 1984. 196-211. Includes the Latin text
of the relevant passages of Frutolf s chronicle.
Gschwantler Die Heldensagen-Passagen in den Quedlinburger Annalen und in
der Wiirzburger
Chronik Unguistica et Philologica: Gedenkschriftfur Bjorn CoUinder. Eds. Otto
Gschwantler, Karoly Redei, and Hermann Reichert. Vienna: Braumiiller,
1984. 135—181. Includes the Latin text of the relevant passages from the
Quedlinburg Annals and the Wiirburg Chronicle.
Chronik. “Zeugnisse zur Dietrichsage in der Historiographie von 1100 bis gegen
 1350.” HH, 35—80. Overview of the treatment of the Dietrich legend in
medieval German chronicles.
Jordanes. The Gothic History ofjordanes in English Version. Tr. Charles
Christopher Mierow. 2d. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915.
Reprint. New York, 1960.
Kaiserchronik eines Regensburger Geistlichen. Ed. Edward Schroder. Hannover,
1892.
Stackmann, Karl. “Dietrich von Bern in der Kaiserchronik: Struktur als
Anweisung zur Deutung.” Idee, Gestalt, Geschicfrte: Festschriftfur Klaus Von
See. Ed. Gerd-Wolfgang Weber. Odense: Odense University Press, 1988. 137-
142.
CHAPTER 4

Oral Transmission

This chapter will consist almost entirely of supposition and extrapolation. The
oral transmission of Germanic heroic legend is entirely lost to us. We have a
number of written documents that may be fairly close in form and content to the
oral tradition, but we cannot be certain that any of them are literal transcriptions
of oral texts. They have all gone through some kind of recomposition or editing
on the part of the person who committed them to writing.
We are in something like the situation of paleontologists who reconstruct
ancient animals and plants from die fossil imprints left in sedimentary rock. And
like those scientists we can argue from die known to the unknown. The known
consists of a rich collection of written narratives, mainly from the thirteenth
century. These stories are connected by some kind of invisible cord to historical
events of the fourth and fifth centuries. It is this invisible cord that is so
fascinating. Theodore Andersson has remarked that “we know both too much
and too litde about the prototypes of die Nibelungenlied” (Preface, 105). We
know too much about the oral tradition leading up to the medieval epic to simply
leave it alone, and we know too litde to reconstruct the missing pieces with any
assurance of accuracy.
We do know a great deal more about the operation of oral poetic traditions
than the scholars who established the study of Germanic heroic poetry in the
nineteenth century. Before we speculate on the nature of the Germanic tradition,
we need to review briefly both the ideas that formed traditional thinking on the
subject and the evidence that has forced us to change the way we think about
oral poetry.

EPIC THEORY FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

One thing seemed clear to all scholars working on die problem of oral narrative
beginning in die late eighteendi century. The poems composed without the help
of writing had to be short, so that they could be memorized and passed on more
or less verbatim from one singer to another. Most theorists imagined a form of
composition rather like that used by writers in which die poet would compose
his work in private, writing it on his memory so to speak, and then present it as a
completed masterpiece to his public.
There is even evidence for this sort of composition in the Old Norse saga of
Egil Skallagrimsson. Egil was forced to compose a large poem in honor of his
captor, Eirik Bloodaxe, in order to save his life. He spent the night in seclusion
and was almost prevented from completing his task by die chirping of a
particularly persistent bird outside his window. Egil’s friend Arinbjorn
eventually drove the bird away and Egil was able to complete die composition
of his 144- line masterwork. Egil’s poem was not an example of traditional
heroic poetry, but rather of a specific kind of panegyric known today as skaldic
poetry. When we return to the question of traditional composition, we will see
how different oral epic narrative is from this kind of composition.
Early scholars had litde or no opportunity to experience oral epic in
performance. The closest thing to oral heroic epic available to most European
scholars before the beginning of the twentiedi century was the folk ballad. Since
the folk ballad was the property of lower classes, it was never seriously
considered as an exemplar of die kind of oral song that entertained medieval
kings and princes.
After establishing (logically rather dian empirically) that oral song lived only
in relatively short memorized lays, scholars were faced with the fact that most
early traditional poetry assumes the form of epic. The Homeric epics are the
oldest narrative texts in Greek, but they were much too long for oral
transmission according to die prevailing dieory. In 1795 Friedrich August Wolf
attempted to explain the development of the Homeric epics from shorter songs
through a process of agglutination. The singers learned each of the short songs,
and the epic was put togedier in writing by an editor who brought all of the
traditional songs togedier. This notion was applied by Karl Lachmann to the
Nibelungenlied in 1816 and formed die basis for the Uedertheorie that was
virtually dogma on the subject diroughout die nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. According to Lachmann the oral songs that made up the Nibelung
legend were strung together by an editor like pearls on a string to form the epic
poem we possess. The task of die scholar was to recognize the junctures
between the individual songs. Wolfs and Lachmann’s theory even inspired the
Finnish scholar Elias Lonnrot to assemble short songs from the oral heroic
tradition of his homeland into what is today considered the Finnish national
epic, the Kalevala.
Most scholars dealing with Germanic epic today consider the new
Uedertheorie developed by Andreas Heusler {Lied und Epos in germ ants cher
Sagendichtung, 1905) to have marked a revolution in die study of medieval
Germanic epic. Heusler based his work on the songs of die Poetic Edda and
came to the conclusion that (oral) heroic songs did not stand in the same relation
to (written) epics as pearls to a strand, but rather as saplings to a tree. According
to Heusler’s theory the short songs generally cover an entire story, and this story
was simply increased by the addition of detail and sub-plots to achieve what
Heusler called epic breadth. Lachmann saw die way from lay to epic as additive,
one lay added to the next without major change. Heusler saw the way as
expansive, each lay was expanded by die addition of detail and incident to make
up an epic. There is doubdess some truth in Heusler’s idea that the written epics
were expanded versions of the material told in oral songs, but it is still based
011 a profound ignorance of the nature of oral epic poetry.
In spite of major differences in emphasis, all of the scholarly dieories from
Wolf to Heusler1 had one important thing in common. They assumed that oral
poetry had to consist of short songs diat could be memorized. The
Hildebrandslied and the poems of the Poetic Edda seemed to provide perfect
examples. An additional point diat Heusler invariably made was that each of
these songs was the unique creative work of an individual poet. He held the idea
of poetry composed by “die people” in great contempt and held any concept of
collective audiorship to be “romantic.” Heusler’s use of this term as a pejorative
is ironic, because his idea of the individual creative artist in oral tradition is just
as much a product of romantic diinking as die idea of Volkspoesie. Empirical
studies of real oral epic have shown diat die oral poet is dependent bodi on the
collective tradition and on his own individual talents.

1 Heuslefs picture of the oral-traditional Germanic HeUenlied is still

influential. See Andersson, “Die Oral-Formulaic Poetry ini Germanischen,” and
Ebenbauer, “Heldenlied,” for contemporary examples of “Heuslensm.”
production of “correct” verse lines almost easy. Hie singers maintained that they
never changed a word in what they sang, but the recorded texts made it clear
that no two texts were identical. Parry and Lord observed that a fixed
memorized text was virtually an impossibility in this tradition.

ORAL POETRY
The early twentieth century began to see the application of more dian haphazard
observation to the question of living oral epic. Inspired by the Croatian folklorist
Matija Murko, the Homeric scholar Milman Parry and his assistant Albert B.
Lord made an extensive study of oral poetry in performance in mainly Muslim
areas of Yugoslavia beginning in the early 1930s. They recorded some 15,000
texts on phonograph records and were able to show diat songs of the breadth
and length of the Homeric epics could actually be produced by illiterate singers.
Such long songs were not typical of oral performance, but the special situation
of being able to record for as long as they wanted to without disturbance
allowed exceptional singers to produce epics of over 12,000 lines. Comparative
scholars have argued that die ancient or medieval situation of dictation might
have inspired poets to surpass their traditions and produce the large book-length
epics we know.
The most important realization to come out of these studies was that the songs
were not memorized word for word, but radier diat they were composed during
performance using a highly formulaic poetic language that made the production
of “correct” verse lines almost easy. Hie singers maintained diat they never
changed a word in what they sang, but die recorded texts made it clear that no
two texts were identical. Parry and Lord observed that a fixed memorized text
was virtually an impossibility in diis tradition.
There was also no “original” in our sense of an original work of art, and no
“correct” text from which others somehow deviated. There was certainly a first
performance of a new song on a given topic, but Lord observed that the first
performance was seldom a very good song. The story had to find its way
through countiess performances into a traditional pattern using traditional
motifs. Like the archetypes of Jung’s psychology, die tradition provides a
limited number of story patterns diat are dien given individual shape tiirough die
addition of specific elements from the historical event. The unique kernel of
historical fact is often difficult to recognize in die complex weave of traditional
song.
In place of die romantic notion that “the people” could somehow generate
poetry spontaneously, the new theory made it clear that oral poetry was the
product of individual singers working within a collective poetic tradition. The
songs were composed in performance using language, formulas, motifs, and
stories known to all singers. Hie singers were men2 who had been exposed to
the tradition from childhood on and who were somehow inspired to learn the art
for themselves. Lord’s famous study The Singer of Tales gives a complete
picture of this tradition ranging from the formal nature of die poetry itself to the
training and career of die individual singer. It is die basis for any study of oral
poetry, even if some details of his theory cannot be applied without adjustment
to other traditions. Hie Parry-Lord Theory, as it has come to be called, does not
say how extensive oral narrative poetry—oral epic—must exist, but it does show
how it can exist. If we find a widespread poetic tradition that exhibits the
formulaic language and other traditional features of oral-formulaic epic
composition, then the simplest, and therefore most likely, explanation is that the
texts draw on a common oral epic tradition of die kind described by Parry and
Lord.

2 In the South Slavic traditon the epic songs are the exclusive province of
male singers. There is a specific genre known as “women’s songs” that is lyric,
not epic, in nature.

The work of Parry and Lord emphasized oral composition in performance,

but Lord was also at great pains to emphasize the necessary conservatism of the
oral tradition. The individual singer might be able to add brilliance and detail to
a song, but he could not make sweeping changes in its content. Any changes
that took place in the substance of the songs as they were transmitted would
have to have been so gradual that neidier the singers nor die audience would be
aware of them. This helps to explain die astounding level of stability of die
stories as they spread through space and time.
After the flush of enthusiasm following the early publications using the “oral-
formulaic theory,” as it was called bodi by its proponents and its detractors,
there followed a period of sobering reconsideration during which some much-
needed adjustment of terminology took place. Lord and his closest associates
continued to equate “oral” witii “oral-formulaic” and used the term to describe
only the specific kind of oral epic discussed above. Ruth Finnegan and others
have been quick to point out that there are many different kinds of pre-literate
and thus “oral” poetry diat do not fall into diis category. Hie most usual contrast
to die semi-improvisational style of die Soutii Slavic oral epic is memorized
verse of the kind we find in medieval Scandinavia. This is die kind of
transmission the literary historians imagined in the first place, but it seems to be
a much later development in the Germanic languages dian diey had imagined.

GERMANIC ORAL NARRATIVE POETRY

In die introductory chapter we quoted a passage from Tacitus diat says diat
[oral] songs are the only form of history known to die Germani. We have no
way of knowing what that poetry was like, but we can put together a picture of
what was certainly a common Germanic poetic tradition in later centuries
(perhaps 700— 1100) from the bits and pieces we have from die Carolingian
period (c. 800) onward. Scraps of early inscriptions suggest that the verse form
had been relatively stable for some centuries before that.
During most of the period in question virtually all narrative poetry was in the
form of alliterative long-line verse of die kind we know best from its literary
adoption in Old English poetry. We find die same form in Old High German, in
Old Saxon, and—with some variations—in Old Norse poetry. A few lines from
the Old English Beowulf will serve to illustrate die form.

... Sigemunde gesprong

aefter deadi-daege dom unlytel,
syj)an wiges heard wynn acwealde, hordes hyrde.

Sigemund gained
after [his] death-day great [lit. unlittle] fame,
since the battle-hardened man killed the dragon,
the protector of the hoard.

In the first fall line of our excerpt die d of death-d&ge ties the first half-line
to the d of dom in the second. This poetic linking of die beginning of words is
called “alliteration.” The second full line alliterates on w. This form of “rhyme”
arises naturally within the Germanic languages, with their heavy stress on the
first syllable of most words. There are four heavy stresses in each long line, at
least two of which (one in each half-line) must carry alliterating syllables.
The presence of an identical verse form in Old English, Old Saxon, and Old
High German poetry makes it probable diat the alliterative long line we know
from the Old English Beowulf (MS. from c. 1000), the Old High German
Hildebrandslied (c. 800), and the Old Saxon Heliand (c. 840) was the standard
unit of Germanic narrative verse. The same line occurs with some variance and
grouped into stanzas in Old Norse heroic narrative, which was recorded in the
thirteenth century. Although very little of the material we have in this verse form
can be considered to be an unaltered representation of oral narrative in
performance, the surviving texts are built on a formulaic language, a use of
traditional motifs and type-scenes, and ancient traditional stories in a form
highly reminiscent of South Slavic oral song. These characteristics allow us to
make fairly confident statements about the shape and style of the oral tradition
that generated these elements, since it is highly unlikely that they would arise in
a purely written tradition of poetry.
The only text before the thirteendi century that completely fits into the range
of this book is the Old High German Hildebrandslied. This text will be
discussed in detail below, but it is important in die batde between what we can
call the old theory (short songs with fixed texts) and the new theory (longer
songs in an improvisational form—oral poetry). The length of the surviving
fragment (some sixty-four lines) would seem to let us identify it easily as a short
Heldenlied of the kind envisioned by both Lachmann and Heusler, but when we
look at the density of the narrative, we see that it is quite “loose,” full of
repetitions and other signs of an improvisational style3. It shows clearly die
form and style of German oral heroic poetry of the time. This text also locates
the legend of Dietrich in Germany, probably in the south, around the year 800.

3 The details of this argument are contained in Haymes, “Oral Poetry and the
Germanic Heldenlied.”

The Common Form

The poetic form described above is common to the earliest traces we have of
narrative verse in various Germanic languages. This form was adopted for
many purposes by the writers of Old English verse. We find heroic epic, elegy,
biblical narrative, saints’ lives, and many other genres using the same verse
form. The different genres also make extensive use of formulaic language and
even of formulaic diemes and type-scenes that could scarcely have originated
anywhere but in the native oral tradition. Hie Old English poetry we have in
writing is almost certainly the product of literary composition, i.e. composition
in writing, but its use of a language typical of oral poetry is powerful evidence
for the existence of traditional poetry in that form.
We find confirmation of this supposition when we look at the verse form
adopted by Old High German and Old Saxon writers on the Continent. The Old
High German Hildebrandslied is the most important text in this connection,
because it also represents heroic narrative in a form we can assume to be very
close to die oral original. The writings of Otfrid von Weissenburg (a ninth-
century cleric, who wrote a life of Christ in Old High German verse), however,
also make extensive use of die conventions of Germanic verse, although he
adds a primitive sort of end-rhyme to die verses and tends to neglect the
alliterative joining of half-lines as a result.
The Old Saxon Heliand, on die odier hand, adopts die native Germanic verse
form and its vocabulary almost widiout change to tell die story of Christ. Hie
same is true of die Old Saxon Genesis diat seems to be a source for an Old
English poem on the same subject.
A number of scholars have put up a spirited resistance to die use of oral-
formulaic theory to describe die Germanic heroic tradition. The most persuasive
of these Neo-Heuslerians is probably Theodore Andersson, who has published
several studies designed to show the irrelevance of die Parry-Lord theory to the
Germanic past. He argues diat the only work that shows the epic breadth we
would attribute to an oral-formulaic tradition is Beowulf and that all other texts
from the Germanic past fall into the category of short heroic lay. He admits the
presence of formulas and type-scenes but denies dieir relevance to the question
of oral-formulaic vs. memorized transmission. Many scholars have held fast to
the idea of short memorized heroic lays in die Heusler mode without seriously
confronting the questions raised by Heusler5s many critics, not all of whom
come from the oral-formulaic “camp,” but Andersson is virtually the only one
who has met the challenge of the oral theory head-on from a position of
orthodox Heuslerism.
Andersson explains die broad epic style of Beowulf and the Old English
biblical and hagiographic epic dirough the influence of Virgil and other
classical models, while maintaining diat die Hildebrandslied, Waldere,
Finnsburh, and the poems of the Poetic Edda represent a tradition of short
memorized lays of the kind postulated by Heusler.
Heusler did not limit himself to a discussion of the length and narrative
density of the Germanic Heldenlied. He also attempted to describe the esthetic
and generic nature of the lost poems. Hie songs used historical events as their
matter, but the poets extracted the tragic essence from historical events and
distilled them into concentrated works of art. According to this view, the heroic
songs focused on the tragic kernel of the story and presented the events in the
form of carefully structured scenes in which dialogue was the main element.
The songs were no longer carriers of history, but artistic formulations of
universal human conflict and tragedy.
With their focus on the “individual creative artist,” Heusler’s disciples must
have seen the oral-formulaic theory widi its emphasis on traditional
composition as a return to the romantic heresy of Volkspoesie the notion that the
people as a whole could somehow collectively generate poetry. In fact some
early oral- formulaic studies in medieval literature (such as Borghart) saw their
work as just such a return to the generation of the Brothers Grimm. This is not
the case at all. In fact Lord goes out of his way to show that the best songs are
the work of exceptionally gifted singers, whose work often changed the way a
song was transmitted by later generations. The individual poetic genius
imagined by the post-romantic generation of Heusler is still a part of the oral
tradition, but the individual contributions cannot be sorted out widi the
simplicity posited by Heusler.
 In spite of spirited opposition on the part of Neo-Heuslerians, it is difficult to
come to any other conclusion than diat the Germanic peoples of Western
Europe had a common tradition of oral-formulaic epic poetry during the period
from the fifth to the eleventh century using the verse form, language, and motifs
we find in the first written texts in Old English, Old High German, and Old
Saxon. It is highly probable that diis tradition was a continuation of the ancient
songs referred to by Tacitus in the first century, aldiough diis will probably
always remain an unprovable supposition.

The Development of the Middle High German Form

For some reason the individual traditions began to develop different traits at
about the same time as the languages made their shift from the early medieval
form (Old English, Old High German) to their high medieval form (Middle
English, Middle High German). Germany showed the earliest tendency toward
end-rhyme with the work of Otfrid von Weissenburg mentioned above. As eady
as the eleventh century we find evidence of what may have been end-rhymed
oral narrative poetry (Metzner, Balladendichtung). By die end of the twelfth
century end-rhymed stanzas had become the standard form of German heroic
epic. The form we find in the Nibelungenlied\ Alpharts Tod\ the Ortnit-
Wolfdietrich poems, and with some changes in the Kudrun and Kabenschlacht
is almost certainly the form in which heroic stories were narrated in the oral
tradition between c. 1150 and 1500. We still find the end-rhymed long lines
arranged as two-line ballad strophes in the Younger Hildebrandslied, Koninc
TLrmenrikes Dot, and the Hurnen Seyfrid\ all of which were apparendy first
written down in the fifteenth and in some cases even the sixteenth century. The
ballad strophe we observe here was in wide use throughout the Germanic world
and is still used in many English and American ballads today.
The great mystery of die German strophe is its development during the time
between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. We have no indication of how the
change to end-rhyme found its way into vernacular poetry outside of clerical
experiments such as diose of Otfrid. We do find diat virtually all German verse
after the middle of the eleventh century is rhymed, although the Latin
translation of the Tanked von Kolbigk is the closest thing to solid evidence of
rhymed long lines before the Nibelungenlied, and many would question its
value as proof of anything, since we only have the Latin translation and all
German versions are reconstructions.

The Special Case of Old Norse

German theorists of die Heusler school delight in dividing the transmission of
heroic legend into “bound” and “unbound” forms, by which diey normally
mean verse and prose. More recent work under the influence of die oral-poetry
theory has shown us diat verse is not always as “bound” as the Heuslerians
would have it and that prose narrative may be almost as restricted by tradition
and traditional form as verse. Medieval Scandinavia is the place where this can
be observed most clearly.
Old Norse developed two forms of oral verbal art that were virtually
unknown in the rest of Germania. The first of these was a tighdy organized
form of verse known as “skaldic” verse from the Old Norse word for poet,
“skald.”4 These verses were composed in stanzas in which virtually every
aspect of the text was determined by rules about the number of syllables,
internal rhyme, and so on. These poems were composed to praise great leaders,
usually kings and earls after significant events, and most of diem were quite
short. A large number survive only in individual stanzas while a few are of
considerable length. Egil’s famous drapa known as Hofudlausn (“Head
Ransom”) reaches die stately length of 144 lines. We have already mentioned
die famous narrative in Egilssaga Skallagrimssonar of die composition of diis
poem. The tight organization of these verses required diat diey be memorized
word for word, and the special gifts needed to compose and memorize such
poems became the skills expected of court poets.

4 According to Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-

English Dictionary, 2d Edition by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon,
1957), s.v. “skald,” the etymology of this word is disputed, but the editors of the
dictionary lean toward a relation with English “scold” and German “schelten,” a
connection that points out the originally negative role of this poetry. By the
tenth century skaldic poetry had become a special means of praise of rulers.

There is no way to be sure, but it seems likely diat the demand for literal
memorization required for skaldic verse drove out die freer style of poetic
composition we have seen in Old English, Old High German, and Old Saxon
poetry. In The Singer of Tales Albert Lord explored die effect of literacy on oral
poets and discovered that the poets, when faced with written texts and the
ability to read (and memorize) them, ceased to be oral poets in die traditional
sense. They were no longer able to perform songs without memorizing them,
and the art of oral composition quickly died out.
Faced with a “technique” of poetic composition every bit as alien to oral-
formulaic composition as writing, the Old Norse version of the common
Germanic tradition was apparendy supplanted by two derivative forms: prose
narrative and short memorized songs of heroic content. The former became the
ground in which die great sagas of Iceland grew, and die latter became die
songs of the Poetic Edda.
There was probably always a bit of “prose” retelling of heroic events, but it
did not develop into an art form until die competing oral epic disappeared and
left prose holding the narrative bag. Hie long winters and die annual Aiding
(assembly) have often been cited as the environmental influences that provided
an opportunity for the composition of die oral forerunners of die great sagas.
The written sagas betray roots in genealogical narratives, stories transmitted to
legitimize land holdings, and in heroic narratives about die early setders of
Iceland. There is no evidence diat die Icelanders ever composed oral epic about
the deeds of their Icelandic ancestors. Hiere is plenty of circumstantial
evidence, on the other hand, to show diat extensive knowledge about the early
history of Iceland was passed on in die form of oral prose narrative and that
these prose narratives became die material out of which the great literary sagas
of the thirteenth and fourteendi centuries were fashioned.
Skaldic poetry, on die odier hand, demanded that the heroic and mythic
stories of the Germanic past be kept in the mind of die audience. The skaldic
style was richly allusive and required diat the audience recognize references to
many obscure episodes of Germanic myth and legend, including die Nibelung
and Dietrich legends. One can only assume that die same skalds who showed
such economy of means in dieir skaldic poetry found it necessary to recast the
half-improvised traditional songs into short, compact retellings diat could be
memorized and passed down from poet to poet. The first fruits of this were
probably the narrative songs of die kind best represented by the Atlakvifia in the
Poetic Edda. Here the traditional story is presented in relatively straightforward
narrative witii few “skaldic” mannerisms. Later poems such as the Helreid
Brynhildar and the four Gudrun poems betray more “skaldic” characteristic and
represent in some cases what can only be called a “fantasy on heroic diemes.”
Mythological materials were condensed into compendia such as the Voluspa,
the Eddie lay that tells of the creation and destruction of the world, and the
ELavamal, a sort of Eddie equivalent to the Old Testament Proverbs. If our
hypothesis about their origin is correct, each of these poems was originally the
work of a skald concerned to keep die stories he needed as background to his
praise poetry before his public. Since many of these songs spent a century or
two in oral transmission, it is probable that they also underwent some changes
along the way, in spite of their more stable form.
 By the middle of the thirteendi century, when the Poetic Edda was written
down, some of die poetic tradition seems to have become fragmented. There are
songs, such as die Volundarkvifia, that are imbedded in some kind of
explanatory prose while others stand on their own. It seems likely that some of
the individual stanzas had lost their connection to a coherent story and so it was
necessary to explain their place in the overall legend. There are two passages
(Frd dautia Sinjjotla and Drap Nijlungd) diat are entirely in prose. The
Volsungasaga may be a more extensive version of die same diing in which die
narrative is shifted almost entirely to prose and die verses are included almost
as decoration. Most of die verses we have in die Volsungasaga are also
contained in die Poetic Edda manuscript. The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson
does much die same thing widi mythological verse. It may well be diat the
usual home of Eddie poetry in die thirteendi century was imbedded in prose
narrative. If die songs were regularly performed and understood by their
audiences, diere would have been no need for die kind of explanatory prose we
find even in die Codex Regius manuscript of the Poetic Edda.
Snorri’s Prose Edda shows clearly why a knowledge of mytiiological and
heroic legend was necessary for the composition and understanding of skaldic
poetry. Most of the book consists of retellings of traditional stories along with
examples of the most common kennings associated widi diem. A kenning is a
veiled reference to an object, usually associating it widi a well-known incident
in traditional lore. Since Fafnir die dragon is depicted as sleeping on a bed of
treasure, gold might be referred to simply as “Fafnir’s bed” or “die dragon’s
bed.” Without a wide knowledge of traditional mytiiological and heroic stories,
a poet of die thirteendi century would have been unable to unravel the
complicated language of die older skaldic poetry and would have been equally
unable to compose poetry of his own.
Iceland of the thirteendi century had many oral and literate genres. We can
imagine diat die oral tradition included narrative in prose, traditional songs
embedded in explanatory prose, and some few songs that needed no such
buttressing. The presence of relatively new songs in die Poetic Edda collection
suggests diat die composition of poems on ancient diemes had by no means
ceased at the time die songs were collected in writing, but these late songs are
also those diat are fartiiest from die style we have postulated as a common
Germanic narrative style as found in Old English, Old High German, and Old
Saxon poetry. It is possible that Scandinavia had always had a tendency toward
shorter, more stable poems, but diat cannot be demonstrated from the written
documents diat survive. We can only recognize diat Scandinavia in general and
Iceland in particular had developed a special style for die transmission of heroic
legend diat has no parallel elsewhere in Germania.

THE ORAL TRANSMISSION OF GERMANIC HEROIC LEGEND

We have virtually no traces of die tradition diat must have carried Germanic
legend from the fourdi and fiftli centuries to the ninth when elements of the
stories find their way onto parchment in England and Germany, and pictorial
and name evidence makes it apparent diat diey were also known in Scandinavia.
We can only guess about the routes of transmission. The Goths did not maintain
a linguistic community far into the Middle Ages. Virtually all descendants of the
Goths (and their fellow East Germani, the Burgundians) spoke Latin by the end
of the seventh century. In spite of their more thorough replacement of Roman
institutions with Germanic ones, die Lombards soon followed them into
linguistic oblivion. The Lombards shared a long border with the Bavarians, who
had established themselves in die region between the Alps and the Danube.
They seem to have had close connections with the Lombards (members of the
Bavarian ducal house ruled the Lombards for several decades), and it is quite
possible that the stories of Ermanaric, Theoderic, and Odoacer found their way
into the Germanic heartland tiirough this Alpine channel.5

5 One scholar buttressed his argument for the Lombard connection to the

point of translating the Old High German Hildebrandslied into his

reconstruction of Lombard (Krogmann, Hildebrandslied).

Another probable route is the Frankish kingdom diat bridged the distance
from the Gothic-Roman south to the purely Germanic Rhineland. It is quite
possible that the legends took both routes. The presence of Frankish names such
as Brunhild6 and Siegfried indicates that the Franks had at least some role in the
transmission and development of the legends. There were many connections
between die Gothic kingdoms and die Frankish kingdom during die fifth and
sixth centuries, and die history of the Godis was known in some detail to Isidor
of Seville in the Visigodiic kingdom of Spain in the early seventh century.7 In
the Icelandic texts of the thirteendi and fourteenth centuries the figures of the
Nibelung legend are referred to variously as Franks, Goths, and Huns with no
recognizable pattern. Only die Nibelungenlied identifies the occupants of the
Worms kingdom as Burgundians.

6 Brumchildis was a Gothic princess from Spain, but her story takes place
among the Franks and it is in their histories that we find her name.
7 Isidore avoids the kinds of stories that find their way into heroic legend.

When he deviates from the straightforward listing of kings and events, it is

usually to tell a pious story such as that of the Roman women who protected the
wealth of St. Peter’s church from the invading Goths under Alaric.

The Old English poem Widsip may give a clue to the propagation of
Germanic legend. The poem tells of a poet who travels diroughout the Germanic
world and who knows about all of the stories we are discussing here. Such
singers of tales may have wandered from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia
bearing these stories in heroic song. The erratic travels of a “Widsip” would
make the recognition of clear-cut patterns of dissemination impossible.
The one route heroic legend did not take was through written texts. It has
been suggested that works like the Nibelungenlied were historical fiction built
on chronicle knowledge about the past. Many scholars are uncomfortable with
missing links in the written historical chain. We need to keep in mind, however,
that the legends know much that is not in the chronicles and vice versa. The so-
called historical sources, as we saw in the previous chapter, provide a very
different image of the figures of heroic legend. For example, the legends have a
largely positive view of Theoderic and Attila, both of whom were thoroughly
damned in the clerical written tradition. Only in an oral tradition largely
insulated from the written histories could the positive view of these two men we
find in medieval epic come into being and survive.
The evidence points toward a northward migration of the heroic stories
through traveling singers during die period from die sixth to the ninth century.
The fact that we have almost no evidence of such migration other than the fact
that it took place is troubling, but there is a general lack of information about
most of Europe during this period. The earliest texts having to do with our topic
(the Old English Widsip and the Old High German Hildebrandslied) both
suggest extensive knowledge of the legendary history of the Goths and other
Germanic tribes at the time they were written down. Oral dissemination is the
simplest and most efficient explanation for the spread of Germanic legend, and
the homogeneity of the tradition across wide geographical (and temporal)
distances makes the use of oral-formulaic verse the likely vehicle of this
transmission.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Andersson, Theodore M. A Preface to the Nibelungenlied. Stanford: Stanford
 University Press, 1987.
Andersson, Theodore M. “Die Oral-Formulaic Poetry 1m Germanischen.” HH,
1-14.
Bauml, Franz H. “Der Ubergang miindlicher zur artes-bestimmten Literatur des
Mittelalters. Gedanken und Bedenken.” Festschrift for Gerhard Eis. Eds.
Gundolf Keil et al. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970, 1-10.
Bauml, Franz H. “From Illiteracy to Literacy: Prolegomena to a Study of the
Nibelungenlied.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 10 (1974): 248-259.
Bauml Franz H, and Agnes M. Bruno. “Weiteres zur mundlichen Uberlieferung
des Nibelungenliedes.” DVLG 46 (1972): 479-493.
Bauml, Franz H, and Donald J. Ward. “Zur mundlichen Uberlieferung des
Nibelungenliedes.” DVLG 41 (1967): 351-390.
Beck, Heinrich. “Eddaliedforschung heute: Bemerkungen zur Heldenlied-
Diskussion.” He/den und Heldensage: Otto Gschwantler zurn Geburtstag. Eds.
Hermann Reichert and Giinter Zimmermann. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1990. 1-
24.
Borghart, K.H.R. Das Nibelungenlied: Die Spuren mundlichen Ursprungs in
schriftlicher Uberlieferung. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1977. 162-163.
Bowra, Cecil Maurice Heroic Poetry. London: Macmillan, 1952.
Curschmann, Michael. “Oral Poetry in Mediaeval English, French, and German
Literature: Some Notes on Recent Research.” Speculum 42 (1967): 36-52.
Curschmann, Michael. “The Concept of the Formula as an Impediment to Our
Understanding of Medieval Oral Poetry.” Medievalia et Humanistica 8
(1977): 63—76.
Ebenbauer, Alfred. “Heldenlied und 'Historisches Lied' lm Friihmittelalter—und
davor.” HH, 15-34.
Egil's Saga. Tr. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin, 1976.
Foley, John Miles Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and
Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985.
Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Harris, Joseph. “Eddie Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages
in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance.” Edda: A
Collection of Essays. Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason.
Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983, 210-242.
Haymes, Edward R. “Oral Poetry and the Germanic Heldenlied.” Rice
 University Studies 62.2 (1976): 47-54.
Haymes, Edward R. The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Heusler, Andreas Lied und Epos ingermanischer Sagendichtung. Darmstadt:
Ruhfus, 1905.
Heusler, Andreas. Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied. Dortmund: Ruhfus,
1920.
Kellogg, Robert L. “The Prehistory of Eddie Poetry.” PSMA, 187-199.
Krogmann, Willy Das Hildebrandslied in der langobardischen Urfassung
hergestellt. Berlin: Schmidt, 1959.
Lachmann, Karl. Uber die ursprimgliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der
Nibelungen Noth, Berlin: Dummler, 1816. Most easily found in Das deutsche
Versepos. Ed. Walter Johannes Schroder. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1969. 1-82.
Lehmann, Winfred P. The Development of Germanic Verse Form. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1956.
Leyen, Friedrich von der. Das Heldenliederbuch Karls des Grofien. Munich:
Beck, 1954.
Lord, Albert Bates. “Avdo Mededovic, Guslar.” Journal of American Folklore
69 (1956): 318—330.
Lord. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.
Lutz, Hans Dieter. Cvoriiberlegungen und Versuche zur statistischen
Beschreibung der Adjektiv-Substantiv-Verbindung im Mittelhochdeutschen.”
DVLG 49 (1975): 465-501.
Lutz. “Zur Formelhaftigkeit mittelhochdeutscher Texte und zur 'theory of oral-
formulaic composition“. DVLG 48 (1974): 432-447.
Meier, John. Werden und Leben des Volksepos. Halle: Niemeyer, 1909. Repr. in
Das deutsche Versepos. Ed. Walter Johannes Schroder. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969. 143-181.
Metzner, Ernst Ench. Zur Jruhesten Geschichte der europaischen
Balladendichtung. Der Tan% in Kolbigk; legendarische Nachrichten,
gesellschafilicher Hintergrund, historische Voraussetvymgen. Frankfurt:
Athenaum, 1972.
Parry, Milman The Making of Homeric Verse. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971. All of Parry's work on Homeric and South Slavic
poetry conveniently collected.
Reichert, Hermann. Nibelungenlied und Nibelungensage. Vienna: Bohlau, 1985.
Schroder, Werner. “1st das germanische Heldenlied ein Phantom?” ZDA 120.3
(1991): 249-256.
Stein, Peter K. “Orendel 1512: Probleme und Moglichkeiten der Anwendung der
theory of oral-formulaic poetry bei der literaturhistonschen Interpretation
eines mittelhochdeutschen Textes.” HS, 322-338.
Wolf, Alois. “Die Verschnftlichung von europaischen Heldensagen als
mittelalterliches Kulturproblem.” HH, 305-328.
Part Two:

LITERARY WORKS
SIGURD STABBING THE DRAGON FAFNIR (from the
Hylestad Stave Church) Museum of National Antiquities
Oslo, Norway
CHAPTER 5

Literary Works

It is not possible here to talk about the many special characteristics that separate
modem literature from medieval literature. A manuscript culture is
fundamentally different from a print (or television, for that matter) culture, and
the differences affect the formation and production of literary works at every
level. The literature being discussed here is particularly special in its close
dependency on oral tradition for both matter and style. It is probably this
dependence on an oral background diat led medieval authors of heroic materials
to remain anonymous. Except for those few instances where an author is
mentioned, all of the medieval literature described here is anonymous, and even
in those few cases where an author’s name appears, we know, with the exception
of Snorri Sturluson, virtually nothing about the person named.
All medieval literature is transmitted in manuscript form, and only in the
rarest of cases do we have a manuscript that can be considered authoritative. The
discussion of different manuscript versions in the following sections will try to
give an idea of the shifting basis of our modem texts. Any modem text is the
product of a lot of choices, many of which are questionable, but without which
we would have no modem editions at all.
Dating is also a problem. In some cases (e.g. Beowulf) the proposed dates
range over centuries. In other cases, we can place a work within a few years, but
there is almost always a considerable amount of guessing involved. Most of the
Middle High German Dietrich poems, for example, were written sometime in the
thirteenth century, but we have no real idea when. Even the sequencing of texts
is usually questionable, since it is difficult to determine in most cases which text
preceded another.
We have arranged the discussions under several general headings in order to
bring some order into what is an inherendy unruly collections of texts. The next
chapter will deal with a number of works, generally quite early, that refer to the
Nibelung or Dietrich stories or tell unrelated stories about characters from the
primary legends. The main purpose of this chapter is to show the presence of the
legends in the minds of Germanic storytellers from the ninth century to the
thirteenth.
The next two chapters are devoted respectively to the Dietrich and Nibelung
legends themselves in all the medieval narratives diat are devoted completely to
them.
A final chapter treats briefly several related legends diat round out the
legendary material of medieval Germany. The Kudrun is not explicidy related to
any aspect of the Nibelung or Dietrich legends, but it obviously belongs to the
same general tradition and some critics have suggested that it can be understood
as something of a reaction to the catastrophic conclusion of the Nibelungenlied.
The Wolfdietrich legends have a number of connections to the story of Dietrich,
as does Konig Rother. Both narratives also have episodes that are attached to
Dietrich himself in the PiSreksaga.
There is relatively litde secondary literature that covers this whole area. The
standard literary histories of English, German, and Norse literature cover most of
the works we discuss here within their own contexts. Hoffmann covers the
Middle High German area well, and Wisniewski offers a relatively complete
coverage of the literature having to do with the Dietrich poems. Two major
works of medieval literature, Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied,\ are well covered
in bibliographies and studies. The following list is generally limited to the
bibliographical guides and literary histories, with preference given to works in
English.

Clover, Carol J., and John Lindow, eds. Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A
Critical Guide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Godden, Malcolm, and Michael Lapidge, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Old English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Heinzle, Joachim. Mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichepik. Zurich: Artemis, 1978.
Extensive documentation of manuscript and early print transmission of the so-
called “fairy-tale Dietrich poems.”
Hoffmann, Werner. Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt,
1974.
Wisniewski, Roswitha. MittelalterlicheDietrichdichtung. Stuttgart: Metzler,
1986.
Walshe, M. O’C. Middle High German Literature: A Survey. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1962.
TABLE OF MOTIFS
On the following page is a table showing the occurrence of the important motifs
of the Nibelung and Dietrich legends in some of the major literary works
discussed in their respective chapters. Narratives that treat only one or two
episodes are omitted.

Distribution of Motifs in the Major

Literary Works
CHAPTER 6

Traces in Early Literature

A number of medieval literary texts mention elements of the Nibelung or

Dietrich legend but are mainly devoted to other, usually legendary matters. We
are including these works because they demonstrate the continued presence of
the legends in the minds of authors (and presumably audiences) from the
centuries preceding the first literary treatment of the legends as a whole.

DEOR AND WIDSIP

The Exeter Book, a late tenth-century manuscript collection of Old English
verse, contains two poems that refer to our legends. One of them, Deor, is cast
as a scop’s lament on losing his job. According to the last strophe Deor has been
replaced by a new poet named Heorrenda. He attempts to alleviate his suffering
by comparing his own situation to unhappy situations from Germanic legend
that turned out happily. He divides his poems into something like stanzas of
varying length by inserting a refrain, “That has passed on, this too shall pass,”
after each story.
He begins by sketching the situation of Weland, referring mainly to his
having been lamed by the king who is called here NiJ)had. Most of the passage
dwells on Weland’s misery. The second “stanza” deals with NiJ)had’s daughter,
here called Beaduhild. In the full story told in the Norse sources described
below, Weland avenged himself on the king by killing his sons and dishonoring
his daughter, and a version quite close to this seems to He behind this reference.
The poet remarks that Beaduhild was less grieved by her brothers’ death than by
her own pregnancy. We can assume that the “happy ending” was the birth of the
hero Widia (Witege, Vidga), her son by Weland.
After reference to an obscure story that does not seem to be part of our
complex, the poem refers to a story of Theoderic in two lines:
Peodric owned for thirty winters
the casde of the Maerings. That is known to many.
 The thirty winters mentioned here agree with the exile of Theoderic as we
know it from the Hildebrandslied and elsewhere, but there is no known
connection between Theoderic the Great and any group known as “Maerings.”
Malone has argued that this J>eodric is not Theoderic the Goth but Theoderic
the son of Clovis, who may have been the model for the German Wolfdietrich
legends. He cites a Swedish runic inscription which also mentions a
“J>iodrikR” as the lord of the Maerings. The evidence is too slight to be
certain of either solution. Widsip explicidy mentions “Eeodric” as a ruler of die
Franks. If there were legends about both Theoderics, then it is quite possible that
the Anglo-Saxon singers of tales confused them as well. They lacked even the
reference tools we have for sorting out the historical background of their stories.
The next stanza refers to the misery of the people under the reign of the
“wolfish” Eormanric, clearly a reference to die Ermanaric of legend. No specific
events are cited here except that his people wished his downfall.
The last two “stanzas” meditate on the misery of exile and the specific
situation of the poet. Frederick Norman has related the names given here to the
Hagen-Hild-Hetel episode in the Middle High German Kudrun.
The second of the Exeter Book poems, Widsip, is cast as the report of a singer
who visited the court of Eormanric (Ermanaric). The major part of the poem
consists of lists of kings and tribes and the courts the singer had visited. In his
edition Malone argues that the lists are much older than the frame story and that
they make up the “oldest poem in the English language” (68). Unfortunately the
lists do not generally go beyond such formulas as “X ruled over Y.” We find
many of the most important figures of our legends mentioned. /Eda (Attila) rules
the Huns, Eormanric die Godis, Gifica (Gibica) the “Burgendan.” Eeodric is
mentioned as the ruler of the Franks, which may lend some additional weight to
Malone’s arguments that the Eeodric of Deor is Theoderic the son of Clovis and
not the Ostrogothic king. The presence of the two poems in the same manuscript
does not prove any relationship between the poems before they were copied, but
it is probable that die two poets would have known essentially the same
tradition.
The lists give tantalizing evidence of extensive knowledge of a “legendary
history” on the part of Anglo-Saxon singers. A real singer would have had to
live several centuries to have known all of the names mentioned, but this does
not seem to have been a problem until literal-minded chroniclers of the later
Middle Ages began to question the appearance of Ermanaric, Attila, and
Theoderic at the same time. (See Frutolf of Michelsberg in the chapter on
historical sources.)
There is a reference at the end of the main part of the poem to Wudga and
Hama, who are described in batde and ruling over gold, men, and women.
Wudga and Hama are probably Witege and Heime who appear together in many
different medieval stories. See the discussion in the Glossary of Names.

Deor. Ed. Kemp Malone. 4th ed. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966.
Norman, Frederick. “Problems in the Dating of Deor and Its Allusions.”
Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody
Magoun, Jr. Eds. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Robert P. Creed. New York: New
York University Press, 1965. 205-213.
Widsith. Ed. Kemp Malone. 2d Revised ed. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and
Bagger, 1962.
Chambers, R. W. Widsith: A Stud)/ in Old English Heroic Legend. Reprint (ong.
1912) ed. New York: Russell and Russell, 1965.

WULFAND EAD WACER

This Old English poem, which follows Deor in the Exeter Book, may not belong
in this book at all, but the name Eadwacer is equivalent to Odoacer, and at least
one interpretation (Harris) has identified Wulf with Hildebrand, who is
occasionally identified as a representative of the Wulfing clan. The poem is the
plaint of a woman who seems to have been left behind by Wulf and is married
against her will to Eadwacer. This would suggest a version of the story in which
Hildebrand’s wife had been forced to marry Odoacer after Hildebrand had been
driven from die land along widi his lord.

The Exeter Book. Ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records
3. Morningside Heights, NY: Columbia University Press, 1936. Wulf and
Eadwacer, 179—180.
Harris, Joseph. “Hadubrand’s Lament: On the Origin and Age of Elegy in
Germanic.” HH, 81-114.

BEOWULF
The Old English poem Beowulf survives in a single English manuscript from the
late tenth or early eleventh century. There have been many attempts to date the
poem itself, but they have all been called into question. The dating has moved
from the seventh century to the eleventh without universal acceptance of any
hypothesis. Current opinion leans more toward the later dating.1
The poem contains die broad heroic narration of two adventures in the career
of the Geatish warrior-king Beowulf. In the first of these stories he journeys to
Denmark to rid King Hrogar’s hall, Heorot, of the murderous visitations of the
monstrous giant Grendel. After killing the monster, Beowulf still has to kill
Grendel’s mother, who seeks vengeance for her son’s death.

1 Chase, Dating brings together recent scholarly opinion. See also Kieman,
Beowulf who argues for an eleventh-century date both for the manuscript and
the poem. Serious objections to Kiernan’s method are raised in the review by
John D. Niles in Speculum 58 (1983): 765-767. Niles, however, accepts a
relatively late date for the poem.

During the celebration following the monsters’ deaths, the court poet at
HroJjgar’s court compares Beowulf s achievements to diose of several heroes of
the past, including Sigmund, to whom die dragon-killing diat usually belongs to
Siegfried/ Sigurd is attributed. Sigmund is also described as wandering about
with his son Fitela, who is the Sinfjotli of the Poetic Edda and the
Volsungasaga.
As a reward for his killing of Grendel Beowulf receives a rich collar that is
compared to a necklace of the “Brosings.” The necklace is featured in a brief
story involving Hama (Heirne), who in some unspecified way gained the enmity
of Eormanric. Hiere are 110 new details except diat we are told diat Hama
“chose eternal reward,” which is probably no more than a euphemism for
death.2
In the second part of the poem Beowulf has reigned over his people for fifty
years and is suddenly faced with a monster infestation of his own. A dragon has
been awakened from its sleep by a treasure-hunter and is ravaging the
countryside. There is no one among die young warriors of the land who will
face the monster. The aged Beowulf kills it but receives his own death-wound in
the process. The poem concludes widi Beowulf s funeral.

2 Malone, ed., Widsith, 160-161.

EDITION AND TRANSLATION

Klaeber, Fr[iednch], ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh. Boston: Heath,
1922. Standard Edition.
Alexander, Michael, tr. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex:: Penguin, 1973.

STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “The Dating of Beowulf.” University of Toronto
Quarterly (1983): 288-301.
Benson, Larry D. “The Pagan Coloring of Beowulf.” Beowulf: Basic Readings.
Ed. Peter S. Baker. New York: Garland, 1995. 35-50.
Chase, Colin, ed. The Dating of Beowulf Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1981.
Hasenfratz, Robert J. Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979-
1990. New York: Garland, 1993.
Kiernan, Kevin S. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1981.
Short, Douglas D. Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York:
Garland, 1980.

WALTHER AND HLLDEGUND

The story of Walther and Hildegund is not a necessary part of the Nibelung or
Dietrich legends, but it does involve both Attila and Gunther, and it is included
in the Pidrekssaga af Bern and is mentioned in the Nibelungenlied. There were
at least four medieval versions of the story (including that in the Pidrekssaga).

Waltharius
This Latin poem may be the oldest written version of the story, since the latest
date suggested for its composition is about 930. The poem was apparendy
written by a monk for the amusement of his brothers, since he addresses his
audience as “fratres” in the first line of the narrative. A brief dedication to a
bishop named Erkambald seems to identify its author as a Brother Gerald.
There is also, however, an eleventh-century reference to a Latin poem about
“Waltharius manu fortis” (“Walther of the strong hand”) that was supposed to
have been written by Ekkehard of St. Gall. There is no way of achieving
certainty about the identity of the poet using the evidence we have.
 Waltharius, Hagano (Hagen), and Hiltgunt (Hildegund) are noble hostages given by their parents
to secure a peace with Attila. They grow up together at the Hunnish court and become close
friends. Hiltgunt and Waltharius had already been betrothed by their parents before they were
given as hostages. Hagano escapes and returns to his king Guntharius (Gunther) in Worms.
Hagano and Guntharius are here referred to as Franks rather than Burgundians, but the situation
is virtually the same as the one we know from the Nibelungenlied.
Waltharius distinguishes himself as a warrior for Attila, and the Huns
are concerned to retain him in that role. For his part Waltharius wishes
only to escape with Hiltgunt and return to his homeland. He plots an
elaborate escape that involves getting the whole Hunnish court drunk and
having Hiltgunt collect the treasures that had been given along with them
as a pledge of peace. The two steal off into the night and are not missed
until it is too late to catch them.
Walther and Hiltgunt cross the Rhine near Worms and pay for their trip
with some fish. This fish finds its way onto the king’s table and Guntharius
demands to know where it comes from since it is of a variety that does not
come from that region. The ferryman tells of the couple he had set over the
Rhine. Gunther is filled with avarice and, over Hagano’s objections, sets
out with eleven men (including Hagano) to separate Waltharius from his
gold.
The “Franks” catch up with Waltharius in the Vosges mountains, where
he is able to find an easily defensible spot where he can meet his attackers
one at a time. In the course of a long day he kills all of them but
Guntharius and Hagano. The two ride off planning to ambush Waltharius
when he leaves his position. Waltharius and Hiltgunt remain in the
mountain pass overnight and emerge the next day, only to be ambushed by
Guntharius and Hagano. Waltharius reproaches Hagano for violating their
vows of friendship, and Hagano says that he is now forced to take
vengeance for one of his relatives who had been slain the day before.
A fierce fight follows in which Hagano is several times required to
rescue his king from certain death. Waltharius strikes off the king’s leg,
Hagano cuts off Waltharius’s right hand, and Waltharius finally lands a
blow that cuts out Hagano’s eye. The severe wounds bring the fight to an
end, and the three men sit around drinking wine and making scurrilous
jokes about their wounds as Hiltgunt binds them.

The story is told with skill and a sense of irony born of a familiarity with
classical literature. The traditional characters and narrative patterns are clearly
drawn from Germanic tradition, but the treatment is learned and witty rather
than heroic.
EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS
Kratz, Dennis M., ed. and tr. Waltharius and Ruodlieb. New York: Garland,
1984. Includes extensive bibliography.
Smyser, H.M., and F.P.Magoun, Jr. Walter ofAquitaine: Materials for the Study
of His Legend New London: Connecticut College, 1950. Contains translations
of all versions of the Walther legend.

WALDERE
The Old English version of the story of Waldere (Walther) and HildiguJ)
(Hildegunt) exists in two brief fragments of what must have been a poem of
considerable length. The first is apparendy an exhortation on the part of
HildiguJ? during the early part of the battle. She says that Weland’s handiwork,
the sword Mimming, has never failed any man. The second fragment tells
something of the history of the sword Mimming, that f>eodric had given it to
Widia (Witege), the son of Weland, along with a great treasure. Gudhere
(Gunther) is here correcdy identified as the “friend [i.e. lord] of the
Burgundians.” The fragment concludes with Waldere’s praise of his own armor.
There is much talk of treasure and possessions in the two fragments, which is
only appropriate in a poem that describes a battle over treasure.
The Old English text of Waldere is included in Klaeber’s edition of Beowulf.

TRANSLATION
Alexander, Michael, tr. The Earliest English Poems. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin, 1966. Also includes translations of Deor and I Vidsip.

Walther und Hildegunt

Like the Old English version, the Middle High German poem exists only in a
few fragments. There are fragments of at least two manuscripts that had been
used in the binding of later books. The cutting and sewing process has left
many illegible passages in the fragments as they survive.
Although there is insufficient material in the fragments to allow a
reconstruction of the Middle High German poem, we can be sure that it was a
literary work of “epic” breadth. The poem is written in stanzas very much like
those used in the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun. We can observe a filling out of
courtly detail very much like what we find in the Nibelungenlied. The largest of
the fragments is a portion of the homecoming of Walther and Hildegund, a
scene that is lacking in all other versions of the story. The fragments of a second
manuscript also seem to contain a scene that is missing from the other versions.
Hagen informs Walther diat he had been betrothed from infancy to Hildegund.
This occurs before Hagen’s departure from Etzel’s court.
An English translation of the fragments is found in Smyser and Magoun cited
above under Waltharius.

Eckerth, W. Das Waltherlied. Gedicht in mhd. Sprache. Halle: Niemeyer, 1909.

This is actually the edition of a modern poem in Middle High German by
Eckerth based on the Latin Waltharius, but he includes the text of the Middle
High German fragments on 70—79.

Valtari (in the Pidrekssaga)

Here the emphasis is on the bridewinning story. Hogni leads the Hunnish troops
pursuing the young couple. Valtari is able to fight them off effectively, and they
give up the pursuit. There is no fight with Gunnar in this version.

WAYLAND (WLELAND, VELENT) THE SMITH

Volundarkvida
The Old Norse poem is preserved in the mythological portion of the Poetic
Edda, although it does not involve the gods direcdy. We can only guess why it
was included in this section.
The lay is introduced by a prose narrative in which Volund and his brothers
Slagfidr and Egil capture and marry diree Valkyries. After nine years the three
escape and fly away. Slagfidr and Egil go out in search of their mates, while
Volund remains at home working in his smithy. King Nidud has him captured
and brought to his court
The lay proper retells some of the matter told in the prose introduction and goes on to tell the
story we associate with Volund. The king has him hamstrung and placed on an island so that the
smith will have to work for him. Volund kills the sons of the king and makes drinking cups out of
their skulls. Later he ravishes the king’s daughter and makes her pregnant. Although it is not
mentioned explicidy in this text, we know from the Pidrekssaga that he makes artificial wings of
feathers that allow him to escape. The text of die lay only mentions that he rose into the air. He
flies before die king to tell him what he has done, and the lay ends widi the king’s daughter’s
lament.
 In the course of the poem Volund is referred to twice as visi alfa, or “leader
of elves,” and his ability to fly is never explained. From these points and many
external associations of smiths with dwarfs and other supernatural beings,
Kaaren Grimstad (“Revenge”) argues that, at least as far as the Volundarkvida is
concerned, Volund is some kind of elf or dwarf with supernatural powers. She
suggests that the poem is built around a kind of initiation involving torture and
mistreatment from which the dwarf/elf/smith rises with renewed power. She
suggests a comparison with Grimnismal, in which Odin appears disguised at a
king’s court, is captured and tortured, after which he identifies himself, bringing
about the death of the king and the installation of his son in his place.
If Volund is a supernatural being, then it is perhaps understandable why the
poem is found in the mythological section of the Poetic Edda rather than the
heroic. The other versions of the Weland story do not suggest supernatural
powers for the smith himself, and the Pidrekssaga attempts a “realistic”
explanation by describing the feather coat Velent makes with the help of his
brother Egil. It is impossible to rule out influence from the Daedalus legend in
this case, since it was known through Ovid and others throughout Europe.
For text and general criticism of the Poetic Edda, see the introductory section
below, p. 119.

Grimstad, Kaaren. “The Revenge of Volundr.” Edda: A Collection of Essays.

Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason. Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba Press, 1983. 187-209.

Velent’s Story (from the Pidrekssaga)

In the Pidrekssaga Velent is mainly important as the smith of the sword
Mimung and as the father of Vidga.
Velent appears at Niduiig’s court as a castaway, and after numerous trials he
becomes the king’s smith. The king hamstrings him after a trumped-up charge
is brought against him, and die remainder of the story is very much as in the
Volundarkvida, except that he has his brother Egil’s help to make artificial
wings so diat he can fly away. In this version there is no indication of
supernatural powers beyond his extraordinary abilities as a craftsman.
In the PiSrekssaga Velent5s brother Egil plays a much larger role. He comes
to the court of King Nidung, where he has to undergo the test later associated
with Wilhelm Tell. He has to shoot an apple off his young son’s head, after
which he tells the king that the other arrows he has were for him (the king) if he
had struck his son. He hunts birds to provide the feathers for Velent’s artificial
wings and gives the device a test flight. When Velent flies away, the king
demands that Egil shoot him down. Egil shoots a bladder Velent is carrying
filled with the blood of the murdered princes, so the king diinks he has
wounded Velent when he sees blood flowing from him.
CHAPTER 7

The Dietrich Legend

With the exception of the Pidrekssaga, which combines both types, the medieval
treatment of Dietrich falls roughly into two main categories: the “historical”
poems, which follow the legendary history of Dietrich, and the “fairy tale”
poems (marchenhajte Dietrichepik) y which tell of Dietrich’s fights with
dragons, giants, and dwarfs with no solid anchoring in the established legendary
history. Since the dividing line is not clear, we will not attempt to reflect it in our
presentation, following instead a roughly chronological arrangement of the
works.
The following literature covers the Dietrich legend in general or a number of
different works together.

Boer, R. C. Die Sagen von Ermanarich und Dietrich von Bern. Halle:
Waisenhaus, 1910.
Boor, Helmut de. “Die Heldennamen in der historischen Dietrichdichtung.”
ZDA. 78 (1941): 234-267.
Curschmann, Michael. “Dichtung tiber Heldendichtung: Bemerkungen zur
Dietrichepik des 13. Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik:
A.kten des V. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses, Cambridge 1975
(1976): 17—27.
Firestone, Ruth H. Hartzell Elements of Traditional Structure in the Couplet
Epics of the Late Middle High German Dietrich Cycle. Goppingen:
Kiimmerle, 1975. Analysis following folktale methodology of Vladimir
Propp.
Gottzmann, Carola Heldendichtung des 13. Jahrhunderts. Siegfried—Dietrich—
Ortmt. Frankfurt: Lang, 1987.
Heinzle, Joachim. “Dietrich von Bern.” Epische Stoffe des Mittelalters. Eds.
 Volker Mertens and Ulrich Muller. Stuttgart: Kroner, 1984. 141-155.
Heinzle, Joachim. Mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichepik. Zurich: Artemis, 1978.
Jiriczek, Otto Luitpold Karl. “Dietrich von Bern und sein Sagenkreis.” Deutsche
Heldensagen. Vol. 1. Strassburg: Triibner, 1898.
Jones, George Fenwick. “Dietrich von Bern as a Literary Symbol.” PftdEA 67
(1952): 1094-102.
Laurien, Hanna-Renate. Stilelemente der historischen Dietrichepen. Dissertation
Microfilm. Freie Universitat Berlin: 1951.
Mohr, Wolfgang. “Dietrich von Bern.” ZDA 80 (1944): 117-155.
Patzig, Hermann. Dietrich von Bern undsein Sagenkreis. Dortmund: Ruhfus,
1917.
Plotzeneder, Gisela. Die Gestalt Dietrichs von Bern in der deutschen Dichtung
ttnd Sage des friihen und hohen Mittelalters. Unpublished dissertation,
Innsbruck, 1955.
Piitz, Horst P. Studien %ur Dietrichsage. Mythisierung und Damonisierung
Theoderics des Groften. Unpublished dissertation, Vienna 1969.
Wessels, P. B. “Dietnchepik und Sudtiroler Erzahlkunst.” ZDP 85 (1966): 345-
369.
Zimmermann, Hans Joachim. Theoderic der Grofie—Dietrich von Bern. Die
geschichtlichen und sagenhafienQuellen des Mittelalters. Unpublished
dissertation, Bonn, 1972.
Zink, Georges Les legendes heroiques de Dietrich et d’Hrrnrich dans les
litteratures germaniques. Lyon: IAC, 1950.

PIDREKSSAGA AF BERN (THE SAGA OF PIDREK OF BERN)

This extensive saga is a compilation of virtually all known stories of Dietrich,
including many that are only marginally a part of the story of Dietrich himself.
It was probably assembled in the mid-thirteenth century at the court of the
Norwegian king Hakon the Old (r. 1216—1263), where many continental
literary works found their way into Norse. This ordering of the narratives
provides the only connected story of the life and career of Dietrich we have. All
other medieval narratives having to do with Dietrich treat a single episode or
group of episodes. The tide Pidrekssaga refers to the work as a whole, although
the individual books are also referred to as “sagas.”
The saga begins with the story of Eidrek’s grandfather, Sir Samson, who is known in no other
sources. Samson abducts the daughter of his lord, and in the process of fighting off his pursuers
kills both his lord and his king. He assumes the rank of both and rules in Salerno.
Samson passes his kingdom on to his older son, Erminrek. Samson’s last
conquest in Bern (Verona) is passed on to die younger son, Eetmar, who in
turn passes it on to his son, Eidrek. £>idrek establishes himself early
through adventures as a hero. He gains Hildibrand as weapons- master and
surrogate father.
[The main manuscript of the saga interrupts the story of Pidrek here with
a series of stories that belong later in the saga. See the stories of Vilkinus
and Attila below.]
About a third of the saga is devoted to the youthful adventures of a
whole series of heroes: Heimir (Heime), Velent (Wieland), Vidga (Witige),
Ekka (Ecke), Eedeif (Diedeip), and Omlung (Amelung), all of
whom join J>idrek in a kind of Germanic Round Table. The story of
young Sigurd (Siegfried) is told to introduce him. At the end of this first
major section diere is a great feast at Eidrek’s hall in which each of the
heroes is described physically along with his armor. The heroes then
embark on a campaign in Bertangaland (Brittany), where each of the
heroes fights a duel with a member of the court of a king named Isung.
Sigurd appears among Isung’s knights and duels with E>idrek, who
defeats him. Mdrek and his men are recognized as die greatest warriors in
the known world.
The second major section of die saga is devoted to a series of adventures
involving women as die object of bridewinning, seduction, or rape. The
first of these is Sigurd’s winning of Grimhild (Kriemhild), the sister of
Gunnar (Gundier), and his agreement to help win his former betrodied,
Brynhild (Brunhild), for Gunnar. In a second adventure Herburt (Herbort)
sets out to win Hild, the daughter of King Artus, for tidrek. He succeeds
but falls in love with her himself and runs off with her. (This is obviously a
parody of the Tristan legend.) Hie bridewinning stories of Osantrix and
Attila followed in the original version of the manuscript. A later editor has
moved them to an earlier point because the stories predate the time of
Eidrek. Hie story of Valtari (Waldier) and Hildigunn (Hildegund) follows
the establishment of Attila as die king of Hunland. Apollonius of Tira is the
 name applied to the hero of a thoroughly conventional bridewinning
romance. Apollonius’s brother Iron is the main figure of a story having to
do with a faithful wife who is jealous of her husband’s passion for hunting,
and a later story in which Iron seduces the wife of Aki Omlungatrausti, an
adventure that leads to his death.
The turning point of die story comes in die final story of this sequence,
in which Erminrek’s (Ermanaric) trusted advisor Sifka avenges the rape of
his wife by his lord by destroying everything that is dear to the king. He
manages to make the king guilty in each of these episodes. The pinnacle of
this series is Erminrek’s forcing his nephew Eidrek and his men into exile
after Sifka had convinced the king that Eidrek had been withholding
tribute.
The final third of die saga deals widi tidrek’s exile at Attila’s court.
During the first section Eidrek aids his host in many batdes. Eidrek then
sets out to retake his kingdom. He is successful 011 die battiefield, but the
deaths of his younger brother, J>ether (Diether), and the sons of Attila
so demoralize him that he returns to Attila without taking his lands.
The story of the killing of Sigurd is inserted at this point, leading to the
largest homogeneous section of the work, the “Saga of the Niflungs,”
which tells essentially the same story as the last third of the
Nibelungenlied.
The major differences He in the motivation (here Attila invites the
Burgundian brothers out of avarice) and in die details of the conclusion. In
the saga t>idrek fatally wounds Hogni (Hagen) (who is able to father a
son to avenge him during his last night alive), and, after the carnage is
over, it is Pidrek who kills Grimhild.
Pidrek and Hildibrand return to Italy to recover their kingdom. With the
help of Hildibrand’s son Alibrand they are able to defeat Sifka and retake
not only their own holdings, but those of Erminrek, who had died horribly
in his bed in die meantime. After the death of his wife, Herrad, Eidrek wins
a bride by killing a dragon diat had killed the woman’s husband. There are
a few final adventures involving mainly Heimir, who retires briefly to a
monastery before being killed by a giant. It is clear that the age of heroes is
at an end. Eidrek is carried off by a mysterious black horse, presumably to
Hell, although the narrator suggests that he had been able to call on the
Virgin in time to save his soul.

Almost all of the Germanic heroic stories we know from Middle High
German and other sources find their way into this massive compilation. Some
stories here we know only from oblique references elsewhere, and a few stories,
such as the initial story of Eidrek’s grandfather Samson, seem to have been
simply cobbled together from motifs derived from other heroic tales. Many
names from unrelated medieval sources find their way into the narrative. We
find a king named Artus (Arthur), who has a son named Apollonius (of Tira).
There is a surrogate bridewinning narrative involving a knight named Tristram
(who is not, however, the wooer). The narrative pattern of the Middle High
German poem Der Kosengarten Worms, involving a sequence of single combats
as a combination tournament and batde, is used in an entirely different context
in the saga. The compiler of die saga made extensive use of virtually everything
known to him about the Germanic legendary past along with many motifs and
names from other sources as well.
The saga even uses folktale motifs we associate now with entirely different
legends. In the saga of Velent the Smith, for example, we find the story
associated with Wilhelm Tell, in which a fadier has to shoot an apple off his
son’s head. The manuscript was written some forty or fifty years before the
historical Wilhelm Tell’s birdi in about 1290, so diis is clearly a wandering
motif in European folklore that only later became attached to the Swiss hero.
We know nothing about the compiler of the collection. A cleric seems
probable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that there were
very few literate lay persons in Norway at the time. The Norse version of the
Tristan legend, Tristrams saga ok Isond, names as its translator/adapter a certain
Brother Robert. None of the other texts adapted from French or German sources
names its author. If the author of our saga was not himself a priest, he had
enjoyed clerical education, perhaps in Germany. Certainly he betrays again and
again a clerical turn of mind, as we shall see in our analysis of the arrangement
of materials below.
Theodore Andersson believes the compilation we have was actually made in
Germany in the 1190s and translated into Norwegian in the middle of the
thirteenth century (Preface, 52). There is littie external evidence that speaks for
or against this hypothesis, but the “Preface” of the saga itself maintains that “the
saga is assembled from the stories of German men, and some of it comes from
their verses, which were composed to entertain great men, and which were
composed long ago, soon after the events that are told here” (Preface). To
buttress the authority of his narrative, the saga-man says (in an epilogue to the
Niflunga saga) that he has heard the stories told by men “who were born in
Bremen or Munster, and none of them knew the others, but they all tell the story
about the things that happened in that land the same way, and that is mosdy
according to the way things are told in old songs in the German language” (ch.
394). There is no compelling reason to doubt the words of the saga writer,
especially since he would have been able to establish even greater authority for
his text if he had referred simply to a “book in the German language.” Written
sources were generally held to be more reliable than oral ones, and the saga
writer felt that he had to establish the correctness of the oral tradition by saying
that “they all tell the story . . . the same way.”
Compilations of this sort are not uncommon in Old Norse literature. Perhaps
the best known is the history of the kings of Norway compiled by the Icelander
Snorri Sturluson in the first half of the diirteendi century. This work is today
known under the tide Heimskringla. An even more similar collection of sagas
having to do with Charlemagne is known as the Karlamagnussaga. The only
other collection having to do with the common Germanic past treated in this
book is the Volsungasaga. The dry narrative of most of the PiSrekssaga may be
more reflective of chronicle writing than of heroic poetry, but, as we have seen
in the case of ancient historiography, the two genres are hardly mutually
exclusive.
The material is arranged in a roughly chronological fashion around the career
of Dietrich, but there is more than a litde evidence that the real organizing
principle is a thematic one. The stories seem to have been arranged to tell of the
rise and fall of a heroic paradise modeled on the biblical story of the Fall. The
preface goes to considerable length to place the history of Eidrek within world
history. The saga author correcdy locates him in the time after Constantine and
later betrays more than a litde knowledge of the negative clerical tradition about
Theoderic, but he goes out of the way to blunt its impact. He invents a
conversion of the hero from the Arian heresy to orthodox Catholicism later in
his life and seeks to whitewash the clerical legend of the king’s being carried
direcdy to Hell on the back of a mysterious black horse believed to be the Devil
himself in disguise.
Edward Haymes has suggested (“Bridewinning’’) that the Pidreksaga was
structured to show die destructive power of a lust for women on a pure
brotherhood of heroes. The first third of the saga contains a number of
opportunities for Eidrek and some of his men to become involved with women,
but these entanglements are always avoided and the heroes assembled at the
great banquet are all, at least theoretically, virgins. The middle portion of the
saga is completely devoted to stories in which the desire for women has dire
consequences. This section leads up to the rape of Sifka’s wife and the resulting
destruction of Erminrek’s happiness. Eidrek is an innocent victim of Sifka’s
revenge and thus indirecdy of Erminrek’s lust. The final third of the saga is
devoted to a gradual destruction of the heroic age, as one hero after another
finds his death. The history of t>idrek of Bern becomes a sort of
demonstration of the Fall of Man. As the original sin of Adam was frequendy
portrayed as the result of his carnal desire for Eve and of her seductive ability to
make him disobey God’s command, so the fall of the Age of Heroes is portrayed
as resulting from the carnal desire of these heroes for women. The Norwegian or
Icelander who arranged these materials into the Pidrekssaga we know certainly
thought like a priest, whether he was in holy orders or not.
The oldest manuscript we have of the saga, a Norwegian parchment of the
thirteenth century, seems to bear the signs of an attempt to reorder the materials
to match the chronological order of events. The bridewinning stories of Osantrix
and Attila (which take place a generation before the youth of Eidrek) have been
moved from their thematically appropriate place within the sequence of
bridewinning stories to a place early in the story, where they come before the
stories of Velent and Vidga. This rearrangement hurts the overall sense of the
saga because it leaves the story of Valtari and Hildigunn, which proceeds from
the story of Attila, standing alone in the middle of the bridewinning section
without any connection to the story of Eidrek. Fortunately the rearrangement
was left unfinished and we can clearly see where the stories of Osantrix and
Attila belong. The manuscript lacks a beginning and an end. These have been
supplied by two later Icelandic paper manuscripts. There is also a Swedish
adaptation of the saga dating from the fourteenth century.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

Die Geschichte Thidreks von Bern. Tr. Fine Enchsen. Jena: Diederichs, 1924.
German translation. Saga Didriks kommgs af Bern. Ed. C.R.Unger. Kristiania,
1853.
The Saga of Thidrek oj Bern. Tr. Edward R. Haymes. New York: Garland, 1988.
English translation.
Pidreks Saga af Bern. Ed GuSni Jonsson. 2 vols. Reykjavik:
Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954. Edition in standardized Old Icelandic
orthography.
Pidreks Saga af Bern. Ed. Hennk Bertelsen. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Moller, 1905-
1911. Critical edition based on oldest manuscript.

(Swedish Version)
Sagan om Didrik ajBern. Efier svenska handskrifter utgjven. Ed. Gunnar Olof
Hylten-Cavallius. Stockholm, 1850.
Die Didriks-Chronik oder die Svava: Das Leben Konig Didriks von Bern und
die NiJIungen. Tr. Hemz Ritter-Schaumburg. St. Goar: Reichl, 1989. German
translation.

STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “The Epic Source of Niflunga Saga and the
Nibelungenlied.” Arkiv fornordiskjilologi 88 (1973): 1-54.
Andersson, Theodore M. “An Interpretation of Thidreks saga.” In Structure and
Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and
Literary Criticism of Edda and Saga Narrative. Eds. John Lindow, Lars
Lonnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber. Odense, 1986. Maintains that the saga
was composed in German in Soest (Westphalia) and later translated into
Norse. Includes an extensive bibliography.
Andersson, Theodore M. The Legend ofBiynhild. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1980.
Andersson, Theodore M. “Niflunga saga in the Light of German and Danish
Materials.” Medieval Scandinavia 7 (1974): 22-30.
Andersson, Theodore M. A Preface to the Nibelungenlied. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1987. Includes translations of extensive portions of the
Pidrekssaga.
Beck, Heinrich. “Zur Thidrekssaga-Diskussion.” ZDP 112 (1993): 441-448.
Benedikt, Erich. “Die Uberlieferungen vom Ende Dietnchs von Bern.”
Festschrift ftr Dietrich Kralik. Horn: Berger, 1954. 99-111.
Brady, Caroline. The Legends of Ermanaric. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1943.
Curschmann, Michael. “The Prologue of Thidreks Sagcr. Thirteenth-Century
Reflections on Oral Traditional Literature.” Scandinavian Studies 56 (1984):
140-151.
Droege, Karl. “Zur Siegfneddichtung und Thidrekssaga.” ZDA (1934): 83-100.
Droege, Karl. “Zur Thidrekssaga.” ZDA (1929): 3-46.
Ebel, Uwe. “Die Thidreks Saga als Dokument der norwegischen Literatur des
dreizehnten Jahrhunderts.” Niederdeutsches Wortll (1981): 1-11.
Forster, Leonard. “Die Thidrekssaga als hansische Literatur.” Sprachkontakt in
der Hanse: Aspekte des Sprachausgleichs im Ostsee- und Nordseemum. Ed. P.
Sture Ureland. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1987. 43-50.
Frantzen, J.J.A.A. “Uber den Stil der Thidrekssaga.” Neophilologus 1 (1916):
196-209.
Frantzen, J.J.A.A. “Uber den Stil der Thidrekssaga.” Neophilolgus 1 (1916):
267-282. Continuation of previous article.
Friese, Hans. Thidrekssaga und Dietrichsepos: Untersuchungen %ur inneren
und aufteren Form. Berlin: Mayer and Miiller, 1914.
Frings, Theodor. Herbort: Studien fur Thidrekssaga. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1943.
Gutenbrunner, Siegfried. “Die Niflungasaga.” Arbeiten vpr Skandinavistik. Ed.
Heinrich Beck. Frankfurt: Lang, 1985. 433-142.
Haupt, Waldemar. Zur niederdeutschen Dietrichsage. Berlin: Mayer and Miiller,
1914.
Haymes, Edward R. “The Bridewinning, Seduction and Rape Sequence in the
Thidrekssaga.” in hohemprise: A. Festschrift in Honor ofErnst S. Dick. Ed.
Winder McConnell. Goppingen: Kummerle, 1989,145-152.
Hempel, Heinrich. “Die Handschriftenverhaltnisse der Thidrikssaga.” BGDSL
(1923): 414- 445.
Hempel, Heinrich. “Sachsische Nibelungendichtung und sachsischer Ursprung
der Thidrekssaga.” In Edda, Skalden, Saga: Festschrift %um 70. Geburtstag
von Felix Genmer. Heidelberg: Winter, 1952. 138—156. Maintains the
Pidrekssaga was composed in Lower Saxony. Collects evidence for Saxon
Dietrich poetry.
Heusler, Andreas. Nibehmgensage und Nibelungenlied. Dortmund: Ruhfus,
1921. The locus classicus for the altere Not, the lost German epic on which
both “The Saga of the Niflungs” and the Nibelungenlied seem to be based.
Hofmann, Dietrich. “Zur Lebensform miindlicher Erzahldichtung des
 Mittelalters im deutschen und niederlandischen Sprachgebiet: Zeugnisse der
Thidreks Saga und anderer Quellen.” In Niederdeutsche Beitriage: Festschrift
fur Felix Wortmann %um 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Jan Goossens. Cologne:
Bohlau, 1976. 191—215.

Hugus, Frank. lcBl6mstrvallasaga and Pidriks saga afBern.” Scandinavian

Studies 46 (1974): 151— 165.
Hunnerkopf, Richard. “Die Rothersage in Der Thidrekssaga.” BGDSL 45
(1921): 291-297.
Kralik, Dietrich von. Die Uberlieferung und Entstehung der Thidrekssaga.
Halle: Niemeyer, 1931. Close analysis of the apparent revisions that took
place in assembling the saga in MS. Mb.
Krogmann, Willy. “Zur Handschriftenfrage der Thidrekssaga.” BGDSL (1927):
140-142.
Lohse, Gerhart. “Die Beziehungen zwischen der Thidrekssaga und den
Handschriften des Nibelungenliedes.” BGDSL (T) 81 (1959): 295-347.
Marold, Edith. “Dietrich als Sinnbild der Superbia.” Arbeiten %ur
Skandinavistik. Ed. Heinrich Beck. Frankfurt: Lang, 1985. 443-486.
McTurk, Rory. “The Relationship of Ragnars Saga Lodbrokar to £>i5riks
saga af Bern.” Eds. Einar G. Pettursson and Jonas Kristjansson. Sjotiu
Ritgerdir helgadir Jakobi Benediktsyni 20 juli 1977, 2 vols. Reykjavik:
Stofnun Arna Magnussonar, 1977. Vol 2, 568-585.
Mundt, Marina. “Observations on the Influence of Thidriks saga on Icelandic
Saga Writing.” Proceedings of the First International Saga Conference.
University of Edinburgh, 1971. Eds. Peter Foote, Hermann Palsson, and
Desmond Slay. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1973. 335—
359. Argues for early date of saga in order to make influence on certain
Icelandic sagas possible.
Paff, William J. The Geographical and Ethnic Names in the Thidriks Saga: A
Study in Germanic Heroic Legend. ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959. Includes a
great deal of information about the stories and their sources.
Panzer, Friedrich. Studien %um Nibehtngenhede. Frankfurt, 1945.
Patzig, Hermann. Dietrich von Bern und sein Sagenkreis. Dortmund: Ruhfus,
 1917.
Piitz, Horst P. “Heimes Klosterepisode: Ein Beitrag zur Quellenfrage der
Thidrekssaga.” ZDA 100 (1971): 178-195.
Reichert, Hermann. Heldensage u?id Rekonstruktion: Untersuchungen %ur
Thidrekssaga. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992.
Ritter-Schaumburg, Heinz Die Nibelungen %ogen nordwarts. Munich: Herbig,
1981. Relates the historical events of the Nibelung legend to the questionable
geography of the Pidrekssaga rather than that of the Nibelungenlied.
Stephens, W. E. D. “Pidriksaga and Eckenlied.” London Mediaeval Studies 1
(1937-1939): 84-92.
Unwerth, Wolf von. “Ostacia und Kara.” BGDSL 40 (1914): 160-162.
Wisniewski, Roswitha. Die Darstellung des Nijlungenunterganges in der
Thidrekssaga. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1961.
Wyss, Ulrich. “Struktur der Thidrekssaga.” Acta Germanica: Jahrbuch des
Sudajrikanischen Germanistenverbandes 13 (1980): 69-86.

HILDEBRANDSLTED, OLDER AND YOUNGER

The Old High German Hildebrandslied was written down in the early ninth
century on the flyleaves of a Latin manuscript. The surviving fragment consists
of some sixty-five1 alliterative long lines. Linguistically the text betrays a
mixture of Upper and Lower German forms, suggesting an Upper German
source and a Low German scribe or vice versa. The usual assumption is that the
surviving text was written down in a monastery along the linguistic border
between High and Low German, probably Fulda.

1 The line count depends on the editorial treatment of several fragmentary

lines.

Like the language, the text is uneven. There are moments of moving
magnificence beside passages that have resisted all attempts to interpret or
emend.
The poem begins with an identification of the two warriors and their preparations to meet in
single combat between their respective armies. Hildebrand speaks first and asks the younger
 man’s identity. Hadubrand tells of his father, Hildebrand, who had left him behind as an infant
thirty years earlier. Hildebrand tells him that he has never begun an action with such a close
relative. He removes an arm-ring and offers it to the younger man. Hadubrand accuses him of
trying to trick him with the gift so that he can stab him with his spear. He concludes his speech
with the statement: “Dead is Hildebrand, die son of Heribrand.” Hildebrand breaks out in a cry of
woe that a great calamity is about to take place. Either his own child will kill him or he will kill
the young man. Hadubrand accuses Hildebrand of cowardice, and the two men throw their spears.
They close and fight widi swords, hewing their shields into small pieces. At diis point die
fragment breaks off.

It is a dogma of Germanic studies diat this poem ends with the deatii of the
son. There is also an Old Norse poem, usually referred to as “Hildeb rand’s
Death- Song,” in which Hildebrand laments having killed his son.
There is, however, a second medieval version of diis story that is found both
in a late ballad-like version known as die <cYounger Hildebrandslied” and in the
Pidrekssaga af Bern. In diis later version die father overpowers the son and
forces him to recognize that he is indeed who he says he is. The story concludes
at the table of the mother, who recognizes her long-lost husband only after he
provides her with a token of his identity. This version survives in High and Low
German printed versions from the late fifteendi and early sixteenth centuries.

EDITIONS
Braune, Wilhelm. Althochdeutsches Lesebuch. Halle: Niemeyer, 1875. Many
later editions. Most commonly cited edition of Hildebrandslied
Meier, John, ed. Deutsche Volkslieder: Balladen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1935. The
“Jiingeres Hildebrandslied” is on 1—21.
Edda. DieLiederdes Codex Regius. Ed.Gustav Neckel. 4th. ed. rev. by Hans
Kuhn. Heidelberg: Winter, 1962. Includes “Hildebrands Sterbelied,”
(“Hildebrand’s Death Song”) as an appendix, 313-314.

CRITICAL WRITINGS AND RELATED WORKS

D’Alquen, Richard. “The Lay of Hildebrand: An Old Dutch Contribution to
German Literature.” Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies/Revue
Canadienne d’Etudes Neerlandaises 4-5.2 (1983): 37-43.
Ebbinghaus, Ernst A. “Torn her ostar gihuet...’” Neophilologus 72 (1988): 238-
243.
Ebel, Uwe. “Historizitat und Kodifizierung: Uberlegungen zu einem zentralen
Aspekt des germanischen Heldenliedes.” Althochdeutsch. Eds. Rolf
Bergmann, Heinrich Tiefenbach, and Karl Stackmann. Vol. 1. Grammatik:
Glossen undTexte. Heidelberg: Winter, 1987. 685— 714.
Gronvik, Ottar. “Sunufatarungo.” Gedenkschrifi for Ingerid Dal. Eds. Cathrine
Fabricius- Hansen and Kurt-Erich Schondorf. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988. 39-
53.
Harris, Joseph. “Hadubrand’s Lament: On the Origin and Age of Elegy in
Germanic.” HH, 81-114.
Klare, Andreas. “Die Niederschrift des Hildebrandsliedes als Zufall.” Leuvense
Bijdragen 82 (1993): 433-443.
Krogmann, Willy Das Hildebrandslied in der langobardischen Urfassung
hergestellt. Berlin: Schmidt, 1959.
McDonald, William C. “Too Softly a Gift of Treasure: A Rereading of the Old
High German Hildebrandslied.” EuphorionlZA (1984): 1-16.
Meier, Hans-Heinnch. “Die Schlacht im Hildebrandslied.” ZDA 119 (1990):
127-138.
Renoir, Alain. “Oral-Formulaic Rhetoric: An Approach to Image and Message
in Medieval Poetry.” Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers. Eds. Laurie
A Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
234-253.
Renoir, Alain “Repetition, Oral Formualaic Style, and Affective Impact in
Mediaeval Poetry: A Tentative Illustration.” Comparative Research on Oral
Traditions. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1987. 533-548.
Stutz, Elfriede. “Hadebrant and Alebrant.” beitrdge %ur Namenforschung 19
(1984): 261-274.
Tyler, Lee Edgar. “The Heroic Oath of Hildebrand.” De Gustibus: Essays for
Alain Renoir. Eds. John Miles Foley, J. Chris. Womack, and Whitney A.
Womack. New York: Garland, 1992. 551-585.
Ynes, Jan de. “Das Motiv des Vater-Sohn-Kampfes im Hildebrandslied.” Zur
germanisch- deutschen Heldensage. Ed. Karl Hauck. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965. 248-284.
DAS BUCH VON BERN (DIETRICHS FLUCHT)
This anonymous poem was probably written down sometime after the middle of
the thirteenth century. It deals widi two recurring and important themes of the
Dietrich legends: Dietrich’s exile and Dietrich’s attempt to recapture his lands
with the assistance of Etzel’s men.
The poem begins with an account of the illustrious ancestors of Dietrich von Bern and sets the
stage for the recurring conflict between Dietrich and his kinsman Emmerich.
Emmerich, brother to Dietrich’s fadier, Dietmar, covets the young
Dietrich’s lands and assembles a great army to lay waste to them. Dietrich’s
forces take Emmerich’s by surprise and are victorious, but later
Emmerich’s forces are able to capture several of Dietrich’s most valued
warriors (Hildebrand and Wolfhart, among others). Dietrich is compelled to
give up his re-conquered lands to save his men. Dietrich journeys to Etzel’s
court, where Helche, Etzel’s gracious wife, and Riiedeger become his
staunchest allies. Dietrich pledges fealty to Etzel, who, in turn, promises to
help him.
Upon receiving news that Bern has been retaken by his forces, Dietrich
returns to his lands. Another skirmish occurs and Emmerich retreats.
Dietrich entrusts Raben [Ravenna] to Witege and returns to Etzel’s court.
Witege betrays Dietrich, who must once again assemble a mighty force to
fight Emmerich. The ensuing batde is bloody and intense Dietrich is
victorious, but Emmerich again manages to escape. After reoccupying his
kingdom, Dietrich returns to Etzel’s court.

In contrast to the other poems in the Dietrich cycle, the Buch von Bern
devotes nearly one quarter of its narrative to Dietrich’s ancestors.
Within the context of the various Dietrich poems, the Buch von Bern is
noteworthy in that it depicts the circumstances behind Dietrich’s exile and his
alliance with Etzel, two popular and recurring motifs in the Dietrich legend. The
Buch von Bern also portrays the theme of the conflict within ruling families
(Dietrich and Emmerich) and its effect on the state. This familial conflict is a
typical feature in medieval Germanic story telling.
Here the emphasis is on feudal order based on loyalty, which types the
various figures accordingly. As die designated hero Dietrich embodies the virtue
of loyalty in his speeches and actions. His strong and praiseworthy loyalty is
reflected and affirmed by his bravery, generosity, and unrestrained
manifestations of grief. He gives up his hard-won lands without hesitation for
the safe return of his captured warriors. Similarly Dietrich’s circle of warriors
displays a staunch and unwavering loyalty to dieir lord. By contrast Emmerich
is disloyal and bears the ignominious epithet ungetriuwe (unfaithful). His
traditional role of villain is intensified in this poem, where he is portrayed as
having no redeeming qualities—he is cowardly and greedy. Emmerich is
surrounded by similarly negative figures: Sibeche, Witege, and Heime, whose
treachery is a recurring motif in many of the Dietrich poems.
The narrative alternates between Dietrich’s exile and his troops’ successful
battles against Emmerich. The numerous and detailed batde scenes hold a
special fascination for the poet, who takes delight in describing the carnage.
Finally there is also an extremely flattering portrait of Etzel and Helche. The
characterization of Helche is especially noteworthy, since she is a visible and
active female figure. Her fierce loyalty to Dietrich prompts her to provide
Dietrich not only widi goods and men but also with a wife.
Das Buch von Bern appears together widi die Rabenschlacht in four medieval
manuscripts, two from the fourteenth century (one now lost), and one each from
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. All of the manuscripts are collections that
include other works beyond the two heroic narratives.

EDITION
Dietrichs Flucht. Ed. Ernst Martin. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1866. Vol. 2, 57-215. Reprinted 1967 and 1975.

STUDIES
Bindheim, Dietlind. Die Dialogtechnik in Dietrichs Flucht und die
Rabenschlacht. Fine vergleichende Untersuchung der beiden Epen.
Unpublished dissertation, Munich, 1966.
Leitzmann, Albert. “Dietrichs Flucht und Rabenschlacht.” ZDP 51 (1926): 46-
91.
Premerstein, Richard von Dietrichs Flucht und die Rabenschlacht. Fine
Untersuchung tiber die dufiere und innere FLntwicklung der Sagenstoffe.
GieBen: Schmitz, 1957.
Voorwinden, Norbert. “Das intendierte Publikum von ’Dietrichs Flucht5 und
’Rabenschlacht.’” 2. Pocblarner HeldenUedgespriich. Die historische
Dietrichepik. Ed. Klaus Zatloukal. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992. 79-102.
Wagner, Norbert. “Ein Aquitamer in der Dietrichepik.” ZD A 114 (1985): 92-95.

RABENSCHLACHT
This poem may have existed in an earlier version before Buch von Bern, but its
dating is commonly accepted to be in the last half of the thirteenth century. Its
opening lines appear to take up the narrative where the Buch von Bern ends.
Dietrich is in exile at Etzel’s court and about to marry Herrat when he receives news of
Emmerich’s renewed attacks on his kingdom. Wedding preparations and festivities alternate with
battle and war preparations. Once again Helche, Etzel, and Riiedeger are unstinting in their
loyalty to Dietrich. After amassing a great force Dietrich departs with Helche’s two young sons,
but only after promising that they will remain under his protection.
Before engaging in combat widi Emmerich’s forces, Dietrich leaves the
two young princes in die care of an elderly warrior, Elson, at Bern.
However, the youths along widi Diether, Dietrich’s younger brother,
secredy leave the safety of the city in search of batde. The three youths
encounter Witege, who is challenged by Diether. All three young warriors
are killed by Witege.
Meanwhile the two great armies meet and Dietrich’s forces are
triumphant. The victory, however, is quickly overshadowed by the deaths
of the three youths. After a great display of mourning Dietrich returns to
Etzel’s court, where, with Riiedeger’s assistance, he is eventually
reconciled with Helche and Etzel.

The two poems, Buch von Bern and Rabenschlacht, share a number of
features. Foremost is the recurring theme of conflict within the ruling families,
exemplified in the struggle between Dietrich and his kinsman Emmerich. In
both poems loyalty and disloyalty form a central theme, and the portraits of
Dietrich and Emmerich are essentially black and white. Both poems have the
customary lists of warriors. The warriors on the opposing sides form a familiar
Nibelungenlied constellation. Among Dietrich’s men are Hildebrand, Wolfhart,
Diedeip, and Riiedeger; among Emmerich’s are Sibeche, Witege, Heime,
Gunther, Gemot, and Hagen. The figure of Sibeche can be linked with that of
Sifka in the Pidrekssaga.
Both poems indulge in hyperbole in their portrayal of die large armies. In the
Buch von Bern Dietrich commands a force of 150,000 (“anderhalp hundert
tusent man,” 8040) and in Rabenschlacht Emmerich has over 200,000 men
(480-99). An entire generation of warriors is destroyed as thousands perish.
Intense and uncontrolled grieving is also typical of bodi poems.
 In spite of these similarities major differences exist. Werner Hoffmann has
argued that the poet of the Buch von Bern had a better knowledge of geography
and of military operations than the poet of Rabenschlacht. The dialogue is
structured differendy and the two poems are written in two different verse
forms. Buch von Bern is in rhymed couplets while Rabenschlacht is in a
strophic form distandy related to that of die Nibelungenlied. Rabenschlacht
appears to be drawn from an earlier marrative concentrating on Etzel’s two sons,
and therefore Emmerich is much more in the background.
Within the narrative context of the Dietrich cycle, the Rabenschlacht appears
to set the stage for the events of the Nibelungenlied. Riiedeger assumes a more
important and familiar role at Etzel’s court. As noted earlier, he is largely
responsible for bringing about the reconciliation between Helche and Dietrich.
Both poems’ treatment of Christianity merits our attention. In the course of
Buch von Bern and Rabenschlacht the main figures tend to employ God’s name
or to call upon him for assistance with regularity. Upon closer examination,
however, this Christianity is essentially superficial; the world of these two
poems is not God-oriented. Indeed, with their emphasis on revenge and
immoderation (the unrestrained blood-letting and grief), these works in effect
reject the basic tenets not only of Christianity but also of courtly knighthood.
See the notice on manuscript transmission under Das Buch von Bern above
for a description of the manuscripts preserving this work.

EDITIONS
Rabenschlacht. Ed. Ernst Martin. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1866. Vol. 2, 219-326.
Die Rabenschlacht nach dem altdeutschen Heldengedicht. Ed. Ludwig
Buckmann. Leipzig: Reclam, 1887-1890.

STUDIES
Leitzmann, Albert. “Dietrichs Flucht und Rabenschlacht.” ZDP 51 (1926): 46-
91.
Premerstein, Richard von. Dietrichs Flucht und die Rabenschlacht. Eine
Untersuchung uber die auflere undinnere Entwicklung der Sagenstoffe.
GieGen: Schmitz, 1957.
Steche, Theodor. Das Rabenschlachtgedicht, Das Buch von Bern und die
Entmcklung der Dietrichsage. Greifswald: Bamber, 1939.
Voorwinden, Norbert. “Das intendierte Publikum von ’Dietrichs Fluchf und
’Rabenschlacht.’” 2. Pochlarner Heldentiedgespriich. Die historische
Dietrichepik. Ed. Klaus Zatloukal. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992. 79-102.

ALPHARTS TOD
This poem in the same strophic verse from as the Nibelungenlied was probably
written down in the middle of the thirteenth century.
The emperor Emmerich decides to take back the lands of his vassal and kinsman Dietrich. This
message is delivered by Heime, whom Dietrich accuses of disloyalty. Dietrich refuses to be driven
off and consults with his men, and together they draw up a list of allies. Alphart, a young,
unproven knight, wishes to engage Emmerich’s guard. Though initially unwilling, Dietrich grants
die youth his request. His kinsman Hildebrand rides out after him in an attempt to dissuade him,
but after Alphart defeats him, he, too, allows the lad to pursue his quest.
Alphart fights valiandy, defeating scores of Emmerich’s warriors.
Hearing of this, Emmerich commands Heime to combat Alphart. Witege
secredy rides out behind his friend. When Heime later falls before
Alphart’s mighty sword, Witege joins in the fight. Alphart is eventually
overcome and slain by the two warriors together.
The death of such a young and gallant warrior becomes a rallying cry as
Hildebrand leads a group of Dietrich’s allies into batde. They defeat
Emmerich’s forces, but the emperor is intent on punishing Dietrich, and
another batde takes place before Worms in which Dietrich’s men are again
victorious. Emmerich and Sibech as well as Witege and Heime, however,
manage to escape the carnage. There is much rejoicing in Bern before the
warriors depart.

In light of its narrative Alpharts Tod {Alphart’s Death) appears to occur near
the beginning of the unending and popular cycle of conflicts between Dietrich
and his kinsman Emmerich. It should be pointed out that Dietrich is not yet in
exile, and thus his familiar alliance with Etzel is not portrayed. Moreover, in
contrast to other poems dealing with the Dietrich legend, most notably Buch von
Bern and Rabenschlacht this poem does not depict Dietrich’s flight.
The choice of Alphart as the hero has important implications for our
understanding of this poem. First of all, Alphart is not one of the traditional
warriors of the Dietrich circle; he does not even appear in the PiSrekssaga. By
contrast he is deemed important enough by die poet of Buch von Bern to be
killed twice by two different opponents!
The figure of Alphart embodies the literary chivalric-knighdy ethos of the
thirteenth century. Alphart is depicted as the young, brave, and idealistic knight-
warrior who sets out alone in search of an adventure, that is, combat with
Emmerich’s guard. In this poem the knighdy ethos is most clearly visible in
Alpharfs battle with Witege and Heime, two traditional villains of the
Dietrich legend. While Alphart fights honorably, never taking advantage of his
foes, Witege and Heime act in an uncourdy fashion: they both engage Alphart in
combat at the same time. WTiile Alphart’s courdy conduct is praised, it is also
shown to be flawed. Alphart’s rigid adherence to the concept of knighdy honor
results in his own death. It would seem diat Alpharfs courdy world view is in
dissonance with the grim reality of feudal order.
Alpharts Tod survives in a single manuscript from the fifteenth century.

EDITIONS
Alpharts Tod. Ed. Ernst Martin. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1866. Vol. 2, 3-54. Reprinted 1967 and 1975.
Zimmer, Uwe. Studien “Alpharts Tod” nebst einem verbesserten Abdruck der
Handschrijt. Goppingen: Kummerle, 1972.

STUDIES
Behr, Hans-Joachim. “Der Held und seine Krieger oder iiber die
Schwiengkeiten ein Gefolgsherr zu sein. Uberlegungen zu ’Alpharts Tod.’” 2.
Pochlarner Heldenliedgesprach. Die historische Dietrichepik. Ed. Klaus
Zatloukal. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992. 13—23.
Jinczek, Otto Luitpold Karl. “Die innere Geschichte des Alphartliedes.” BGDSL
16 (1892): 115-199.
Kettner, Emil. “Die Einheit des Alphartliedes.” ZDP 31 (1899): 24-39.
Vogelsang, Heinz. Studien %ur Entstehungsgeschichte von Alpharts Tod
Unpublished dissertation, Bern, 1949.
Zimmermann, Giinter. “Wo beginnt der Ubermut? Zu ’Alpharts Tod.’” 2.
Pochlarner Heldenliedgesprach. Die historische Dietrichepik. Ed. Klaus
Zatloukal. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992. 165-182.
THE POEMS IN BERNERTON
The following four poems {Virginal, Eckenliet, Sigenot, and Goldemar) share
the same strophic form, a complex thirteen-line stanza known as the Bernerton.
In contrast to the other poems in the Dietrich cycle the author of Goldemar
names himself in the poem: “von Kemenaten Albreht der tihte ditze maere” (“by
Albrecht von Kemenaten, who wrote this story”) (2,2). All four poems are dated
in the middle of the thirteenth century, and some literary historians have held
them all to be the work of a single author, provisionally identified as Albrecht
von Kemenaten, about whom nothing else is known. The poems vary enough in
quality and style to allow us to question seriously the idea of a single author, but
there is no way to be sure.

Virginal
Hildebrand sets off with the young Dietrich in search of aventiure (adventure) (7,7). They
separate. While Hildebrand rescues a maiden who is being carried off as tribute from the dwarf
queen Virginal to the heathen Orkise, Dietrich fights a band of heathens. Hildebrand arrives in a
timely fashion to help Dietrich defeat them. The maiden returns to Virginal, who prompdy sends
another messenger, the dwarf Bibung, to Dietrich and Hildebrand.
Hildebrand and Dietrich batde dragons. Rentwin is rescued from the
mouth of a dragon by his great-uncle Hildebrand, and Dietrich slays
another dragon. Rentwin’s fadier, Helferich, appears and all journey to
Helferich’s kingdom of Arona. Bibung invites Dietrich and Hildebrand to
Virginal’s court at Jeraspunt. Bibung is forced to return again to make sure
that the guests follow.
With Helferich’s men Hildebrand and Dietrich finally set off, but
Dietrich is separated and is overpowered by the giant Wicran and brought
as a prisoner to Nitger in Muter. The others discover Dietrich is missing in
Jeraspunt and make plans to rescue him.
Dietrich is befriended by Nitger* s sister Ibelin, who helps him to send a
messenger to Jeraspunt. Ibelin warns her brother of the impending attack.
Two simultaneous preparations for Dietrich’s rescue occur. While Imian of
Hungary assembles Biterolf and Diedeip, Hildebrand journeys to Bern to
bring back the Wulfings as well as Heime and Witege.
At Muter eleven single combats occur. Nitger is beaten and is made a
vassal of Dietrich. After fighting with more giants Dietrich and his guests
at last arrive at Jeraspunt, where a great celebration takes place. News
arrives of a siege of Bern. Dietrich and guests set off for Bern, but the
threat fails to materialize. Dietrich arrives triumphandy in the city and his
 guests depart.

Much discussion has focused on Virginal’s structure. The poem appears to

consist of three discernible stories. The first and probably the oldest deals with
Dietrich’s first adventure, where Dietrich appears as a youth. Hie second story
depicts the Rentwin-dragon episode. The Muter episode harks back to an older
tradition that recounts the imprisoning of Dietrich by giants and the rescuing of
Dietrich by his men. One recurring and unifying motif is the separation of
Dietrich from Hildebrand, which takes place in each of the three parts. The
three stories are interwoven with the persistent attempts of Virginal (here
represented by her messenger Bibung) to have Dietrich visit her court. The
poem also contains repetitions, retellings of previous events, and discrepancies
that can be attributed to various uncoordinated reworkings of the text.
The knightly influence in the poem is most apparent at the beginning and at
the end of the poem. Hildebrand accompanies the young and unproven Dietrich
so that his lord can experience adventure. One recurring motif present in this
work is Dietrich’s reluctance to serve ladies. Virginal’s court is one, long festive
scene replete with dancing, feasting, and tournaments. The poem also
emphasizes the fantastic—the presence of dragons, giants, and dwarfs enables
the heroes to shine all the more brightly.
There are three principal manuscripts: h, d, and w. After stanza 233 the
versions differ from one another considerably. The popularity of Virginal can be
attested to by its twelve manuscripts, many of which exist today only as
fragments.
In some early editions Virginal appeared under the title “Dietrichs erste
Ausfahrt” (“Dietrichs First Excursion”), and some of the critical literature
retains this tide.

EDITIONS
Virginal. Ed. Julius Zupitza. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann,
1870. Vol. 5, 1— 200. Reprinted 1968.
Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt. Ed. Franz Stark. Stuttgart, 1860.

STUDIES
Kraus, Carl von. ’Virginal und Dietrichs Ausfahrt.” ZDA 50 (1908): 1-123.
Kuhn, Hugo. “Virginal.” BGDSL 71 (1949): 331-86, and in Dichtung und Welt
im Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959. 220-248.
Lunzer Justus. “Uber Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt” ZDA 43 (1899): 193-257.
Lunzer Justus “Zu Virginal und Dietrichs erster Ausfahrt.” 27. Jahresbericht
uber das k.k, Fran
Joseph-Gymnasium in Wien. Vienna: Selbstverlag des Gymnasiums, 1901. i—
xxxiii.
Schmidt, Ernst A. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte und Veifasserfrage der Virginal.
Prague, 1906.

Wilmanns, W. ccUber Virginal, Dietrich und seine Gesellen und Dietrichs erste
Ausfahrt.” ZDA 15 (1872): 294-309.

Eckenliet
Three warriors, Vasolt, Ecke, and Ebenrot, gather to recount great heroic deeds.
Talk focuses on Dietrich of Bern, which prompts Ecke to seek out Dietrich in
order to measure his own prowess. Three young queens are so enthralled by
Dietrich and his legend that they agree to provide Ecke with magical armor. If
he is successful in bringing Dietrich back to their court, he can choose one of
them to be his wife. Too big for a horse, Ecke travels by foot to Bern, where the
ever-wise Hildebrand attempts to dissuade him from his present folly. He enters
a strange forest where he slays a Meerwunder (sea monster). He then
encounters a knight who has been grievously wounded by Dietrich.
Finally Ecke catches up with Dietrich and challenges him. Ecke explains the origin of his
magnificent armor in the hope of getting Dietrich to fight him. Dietrich refuses and chides him
for his arrogance but reluctandy consents to do battle with him when faced with a probable loss
of honor and reputation. Their batde is protracted and fierce. After numerous entreaties to God
for assistance Dietrich finally overpowers the cocky Ecke. Fearing shame and dishonor, Ecke
refuses to surrender and Dietrich slays him, then strips him of his armor, which is so big that he
has to cut it down. This is a bitter victory for Dietrich, and he decides to seek out the three
queens. His wounds are healed by a mysterious woman along the way. He then encounters Ecke’s
brother, Vasolt, who is hunting a woman. They fight, and Vasolt is forced to swear loyalty to
Dietrich. Vasolt’s man, a dwarf, and his people also pledge their allegiance to Dietrich. Dietrich
and Vasolt continue their journey to the land of the three queens. Eggenot, a blood relative of
Ecke and Vasolt, is also vanquished by Dietrich. Vasolt secredy plots revenge and leads Dietrich
to his mother, Birkhilt, whose power stems from the Devil. After cleaving her in two, Dietrich is
seriously challenged by her tree- swinging daughter, Uodelgart. [Here the manuscript E2ends
abrupdy.]
 A popular motif found in this poem is Dietrich’s reluctance to fight. On the
one hand Dietrich appears as a larger-than-life figure whose fame prompts the
giant Ecke to seek and fight him. On the other hand Dietrich is slow to fight and
does so only to prevent loss of honor.
The characterization of Ecke functions to expose the presumed shortcomings
of the knighdy ethos. Ecke’s great size provides some humor, preventing him
from riding a horse, a universal perquisite of knighthood. The whole concept of
frouwendienst (service of ladies) comes under attack when Ecke is further
encouraged to seek out Dietrich for combat by die three queens. Thus the
ensuing batde is a frivolous whim, an adventure. After his defeat Ecke is so
concerned with his diminished honor in the eyes of his three queens that he
chooses death, a stance diat Dietrich, die consummate warrior, criticizes. The
poem also depicts the demonic in Vasolt, Ecke’s brother, who hunts a maiden
like an animal. Their mother and sister are also evil and apparendy supernatural.
Seven manuscripts and eleven printed copies exist. The earliest transmission
is a single strophe found in the Codex Buranus from the first half of the
thirteenth century. The oldest manuscript containing most of the text is E2
(which the summary above follows). The manuscript found in the Dresdener
Heldenbuch is important because it probably contains the original conclusion.
In this version Dietrich throws the severed head of Ecke before the queens as a
rejection of the courdy ideals of aventiure and froumndienst.
There are at least three distinct versions, the version summarized above, the
one in the Dresdener Heldenbuch, and the one found in the printed Heldenbuch
(see Heldenbuch Prose, below, p. 97). The differences begin with the events
following Vasolt’s surrender to Dietrich (verse 245).
Of special interest among these is the E7 version from the Dresdener
Heldenbuch, in which Ecke is portrayed as a negative figure. After seeking out
the three queens, Dietrich learns that he has rescued them from Ecke’s tyranny.
More information about the manuscripts and the versions can be found in the
treatments by Hoffmann and Heinzle.

EDITIONS
Ecken Uei. Ed. Julius Zupitza. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1870. Vol. 5, 219-264. Reprinted 1968.
Eckenlied. Ed. and tr. Francis B. Brevart. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986. Includes
facing-page modern German translation.
Eckenlied. Ed. Martin Wierschin. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1974.

STUDIES
Bernreuther, Mane Luise. “Herausforderungsschema und Frauendienst 1m
’Eckenlied.’” ZDA 117 (1988): 173-201.
Boer, R. C. “Das Eckenlied und seine Quellen.” BGDSL 32 (1907): 155-259.
Boor, Helmut de. “Zur Eckensage.” Mitteilungen der schlesischen Gesellschaft
fur Volkskunde 23 (1922): 29-43.
Boos, G. “Studien uber das Eckenlied.” BGDSL 39 (1914): 135-174.
Brevart, Francis B. “Der Mannervergleich im ’Eckenlied’.” ZDP 103 (1984):
395-406.
Brevart, Francis B. “won mich hant vrouwan usgesant (L. 43,4): Des Helden
Ausfahrt im Eckenlied.” ArchivJurdas Studium derNeueren Sprachen und
Li/eraturen 220 (1983): 268-284.
Flood, John L. “Dietrich von Bern and die Human Hunt.” Nottingham
Mediaeval Studies 17 (1973): 17-41.
Freiberg, Otto. “Die Quelle des Eckenliedes.” BGDSL 29 (1904): 1-79.
Heinzle, Joachim Mittelhochdeutsche Dietrichepik. Zurich and Munich:
Artemis, 1978.
Hoffmann, Werner Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Grundlagen der
Germanistik 14. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974.
Kratz, Henry. “The Eckenlied and Its Analogues.” Spectrum Medii Aevi: Essays
in Early German Literature in Honor of George Fenrnck Jones. Ed. William
C. McDonald. Goppingen: Kummerle, 1983. 231-255.
Lassbiegler, H. Beitrage %ur Geschichte der Eckendichtungen. Bonn: Georgi,
1907.
Meyer, Matthias. “Zur Stmktur des Eckenliedes” Jahrbuch der Reineke
Gesellschaft 2 (1992): 173- 85.
Stephens, W. E. D. “bidriksaga and Eckenlied” London Mediaeval Studies 1
(1937-1939): 84-92.
Vogt, Friednch Hermann Traugott. “Zum Eckenlied.” ZDP 25 (1893): 1-28.
Zingerle, I. V. “Die Heimat der Eckensage.” Germania 1 (1856): 120-123.
Zink, Georges. “Eckes Kampf mit dem Meerwunder. Zu, Eckenlied L 52-54.”
Mediaevalia litteraria: Festschrift fur Helmet de Boor rum 80. Geburtstag.
Eds. Ursula Hennig and Herbert Kolb. Munich: Beck, 1971. 485-492.

EKKA (IN THE PIDREKSSAGA)

P&gt;idrek sets out to regain his honor after having been defeated in single combat. He
encounters Ekka, who is betrothed to the queen of Drekanflis. After a long resistance Pidrek
finally agrees to fight in the dark. Ekka strikes his sword against a stone generating sparks so that
the two men can see each other. Ekka gets the better of his opponent, but Pidrek’s horse, Falke,
realizes his master*s predicament and, breaking his reins, attacks Ekka. After the horse has
broken Ekka’s back, £&gt;idrek cuts off his head. Eidrek rides toward Drekanflis, where the
queen sees that a strange man has on Ekka’s armor. She commands mourning in the casde, and
Ekka’s men arm themselves to seek revenge. Pidrek prudendy rides away only to encounter
Ekka’s brother Fasolt, who disables his brother’s killer with a single blow. When Eidrek recovers
his senses, he rides after Fasolt and challenges him to continue the batde. They fight until Fasolt is
defeated and the two combatants swear blood-brotherhood.
The two ride off and soon encounter a dragon that is swallowing a
knight, whom they rescue. This episode is clearly related to the Rentwin
episode in the Middle High German Virginal described above.

The service of ladies so prominent in the Middle High German version is

reduced to a mention of nine princesses, who play no role in the story. (Pidrek
does come back and marry one of die princesses later in the saga, but only after
being disappointed in his desire to marry the daughter of King Artus.) His
reluctance to fight is explained by his wounds, which were not yet completely
healed, although there is something fairly close to cowardice in much of his
behavior.

Sigenot
Dietrich awakens a sleeping giant, Sigenot, only to discover that he is intent on seeking
vengeance on Dietrich, who had slain two of his kinspeople, Grim and his wife. Failing to
dissuade the giant from this
course of action, Dietrich fights but is overpowered and thrown into a
cave by Sigenot.
Hildebrand appears in the forest and batdes with Sigenot. Although
initially overpowered by his opponent, Hildebrand is able to surprise the
 giant, cutting off Sigenot’s left hand before slaying him.
After attempting unsuccessfully to rescue his lord (Hildebrand makes a
rope out of his own clothing), Hildebrand encounters a sleeping dwarf,
Eggerich, a vassal of Dietrich. With Eggerich’s assistance, Hildebrand is
able to find a ladder and Dietrich is finally rescued. Dietrich and
Hildebrand return to Bern, where they are cordially received.

Two passages appear to connect Sigenot with Eckenlied. According to the

narrator the time sequence is right after Dietrich’s slaying of Ecke: “dar nach er
Ecken stach” (“after he slew Ecke”) (1,13). The closing lines of Sigenot refer
direcdy to Eckenlied. “sus hebet sich Ecken liet” (“so begins the song of Ecke”)
(44,13). However, Sigenof s relationship to Eckenlied is tenuous at best. The
two poems have litde in common. While this particular incident is not
recounted elsewhere in the Dietrich cycle, the PiSrekssaga does indeed portray
Dietrich’s batde with Grim’s wife. The author interjects some humor into the
poem by portraying Hildebrand and Eggerich having their beards tugged. As a
friendly and loyal dwarf, Eggerich is somewhat reminiscent of Laurin (see
section on the poem of Laurin below, p. 92).
There are two standard renditions: The Older Sigenot and The Younger
Sigenot. About one hundred years separate these two versions (1250—1350).
The numerous extant copies of The Younger Sigenot attest to its continuing
popularity. Indeed, Sigenot was frequendy published during the early years of
printing. The oldest manuscript of die Older Sigenot dates from the fourteenth
century.

EDITION
Sigenot. Ed. Julius Zupitza. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann,
1870. Vol. 5, 207- 15. Reprinted 1968.

STUDIES
Benzing, Josef. “Eine unbekannte Ausgabe des Sigenot vom Ende des 15.
Jahrhunderts.” Gutenbergjahrbuch (1964): 132-134.
Eis, Gerhard. “Zur Uberlieferung des Jungeren Sigenot.” ZDA 78 (1941): 268-
276.
Flood, John L. “Studien zur Uberlieferung des Jungeren Sigenot.” ZDA 95
 (1966): 42-79.
Matthey, Walther. “Der alteste Wiegendruck des Sigenot. Datierung,
Bildschmuck, Nachwirkung.” Aneiger des germanischen National-Museums
1954 bis 1959 (1960): 68—90.
Rosenfeld, Hellmut. “Ein neues handschriftliches Sigenot-Fragment.” ZDA 96
(1967): 78- 80.
Steinmeyer, E. “Das jungere Gedicht vom Riesen Sigenot.” Altdeutsche
StucUen. Berlin, 1871. 63-94.

Goldemar
Dietrich, a courageous and valiant warrior, learns about great giants in the forest. He sets off in
search of diem. At the mountain of Trutmunt he catches sight of a lovely maiden and is
immediately smitten by her. The maiden, however, is guarded by dwarfs who live in the
mountain. Dietrich asks the dwarf king, Goldemar, to allow him see her. In the middle of
Goldemar’s reply, the text abrupdy ends.

This poem has some similarities with haurin. Most notably both depict a
kingdom of dwarfs in a mountain that is guarded by giants. There is also a
captive maiden who escapes defilement.
According to Werner Hoffmann (195—197), the author of Goldemar was
reacting against the traditional image of Dietrich. Here Dietrich appears as the
lovestruck suitor. This is a significant departure from the conventional portrait
of Dietrich as a valiant and loyal warrior whose relations with ladies is polite
but usually somewhat distant. Not surprisingly the focus of Goldemar is on
minne (love), not on heroic deeds and batdes.
The poem exists in a single fragmentary manuscript.

EDITION
Goldemar. Ed. Julius Zupitza. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1870. Vol. 5, 203- 204. Reprinted 1968.

STUDIES
Haupt, M. “Goldemar von Albrecht von ICemenaten.” ZDA 6 (1848): 520-529.
Hoffmann, Werner Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Berlin: Schmidt,
1974.
Biterolf und Dietleip
The poem in rhymed couplets was written between 1260 and 1270 by an
anonymous Austrian poet. It has two main divisions: the pre-history of Biterolf
and Diedeip with their separate journeys to Etzel’s court and the combat at
Worms with its preparations.
Biterolf is the ruler of a Spanish land whose capital is Toledo. He and his wife, Dietlint, have a
son, Diedeip.
So taken is Biterolf with the fame of Etzel’s court that he secredy leaves
his wife, son, and kingdom to seek it out. He encounters a nephew, Walter
of Karlingen, and later meets Riiedeger. Finally he arrives at Etzel’s court
and swears fealty to him. Along with Riiedeger he falls prisoner to a rival
of Etzel’s but later is able to overcome Etzel’s foes.
Years pass. Biterolf s son, Diedeip, now sets off to find his father. On his
journey he encounters the Burgundians. Diedeip is forced to fight Hagen,
Gemot, and Gunther—all of whom die inexperienced youth overcomes.
He arrives at Etzel’s court. In an ensuing batde father and son fight each
other unknowingly, but die outcome is not tragic. Riiedeger is instrumental
in reuniting Biterolf and Diedeip.
Attention then shifts to Diedeip’s presumed insult at the hands of the
Burgundians. Etzel is determined to avenge this wrong and assembles a
great army under the command of Riiedeger. Riiedeger is sent as a
messenger to Worms, where he is warmly received. The fighting has three
phases: a tournament; an engagement between the two armies; and another
batde stemming from Riiedeger’s gift, a banner. Gunther concedes defeat
and a reconciliation occurs. Biterolf and Diedeip receive Steiermark from
Etzel.

Like the poet of the Klage the poet of Biterolf und Dietleip appears to be
reacting to the Nibelungenlied. Whereas the former recast the chief figures, the
Biterolf und Dietleip poet focuses on die role of knighdiood. Thus the impetus
for narrative action at the beginning of the poem is Biterolf s fervent wish to see
ritterschaft (knighthood) (405) at Etzel’s court, which functions much like
Arthur’s court: its renown making it a model and a magnet for aspiring knights.
The emphasis on knighthood is reflected in the more prominent role of
Riiedeger, who exudes courtliness. This courdy ethos is evidenced by
Riiedeger’s role as peacemaker in the poem. He is thus responsible for reuniting
the father and son. Later Riiedeger acts as a messenger to Worms where he
distinguishes himself—especially widi die ladies at court. The importance of a
courdy-knighdy ethos may explain why Dietrich’s role is small in this poem. He
appears in the role of an ally of Etzel and is in exile. Once again he initially
displays a reluctance to fight Sifrit. This dual motif is also found in
Rosengarten Worms and Pidrekssaga. The poet of Biterolf und Dietleip pokes
some fun at this motif by having Dietrich turn pale at die prospect of fighting
Sifrit.
The fight before Worms occurs within a knighdy context. Indeed, the greatest
warriors in the Germanic heroic tradition are assembled. The batdes reprise the
familiar constellation of the Burgundians and their allies versus the Huns and
Amelungs. The choice of a tournament ensures that the conflict will not end in
a bloodbath (cf. Nibelungenlied), however; the ensuing fights do vacillate
between sport and life and death. Another indication of some knighdy- courdy
influence is die more visible role of the female figures. Brunhild and Kriemhild
are portrayed as the perfect social hostesses to the messenger,
Riiedeger. During the combat the ladies are present and seem to inspire the
knights to greater deeds. The assembled ladies, however, are not the goals of
the fighting, and the focus of the poem is undeniably on die fighting itself, not
on minne (love). As in the Rosengarten Worms the climax of the many contests
is the combat between Dietrich and Sifrit.
While the focus on knighthood enables the poet of Biterolf und Dietleip to
achieve a peaceful resolution of the conflict, this depicted knighthood, for the
most part, is superficial and arbitrary. For example, .the motivation for the
confrontation at Worms arises from the uncourdy conduct of Diedeip, who
despite his victory over Hagen, Gemot, and Gunther refuses to accept the
Burgundians’ apology. It should be noted that during the Worms segment
Diedeip and Biterolf essentially vanish from the narrative.
Within the narrative time frame of die Dietrich legend Biterolf und Diedeip
appears to depict a time coinciding widi die beginning of the Nibelungenlied.
At the beginning of this poem Hagen is still at Etzel’s court and dius knows
Riiedeger. When Diedeip encounters the Burgundians, they are just returning
from the successful Saxon wars. Emmerich as well as Witege and Heime are
portrayed as allies of Etzel and thus appear as positive figures.

EDITIONS
Biterolf und Dietleip. Ed. Andre Schnyder. Bern: Haupt, 1980.
Biterolf und Dietleib. Ed. Oskar Janicke. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin:
Weidmann, 1866. Vol. 1, 1-197. Reprinted 1963.
STUDIES
Firestone, Ruth H. “On the Similarity of Biterolf und Dielleib and Dietrich und
Wenelan?” Comparative Research on Oral Traditions. Ed. John Miles Foley.
Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1987. 161-83.
Hagenmeyer, Alfred. Die Quellen des Biterolf. Heilbronn: Baier and Schneider,
1926.
Knapp, Fritz Peter. “Sagengeographie und europaischer Krieg in ’Biterolf und
Diedeib.’” 2. Pochlarner Heldenliedgespriich. Die historische Dietrichepik.
Ed. Klaus Zatloukal. Vienna: Fassbaender, 1992. 69-77.
Lunzer, Justus. “Die Entstehungszeit des Biterolf.” Festschrift fur B. Seuffert.
Erganzungshefte zum Euphorion 16, 1923. 8-24.
Lunzer, Justus. “Humor im Biterolf.” ZDA 63 (1926): 25-43.
Rauff, Willy. Untersuchungen Biterolf und Dietleip. Bonn, 1907.
Williams, Jennifer. “Etzel: Auf den Spuren der deutschen Ordensritter? Biterolf
und Dietleip 1388-1627.” ZDA 110 (1981): 28-34.
Zimmermann, Giinter. ” ’Biterolf und Dietleip:’ Gedanken zu Gattung,
Sinnstruktur und Thema.” Die mittelalterliche Literatur in der Steiermark.
Eds. Alfred Ebenbauer, Fritz Peter Knapp, and Anton Schwob. Bern: Lang,
1988. 317-333.

Laurtn
This adventure poem is in rhymed couplets and was probably composed
sometime around die middle of die thirteenth century.
In Bern Hildebrand recounts the strange tale of a rose garden surrounded by a thread, cultivated
and guarded by the dwarf-king Laurin. The violation of this thread and the garden represents an
assault on Laurin, who demands of any trespasser a right foot and left hand as compensation.
Dietrich and Witege seek out the garden and then proceed to destroy it. Magnificendy clad,
Laurin appears angrily, demanding his compensation. Dietrich at first seems reluctant to fight the
dwarf but is forced to when Laurin overcomes Witege. During the long batde Hildebrand offers
valuable advice that allows Dietrich to be victorious in spite of Laurin’s indestructible armor,
Tarnkappe (cloak of invisibility), and magical belt. Initially Dietrich is unwilling to grant the
dwarf his life. Laurin asks for Diedeip’s intervention, saying that he holds Diedeip’s sister
prisoner in his kingdom. Diedeip then fights Dietrich, but the ever- wise Hildebrand brings about
peace between the two combatants.
 The warriors (Witege, Wolfhart, Hildebrand, Diedeip, and Dietrich) then
return widi Laurin to his mountain realm, where they are warmly received.
Diedeip’s sister, Kiinhilt, finally appears. Laurin, however, is still angry
about the destruction of his rose garden, so he imprisons Diedeip and
drugs and throws the other warriors into a dungeon. Kiinhilt is
instrumental in rescuing die warriors. She has in her possession a magical
ring that enables the wearer to see the invisible dwarfs. A great batde
ensues, but, thanks to the magic, the warriors are able to overcome the
dwarfs as well as their allies—five giants—who perish. The dwarfs,
however, are allowed to live. Laurin decides to become a Christian, and
only then is he truly reconciled widi Dietrich.

While Laurin treats die Dietrich legend, it nonedieless has a number of

motifs reminiscent of the Siegfried legend. For example, Laurin has a
Tarnkappe (cloak of invisibility) and his armor has been dipped in dragon’s
blood. These two devices along with a magical belt make him an almost
invincible opponent. In this poem the Dietrich figure is combined with an
earlier, popular tale: the abduction of a lady or maiden by dwarfs (see
Goldemar). The presence of Diedeip and his sister, Kiinhilt, two members of
die royal family of Steiermark (Styria), lends the poem a local flavor.
According to Miillenhoff (edition, xliv ff.), the story of the dwarf-king Laurin,
his garden, and his kingdom of the underworld can be traced back to a Tyrolean
tale.
What is important to our discussion is the depiction of Dietrich and his
trusted warriors. While the subsequent fighting is precourdy, some courtly
influence is reflected in the original cause of the narrative action: the desire for
adventure, that is, to see this fabulous garden. Once again Hildebrand appears
as the sage and competent elder warrior-advisor, who continually helps his lord,
Dietrich. Diedeip is here given a sister who shows courage and resourcefulness
in helping her brother and the other warriors overcome their enemies. While
Dietrich is portrayed as a living legend, he again is shown to be reluctant to
fight. Here Witege is depicted as a trusted member of the Dietrich circle.
The conclusion of Laurin offers a somewhat optimistic worldview. It is
noteworthy that Christianity is somewhat more visible in this poem. While
treated with dignity by Laurin and his people, Kiinhilt, nevertheless, has no
desire to remain with them because they are heathens. Moreover, a true and
lasting reconciliation between Laurin and Dietrich is shown to be only possible
after Laurin has converted to Christianity.
Seventeen manuscripts and eleven printed copies survive. This summary
follows the manuscript Li, but we should also point out that this version is one
of many. Joachim Heinzle sees at least five distinct versions. Manuscript Li is
of special interest since it anticipates its sequel, Walberan.

EDITIONS
Laurin undder kJeine Rosengarten. Ed. Georg Holz. Halle: Niemeyer, 1897.
Laurin und Walberan. [Ed. Karl Mullenhoff.] Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols.
Berlin: Weidmann, 1866. Vol. 1, 201-257. Reprinted 1963 . Mullenhoffs
name does not appear on the edition, but it is assumed that he edited the
sections of the Deutsches Heldenbuch that bear no name.

STUDIES
Dahlberg, Torsten. Zum danischen Lavrin und niederdeutschen Lorin. Mit einem
Neudruck des einvig erhaltenen niederdeutschen Exemplars. Lund: Gleerup,
1950.
Flood, John L. “Das gedruckte Heldenbuch und die jiingere Uberlieferung des
Launn D.” ZD? 91 (1972): 29-48.
Halasz, Katalin. “The intermingling of Romance Models in a 13th Century
Prose Romance: Roman de Laurin.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 22
(1986): 273-283.
Heinzle, Joachim. Mittelbocbdeutsche Dietrichepik. Munich: Artemis, 1978.
Klein, Klaus. “Eine wiedergefundene Handschrift mit Laurin und Rosengarten.”
ZDA 113 (1984): 214-228.
Schroer, K. J. “Ein Bruchstuck des Gedichtes Luarin [sic] oder der Kleine
Rosengarten.” Jahresprogramm der Presburger [sic] Oberrealschule 7
(1857): 19—28.
Wessels, P. B. “Konig Laurin.” BGDSL (T) 84 (1962): 245-265.
Zips, Manfred. “Konig Laurin und sein Rosengarten. Ein Beitrag zur
Quellenforschung.” TirolerHeimat 35 (1972): 5-50.

Walberan
The opening lines of Walberan link it to the closing of Laurin. Walberan was
probably written around the middle of the thirteenth century. Like its
predecessor this poem is written in rhymed couplets.
Dietrich and his followers (including Laurin) are in Bern. Here Laurin himself is the impetus for
the narrative action.
Word reaches Walberan in his casde Kanachas on the Euphrates about
the uncertain fate of his kinsman Laurin. Walberan immediately sets about
assembling an army of 60,000 to fight Dietrich of Bern. Before the batde
he sends Schiltunc as a messenger to Dietrich. Meanwhile Laurin has
become a friend and ally of Dietrich and is not in any danger. Walberan’s
mighty army has one great advantage—they can make themselves
invisible—but Dietrich, Hildebrand, Diedeip, Witege, and Wolfhart still
possess magical rings, presumably acquired in the earlier Laurin episode.
When batde seems inevitable, Laurin himself acts as a messenger on
Dietrich’s behalf. He is able to bring about a peaceful resolution of the
conflict. It is decided that Dietrich and Walberan will engage each other in
combat. On the day of the fight Walberan’s troops are so radiant that the
people of Bern believe them to be from heaven. First Schiltunc and
Wolfhart fight and then Dietrich and Walberan. After a long and
inconclusive fight the wise Hildebrand intercedes and brings about peace.
The two foes swear friendship and Walberan is welcomed into Bern, where
a great celebration takes place.

The editor2 of the edition in the Deutsches Heldenbuch was correct when he
suggested that the chief aim of the poem was to depict Laurin in a positive light.
The poem leaves no doubt whatsoever about Laurin’s loyalty to Dietrich. Only
by acting personally as a messenger for Dietrich is Laurin finally able to
dissuade his kinsman Walberan from staging a massive attack. Inevitably
Dietrich has to engage Walberan in combat. In the Dietrich cycle Dietrich’s
fight with a formidable foe is a recurring motif. Mirroring the upbeat mood of
the poem, not a single life is lost. The positive worldview persists as the former
foes are reconciled. Loyalty is a dominant theme, and Walberan equals Laurin’s
loyalty to Dietrich in his own loyalty to his kinsman.

2 Karl Mullenhoff, whose name does not appear in the edition. It is common

knowledge that Mullenhoff edited the portions of the Deutsches Heldenbuch

that bear no editor’s name, but we have been unable to locate documentation
outside of scholarly oral tradition. Heinzle {Dietrichepik), who is generally
careful about facts, assumes Mullenhoff to be editor of the Laurin and
Walberan.

The depiction of the Orient in the poem is also noteworthy. While it appears
as an exotic place, it is not portrayed negatively.
Walberan appears whole in one of the Laurin manuscripts, and a second
contains only the beginning. There is no independent transmission of the poem.

EDITION
Laurin und Walberan. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Bedin: Weidmann, 1866.
Vol. 1, 201—257. Reprinted 1963. No editor is named, but the two texts are
assumed to have been edited by Karl Mullenhoff, see footnote 2.

Dietrich und Wenzelan

This poem in rhymed couplets stands between the fairy-tale poems and the
historical poems. It does not fit clearly into the historical story of the Buch von
Bern I Rabenschlacht sequence, but it does place Dietrich in exile at EtzeFs
court. The poem is usually dated in the middle of the thirteenth century and
exists only in a fragmentary manuscript.
After receiving a public challenge to fight Wenzelan, the prince of Bolan, Dietrich consults widi
Wolfliart. Dietrich’s reluctance to fight is gradually overshadowed by the possibility of his loss of
fame and honor. Etzel then expresses a desire to be present at the fight. The mood is festive as the
two armies meet; ladies, too, are present. The joust between the prince of Bolan and Dietrich is
long and intense. When Dietrich appears to be weakening, Wolfhart is able to rally and incite
Dietrich, who fights with renewed vigor and determination.

This poem depicts two recurring and popular motifs of the Dietrich legend:
1) Dietrich is required to fight a formidable opponent and 2) Dietrich is at first
reluctant to do so. For unexplained reasons Hildebrand and Wolfhart are
hostages at Wenzelan’s court. Riiedeger of Bechelaren, another figure
associated with the Dietrich legend, makes a brief appearance as the marshal.
Etzel appears as Dietrich’s lord, who, upon learning of the challenge, shows
great loyalty to his vassal. Etzel thus rides out with Dietrich. The contest is
fought in the presence of the ladies, who are essentially decorative, having no
real function. The ensuing batde harks back to a precourdy era: it is long and
bloody. The poem abrupdy breaks off just as Dietrich is rallying against
Wenzelan, a most capable opponent.
EDITION
Dietrich und Wenelan. Ed. Julius Zupitza. Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols.
Berlin: Weidmann, 1870. Vol. 5, 267-274. Reprinted 1968.

STUDIES
Eis, Gerhard. “Zu Dietrichs Slawenkampfen. 1. Dietrich und Wenezlan.” ZDA
84 (1952— 1953): 70-77.
Firestone, Ruth H. “On the Similarity of Biterolf und Dietleib and Dietrich und
Wenelan” Comparative Research on Oral Traditions. Ed. John Miles Foley.
Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1987. 161-183.
Lunzer, Justus. “Dietrich und Wenezlan.” ZDA 55 (1917): 1-40.
Schroder, E. “Das Fragment Dietrich und Wenezlan.” ZDA 70 (1933): 142-144.

Der Wunderer
This curiosity is probably a product of the fifteenth century. It exists in two
versions, both of which tell approximately the same story.
Etzel is holding a grand festival at which all of his tributary kings and nobles are present. The
poem emphasizes the security of Etzel’s rule, which allows him to leave the casde gates open. A
young woman appears asking to speak to Etzel. She tells him that she is being pursued by a
monster and asks for a champion to fight for her. Rudiger and Etzel both refuse. Dietrich, who is
so young that he is not even allowed to eat with the established heroes, offers to do so. She puts a
spell on him that is supposed to protect him. He carries on a long fight with the monster and
eventually defeats him. The woman identifies herself as Lady Fortune (Frau Saelde) before
leaving die court.

The court situation is reminiscent of the Arthurian court, and, in fact, Etzel is
compared favorably to Arthur in die opening strophes, so we can assume the
“contamination” of Dietrich legend by Arthurian adventures was intended. The
motif of a human hunted by a monster also occurs in die Eckenlied.\ but there is
no necessity to assume direct influence. The situation imagined by the poem is
not even provided for in the legendary “history” because Dietrich does not
come to Etzel’s court until he is a mature man. The poem exists in a strophic
version and in a version in couplets. The couplet version survives only in
fragments, while the strophic text is found in the Dresdener Heldenbuch and in
two printed books of the early sixteendi century.
EDITIONS
Hagen, Fnedrich Heinnch von der, and Alois Primisser, eds. Der Helden Buch in
der Ursprache. 2 vols. Berlin, 1820-1825. Edition of the Dresdener
Heldenbuch.
Zink, Georges, ed. Le Wunderer. Fac-Simile de L’Edition de 1503. Paris: Aubier,
1949. Facsimile reprint of the print of 1503 with introductory discussion of
the versions of the poem.

ErmenrIkes Dot
An odd collection of motifs from heroic legend finds its way into the Low
German ballad Ermenrikes Dot (“The Death of Ermanaric”). The poem
survives only in printed broadsides and collections beginning in the late
sixteenth century.
Dirick and his men ride out in search of the king of Armentrik. Hilleb rand’s wife tells him where
to find him and advises taking along the twelve-year-old giant Bloedelinck. The twelve men set
out to Freysack (Friesach in Carinthia?), where they see fresh gallows set up for them. The men
appear with silk clothing over their armor and with flowers in their hair as if coming to a dance.
They confront the king, and, when he refuses to say why he has set up the gallows, they behead
him. The twelve warriors fight with the king’s men and defeat them, killing all but the faithful
gatekeeper Reinhold of Meilan. Dirick fears the young Bloedelink has been lost, but he is found
in a dungeon, where he has wounded 350 warriors.

This odd concatenation of heroic motifs seems to echo the expedition of

Hamdir and Sorli from the Ham dismal, but Dietrich appears here as the
attacker and he is immediately successful. John Meier suggests that the poem is
more closely related to Dietrich Flucht and that the similarities to Ham dismal
are accidental. Brady, on the other hand, expands the number of parallels by
incorrecdy reporting in her synopsis of the story that Bloedelinck is killed. She
brings this nonexistent killing into a relationship with that of Erp, the half-
brother of Hamdir and Sorli who is killed along the way to Jormunrek’s court.
Ermenrikes Dot is typical of the hodgepodge of heroic motifs we find in later
Scandinavian ballads, and an influence from Danish ballads on our text cannot
be ruled out.

EDITION AND STUDIES

“Ermenrichs Tod.” Deutsche Volksheder: Balladen. Ed. John Meier. Berlin: de
 Gruyter, 1935. 21—27. Includes commentary and discussion of relationship
to other Dietrich narratives.
Boer, R. C. Die Sagen von Ermanarich und Dietrich von Bern. Halle:
Waisenhaus, 1910.
Brady, Caroline. The Legends of Ermanaric. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1943.
Haug, Walter. “Ermenrikes dot.” Deutsche Uteratur des Mittelalters:
Verfasserlexikon, Ed. Kurt Ruh etal. 2d ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977ff. Vol 2,
611-618.

Heldenbuch Prose
In the course of the fifteenth century a collection of heroic legends became
more or less standardized. This took place first in manuscripts produced in lay
scriptoria,3 but the collection was soon printed and the first printing formed the
basis for a century of unauthorized reprints. The collection reached its final
form in the Heldenbuch (“Book of Heroes”) printed in Strasbourg in 1483. It
contained the following texts: Ortnit, Wolfdietrich, Rosengarten, and Laurin.
The text was prefaced by an extensive prose introduction in which the
legendary past was retold. The printed book also included a general rhymed
introduction that complained about the degradation of morals and customs and
recommended the reading of books as a remedy. The prose matter was
variously placed at the beginning and end of various printings so that it has
sometimes been called the Preface (Vorrede) and sometimes the Appendix
(A.nhang) to the Heldenbuch. We have followed Heinzle’s suggestion to call it
simply Heldenbuch-Prose. Heinzle lists six printings of the collection in the
period from 1483 to 1590.

3 Until about the beginning of the fifteenth century even secular books were

produced by scriptoria in monasteries. As literacy began to spread quickly

around 1400, the demand for books brought about the founding of several lay
scriptoria in which books were copied wholesale for booksellers. It was this
great demand for books that led to the invention of printing with movable type
in the middle of the century.
The introduction sets out to tell where heroes come from and how their race had come to an end.
It includes an extensive discussion of dwarfs in which die appearance of giants and heroes is also
introduced. The giants were introduced to protect the dwarfs, from the monstrous creatures that
 roamed die earth, and the heroes were introduced to protect the dwarfs from the giants. There
follows a list of heroes, sometimes widi their lineage or their place of origin.
Then follow the stories of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich told in considerable
detail, following the texts that appear later in the book. Here, as in
Wolfdietrich D, Dietrich of Bern is the grandson of Wolfdietrich.
We are told that a spirit appeared to the mother of Dietrich during her
pregnancy who foretold the son’s strength and also said that he would be
able to spew fire from his mouth when he became angry. The Devil
(apparendy the same spirit) built a casde in three days for Dietrich in Bern.
Then the story of the Rosengarten is inserted in which Seifrid
(Siegfried) is killed by Dietrich. The story of the rape of Sibech’s (Sifka’s)
wife by Ermanaric is told much as it is in the PiSrekssaga and Sibech’s
revenge is much the same. He leads Ermanaric to kill his nephews and
drive Dietrich from his lands. With the help of Markgraf Riediger
(Rudiger) Dietrich is able to find refuge with Etzel. Etzel has Dietrich
marry his niece and helps him regain his lands.
Crimhilt marries Etzel in order to gain vengeance on Dietrich for the
death of Seifrid. She attempts to get Hagen to start the fight, but he refuses
because no harm has been done to him. She then twice sends out her son to
strike Hagen. The first time Hagen sends him away with a warning, but the
second time he beheads the boy and the fight is underway. All the heroes
batde. Hildebrant is wounded and goes to inform his lord about the batde.
Dietrich comes and takes the two brothers of Crimhilt captive and sends
them bound to her. She strikes off their heads. Dietrich cuts her in two.
Dietrich and Hildebrant ride back to Bern, where a batde takes place.
Hildebrant is killed by Guther, Crimhilt’s brother, and the remaining
heroes in the world are killed there with the exception of Dietrich. A dwarf
appears and says to him: “You shall go with me. Your kingdom is no
longer in this world.” Dietrich goes with him and no one knows where he
is, or whether he is alive or dead.

This compilation has not received much attention in research literature, but it
is a fascinating glimpse into the understanding of the Dietrich legend available
to a fifteenth-century writer. Since the collection contained the texts of Ortnit,
Wolfdietrich, Kosengarten, and Laurin y these were the focus of much of the
prose addendum, but the most interesting portion is contained in the material
added to fill out the life of Dietrich. Here we find a mixture of motifs we know
from such places as the Pidrekssaga and the Nibelungenlied,\ but in a logical
connection that defies both earlier sources. Here Dietrich is Siegfried’s killer
and Kriemhild marries Etzel to gain vengeance against him. It is hard to
imagine that the author of this text knew the Nibelungenlied,\ but the echoes of
details are too strong to be coincidental. Kriemhild’s sending her son to strike
Hagen (the version we know from the Pidrekssaga) and Hildebrand’s mission
to inform Dietrich of the batde and Dietrich’s binding of the “brothers” of
Kriemhild are echoes of the version we know in the Nibelungenlied.
This confusion cannot be unraveled here, but it is typical of a retelling from
oral transmission in which the motifs of different oral and written versions have
become hopelessly muddled. We find a similar muddle in Das Lied vom Hitmen
Seyfrid (see below, p. 129).

EDITIONS
Heldenbuch nach dem dhesten Druck in Abbildung. Ed. Joachim Heinzle.
Goppingen: Kiimmerle, 1981. 1-6. Facsimile of 1483 Heldenbuch printed in
Strasbourg.
“Alte Vorrede des Heldenbuchs.” Heldenbuch. Ed. Friedrich Heinrich von der
Hagen. Leipzig: Scholze, 1855.
CHAPTER 8

The Nibelung Legend

The Nibelung legend consists generally of the story of Siegfried/Sigurd, his

youth, bridewinning, and murder, and die story of the fall of the Burgundians,
who in most Norse sources are simply called Niflunga. The Northern versions of
the story place more emphasis on die family of Sigurd, the Volsungs, and on the
deeds of Sigurd’s relatives. This is expanded to the greatest extent in the
Icelandic Volsungasaga, which traces Sigurd’s ancestry back to the god Odin
(Wodan).
In Germany the Nibelungenlied seems to have satisfied the need for a literary
version of the legend, since there are fewer competing versions of the story.

Berndt, Helmut. Die Nibelungen: Auf Spur en eines sagenhaften Volkes.

Oldenburg: Stalling, 1978.
Beyschlag, Siegfried. ccUberlieferung und Neuschopfimg: Erortert an der
Nibelungen- Dichtung.” IFIF8.205-213 (1957-1958).
Dinkelacker, Wolfgang. “Nibelungendichtung auBerhalb des
“Nibelungenliedes.” Ja mu ich sunder riuwe sin. Festschrift fur Karl
Stackmann %um 15. Februar 1990. Ed. Wolfgang Dinkelacker. Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990.
Heusler, Andreas. Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied. Dortmund: Ruhfus,
1920.
Ploss, Emil. Siegfried—Sigurd. Der Drachenkampfer. Cologne: Bohlau, 1966.

NIBELUNGENLIED
Uns ist in alten maeren wunders vil geseit
von helden lobebaeren, von grozer arebeit
 von frouden, hochgeziten, von weinen und von klagen,
von kiiener recken striten, muget ir nu wunder horen sagen.

(We have been told in ancient tales many marvels of famous heroes, of
mighty toil, joys and high festivities, of weeping and wailing, and the fighting of
bold warriors—of such things you can now hear wonders unending!” Hatto, 17)
With this powerful opening stanza the Nibelungenlied poet boldly broke with
the chivalric-knightly literary tradition in vogue around 1200. Instead, to relate
his magnificent tale of murder, treachery, and revenge, the poet chose the
popular and ancient legends as his raw material.

The tragic mood is already established in the first few stanzas. Many
warriors will die because of one woman, Kriemhild. The impending
tragedy is immediately reinforced by the young Kriemhild’s troubling
dream. Kriemhild lives with her mother, Ute, and her brothers (the three
kings) Gunther, Gemot, and Giselher in Worms.
The setting shifts to Xanten, home of the accomplished knight-prince
Siegfried and his parents, Sigmund and Sigilind. Although he sets off for
Worms to woo Kriemhild, Siegfried initially challenges Gunther5s
kingship. The matter, however, is peacefully resolved, and Siegfried
becomes an important ally in the Saxon war against Liudeger and
Liudegast. Siegfried is at court in Worms one year before he sees
Kriemhild. At the banquet celebrating the victory over the Saxons Siegfried
and Kriemhild instandy fall in love with each other.
Before Siegfried can marry Kriemhild he must help Gunther win the
powerful and formidable queen Brunhild. He accomplishes this by using a
magical Tarnkappe (a cloak that allows its wearer to become invisible and
gives him the strength of twelve men). Later Siegfried is forced to subdue
Brunhild so that Gunther can consummate the marriage. With her virginity
taken Brunhild loses her extraordinary strength.
Siegfried and Kriemhild depart for Xanten, where Sigmund renounces
the throne in favor of his son. Years pass, and Brunhild convinces Gunther
to invite his vassal Siegfried to visit Worms. At a tournament the two
queens argue over the importance of their respective husbands, which later
leads to a confrontation outside of the cathedral. Here Kriemhild tells
Brunhild that Siegfried, not Gunther, took her virginity. Brunhild’s public
humiliation prompts Hagen, the chief vassal of the Burgundian kings, to
seek revenge.
After tricking Kriemhild into revealing Siegfried’s one vulnerable spot,
 Hagen slays the famous warrior while out on a hunt. Kriemhild dissuades
Sigmund and his men from taking revenge, and they depart. At the behest
of her relatives Kriemhild decides to remain in Worms, and eventually she
is reconciled with her brothers, but not with Hagen. Kriemhild’s brothers
eventually convince her to have Siegfried’s treasure brought to Worms, but
Hagen eventually takes it away from her and sinks it in the Rhine.
Years pass. Helche, the wife of Etzel, dies, and his advisors urge him to
marry Kriemhild, who is reluctant until her kinspeople persuade her to
accept Etzel’s proposal. With Etzel’s messenger, Riiedeger, Kriemhild
journeys to Etzel. After a number of years Kriemhild convinces Etzel to
invite her brothers and Hagen, to his court. Neither Ute’s warning nor the
sea nymphs’ prophecy deters the Burgundians from their journey. Hagen
now assumes a dominant role, singlehandedly transporting the vast army
across the Danube. Only after destroying the raft does he finally inform
them of their doom. A fight ensues when the Bavarians attempt to avenge
the ferryman whom Hagen had slain.
Their stay with Riiedeger is the last happy occasion for the Burgundians.
Giselher is betrothed to Riiedeger’s daughter. At Etzel’s court the tension
becomes increasingly palpable until finally Kriemhild incites the Huns to
attack. At a feast warfare breaks out, and Hagen beheads the son of Etzel
and Kriemhild. Dietrich manages to save Kriemhild and Etzel, but all the
other Huns in the hall perish. Riiedeger is forced to fight for his lord
against his new kinsmen, the Burgundians, and is killed by Gemot. Both
Hagen and Giselher refrain from fighting against Riiedeger.
Dietrich is finally drawn into the batde and takes the only two surviving
Burgundians, Hagen and Gunther, prisoner. Kriemhild kills first her brother
then Hagen. The slaying of such a great warrior as Hagen demands instant
retribution: Kriemhild is slain by Hildebrand in front of Etzel and Dietrich,
who moum the great loss of life.

The Nibelungenlied poef s retelling of the well-known legends of Siegfried’s

murder and the fall of die Burgundians is dramatic, innovative, and above all
modem. While the phrase, “in alten maeren” (“in ancient tales”), hearkens back
to an earlier, precourtly era, the Nibelungenlied is actually a political poem that
sets out to document the systematic breakdown of social (political) order. The
Nibelungenlied poet, conservative in his social views, attributes the unfolding
national tragedy to the irreconcilable clash between the chivalric-knighdy and
the heroic-aristocratic value systems. In the course of the Nibelungenlied the
poet demonstrates that the new courdy ethos is actually dangerous to the
aristocratic social (political) order.
The clash between these two value systems is highly visible in the
Nibelungenlieds depiction of kingship. While most of the discussion has focused
on Gunther, both Siegfried and Etzel also represent weak kings. Siegfried,
Gunther, and, to a lesser extent, Etzel all needlessly expose themselves to danger
or possible loss of face in the pursuit of their respective brides. Siegfried’s initial
belligerence upon his arrival at Worms places him as well as his chosen
opponent Gunther at unnecessary risk. Indeed, throughout his quest for
Kriemhild, Siegfried puts himself at risk on no fewer than four separate
occasions: 1) he volunteers to fight against the Saxons; 2) posing as Gunther’s
vassal, he overcomes the threatening Brunhild; 3) after this victory he journeys
alone to his Nibelungen warriors, who at first fail to recognize him; and 4) he
must once again overcome Brunhild so that Gunther can consummate the
marriage. In all of these instances Siegfried’s service to Gunther causes a
blurring of his social status, which in turn later leads to his deadi.
A recurrent question is: What is Siegfried’s political relationship to Gunther?
The poet provides the audience with ample information that Siegfried is indeed
superior to Gunther. For instance, while Brunhild and her court are familiar with
the glorious deeds of Siegfried, Siegfried himself is compelled to introduce
Gunther and then praise him. Here and elsewhere Siegfried and the others
conspire to deceive Brunhild. Therefore Siegfried immediately establishes his
“inferior” status by identifying himself as Gunther’s “man”: “wand’ er ist min
herre” (420, 4), which his subsequent behavior confirms. Consequendy,
Brunhild is led to believe that Siegfried is actually Gunther’s vassal. Siegfried’s
ambiguous political status undermines the political order, and therefore he must
be killed in order to restore it (Gunther’s and Brunhild’s loss of face).
Gunther is typically viewed as a weak monarch. His weakened kingship is
especially evident in die first part of the poem, where he not only relies heavily
on Hagen for advice but also persistendy seems to shun fighting. When
Siegfried challenges him, he appears unwilling to fight. Later he seems to need
Siegfried’s assistance to defeat the troublesome Saxons. Gunther most seriously
undermines his own kingship when he knowingly employs deceit to win
Brunhild for his wife. This tactic affirms his unworthiness and, as we have seen,
eventually destabilizes the political order. It should be noted, however, that
Gunther undergoes a transformation. During the bloody and ferocious fighting
at Etzel’s court Gunther distinguishes himself as a capable and fierce warrior.
After the death of his wife, Helche, Etzel decides to seek Kriemhild’s hand.
He sends his most distinguished vassal and best negotiator, Riiedeger of
Bechelaren, as his representative to Worms. Kriemhild’s marriage to Etzel gives
her the resources to achieve her revenge—the destruction of the Burgundians.
The bridewinning sequence here parallels the one involving Siegfried in the
first half of the epic. Both men hear about Kriemhild’s beauty and nobility and
seek her hand in marriage without having seen her. In fact this example can be
expanded textually to support Theodore Andersson’s convincing argument that
the first half of the Nibelungenlied was modeled after the second part. The
downfall of the Burgundians is not only a result of the murder of Siegfried, it
forms the structural parallel to it in the second half.
In the Nibelungenlied the “courtly” episodes function to strip the chivalric-
knighdy ethos of its idealism. At the beginning of the poem Ute’s (the queen
mother’s) interpretation of Kriemhild’s dream is reminiscent of the Minnesang
tradition in which the knight is sometimes portrayed as a falcon. This dream
foretells the disastrous consequences of the minne (love) relationship of
Siegfried and Kriemhild. Thus it is not surprising that the language of
Siegfried’s courtship of Kriemhild is strikingly different—it is replete with
Minnesang imagery. Kriemhild’s marriage to Siegfried brings about a lessening
of both Siegfried’s and Gunther’s kingship as well as leading finally to the great
loss of life.
In his retelling of the two legends the Nibelungenlied poet enhanced the role
of Kriemhild, who functions as the “bridge” binding the two parts of the poem.
In the course of the poem she evolves from young maiden to haughty queen, to
grieving widow, and finally to vengeful queen. Kriemhild has a pivotal role in
both the death of Siegfried and the destruction of the Burgundians. The epithet
“valandinne” (she-devil) applied to her both by Dietrich and by Hagen
underscores her antiheroine role in the poem. This word would be used again by
the poet of Kosengarten to vilify Kriemhild. Nonetheless, the very fact that the
poem attributes the death of coundess warriors to Kriemhild is a significant
departure from the traditional depiction of female figures in our legends. Indeed,
with the characterizations of Kriemhild and, to a lesser extent, Brunhild, the role
of the female figure is expanded. At the same time, however, this increased
focus on the female figures (or the effect of wooing them) itself reflects the
irreconcilable clash between the courtly and aristocratic-feudal value system.
Indeed, the more prominent roles of these two female figures points to an
instability within the society depicted in the Nibelungenlied.
The winning of Brunhild is predicated on deceit, which in the course of the
poem has disastrous consequences for most of the main figures. Brunhild’s
submission is brought about in two interrelated stages. First, she is bested by
Siegfried, who uses magic in a series of physical contests. This defeat forces her
to relinquish control of her kingdom. Second, Siegfried must again overcome
her on her wedding night so that Gunther can consummate his marriage. The
loss of her virginity brings about the loss of her supernatural powers and
independence. After her quarrel with Kriemhild, Brunhild assumes a more
typical female role in that she recedes into the background of events.
The Nibelungenlied poet reassembled only a few of the chief figures of the
Dietrich circle. He does depict Dietrich accompanied by Hildebrand in exile at
Etzel’s court. Dietrich is an exemplary warrior who despite his rather late
appearance in the poem immediately distinguishes himself. He is thus
responsible for saving Etzel and Kriemhild when they are trapped in the hall.
True to the Dietrich tradition, however, he refrains from fighting—at least
initially. Once he decides to fight, he proves himself to be a capable warrior,
quickly defeating Gunther and Hagen. This batde between Dietrich and the
Burgundians in the Nibelungenlied would become a popular and recurring motif
in such Dietrich poems as Rosengarten and Biterolf und Dietleip.
Hildebrand, the ever wise and loyal advisor-warrior, shares a kinship with
Hagen. Both figures embody and celebrate the warrior ethos or, in other words,
the older, conservative order. As a vassal to Gunther (and his brothers) Hagen
exemplifies feudal loyalty. Yet Hagen’s fierce loyalty is shown to make him
inflexible—he is unable to pursue the possibility of a peaceful resolution. In the
Nibelungenlied Hildeb rand’s warrior role is emphasized more than his familiar
role as sage counselor. Forced into a belligerent stance by his nephew Wolfhart,
Hildebrand fights furiously against the Burgundians, leaving the battle as the
last of Dietrich’s men left alive only after he is wounded. Tellingly, the
Nibelungenlied poet chooses Hildebrand to reestablish order by beheading
Kriemhild, the instigator of the disorder and death.
A great deal of discussion has focused on Riiedeger, who experiences a
terrible conflict of loyalties. With this characterization the Nibelungenlied poet
artistically shows the tragic effects when aristocratic-feudal loyalties clash with
blood-familial loyalties. While Riiedeger’s sympathies are clearly stronger for
his kinsmen the Burgundians (his daughter is betrothed to Giselher), he is
ultimately forced to acknowledge his original allegiance to Kriemhild and Etzel
and must fight the Burgundians.
Three of the above-mentioned figures of the Dietrich legend (Dietrich,
Riiedeger, and Etzel) share another significant trait in the Nibelungenlied—they
are all unsuccessful peacemakers. Each figure at some point of the conflict
attempts to bring about a peaceful resolution, but each fails for different reasons.
Ruedeger’s bonds with both sides of the quarreling parties should have made
him a strong candidate to mediate, but instead these conflicting loyalties destroy
him. Etzel, too, at the beginning of the Burgundians’ stay at his court has the
potential for negotiating a peaceful settlement, but Hagen’s murder of Etzel’s
and Kriemhild’s son effectively destroys this possibility. Etzel must now
become involved in the bloodletting. Dietrich attempts to bring a late
reconciliation when he does not kill the last two surviving Burgundians, Gunther
and Hagen. Dietrich, however, errs when he entrusts their safety to Kriemhild,
who kills them.
These failed attempts at peacemaking also confirm the minor role that
Christianity plays in this poem. The Christianity depicted in the epic is largely
ritualistic and superficial. One glaring example of this tendency is the famous
quarrel between Kriemhild and Brunhild outside the cathedral. While both
figures attend the mass, it does not appear to have any mitigating influence on
their rage, since afterward their argument dramatically escalates. While
Christianity does not come under direct attack (as does the chivalric-knightly
ethos), it is, by its very insignificance, shown to be largely irrelevant to the
conservative and aristocratic feudal order.
The Nibelungenlied occupied a unique place in die contemporary literature
around 1200. By seriously questioning the chivalric-knighdy value system, this
poem deals with the political and societal realities in thirteenth-century German
society. While its treatment of these issues makes the Nibelungenlied quite
modern, it nonetheless represents the culmination of the heroic literary tradition.
Earlier and later works have reworked these two legends, but none has ever
equaled the brilliance and mastery of the Nibelungenlied.
The numerous surviving manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied affirm its
popularity. There seems to be no way, however, to construct a manuscript
hierarchy. The usual dating of the chief manuscripts is C (c. 1220), B (c. 1250),
and A (somewhat later). It is now commonly accepted that A is a version of B.
Most critical editions and translations are based on the B manuscript.
The C manuscript represents an extensive revision of the poem designed to
soften the vilification of Kriemhild and to cast greater blame on Hagen. This
tendency is also present in Diu K/age, which is included in all but one of the
complete manuscripts of die epic.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

Das Nibelungenlied: Paralleldruck der Handschrifien A, B und C nebst
Lesarten der ubrigen Handschrifien. Ed. Michael S. Batts. Tubingen:
Niemeyer, 1971.
Der Nibelunge Not. Ed. Karl Bartsch. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966. Reprint of 1876
 edition. Based on MS B.
Das Nibelungenlied Mittelhochdeutscher Text und 0bertragung. Ed. and tr.
Helmut Brackert. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1971.
Das Nibelungenlied Ed. Helmut de Boor. 22d Edition by Roswitha Wisniewski.
Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1988 (based on edition of Karl Bartsch).
Das Nibelungenlied: A Complete Transcription in Modern German Type of the
Text of Manuscript C. Ed. Heinz Engels. New York: Praeger, 1969.
The Nibelungenlied. Tr. A.T. Hatto. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965. Numerous
reprints.
The Song of the Nibelungs. Tr. Frank G. Ryder. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1962.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Abeling, Theodor. Das Nibelungenlied und seine Uteratur. Leipzig, 1907.
Reprint. New York: Franklin, 1970.
Krogmann, Willy, and Ulrich Pretzel. Bibliographie %um Nibelungenlied
Berlin: Schmidt, 1966.
Uberschlag, Dons. “Nibelungen-Bibliographie seit 1980.” AGSN, 293-350.

STUDIES
Anderson, Philip N. “Kriemhild’s Quest” Euphorion 79 (1985): 3-12.
Anderson, Philip N. “The Hunting of the Schelch: A New Interpretation of
Nibelungenlied 937,2.” Germanic Notes 16 (1985): 25-26.
Andersson, Theodore M. “The Encounter Between Burgundians and Bavarians
in Adventure 26 of the Nibelungenlied:’ JEGP 82 (1983): 365-373.
Andersson, Theodore M. “The Epic Source of Niflunga saga and the
Nibelungenlied.” Arkivfornordiskflologi 88 (1973): 1-54.
Andersson, Theodore M. A Preface to the Nibelungenlied. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1987.
Armstrong, Marianne Wahl. Kolle und Charakier: StucUen %ur
Menschendarstellung im Nibelungenlied. Goppingen: Kummerle, 1979.
Bauml, Franz H. “The Unmaking of the Hero: Some Critical Implications of the
Transition from Oral to Written Epic.” The Epic in Medieval Society. Ed.
Harald Scholler. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1977.
Bauml, Franz H, and Eva-Maria Fallone. A Concordance to the Nibelungenlied.
Leeds: Maney, 1976.
Bauml, Franz H, and Edda Spielmann. “From Illiteracy to Literacy:
Prolegomena to a Study of the Nibelungenlied.” Forum for Modern Language
Studies 10 (1974): 248—259.
Bauml, Franz H, and Donald J. Ward. “Zur miindlichen Uberlieferung des
Nibelungenliedes.” DVLG 41 (1967): 351-390.
Bekker, Hugo. “The Nibelungenlied: Riideger von Bechlaren and Dietrich von
Bern.” Monatshefte 66 (1974): 239-253.
Bekker, Hugo. The Nibelungenlied: A Literary Analysis. Toronto: LJniversity of
Toronto Press, 1971.
Bender, Ellen. Nibelungenlied und Kudrun: Eine vergleichende Studie %ur
Zeitdarsellung und Geschichtsdeutung. Frankfurt: Lang, 1987.
Benkert-Dodnll, Renate L. “The Role of the Dragon-Fighter and the Swan-
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Beyschlag, Siegfried. “Das Motiv der Macht bei Siegfrieds Tod.” Zur
germanisch-deutschen Heldensage. Ed. Karl Hauck. Darmstadt:
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Beyschlag, Siegfried. “Das Nibelungenlied als aktuelle Dichtung seiner Zeit.”
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Boehringer, Michael. “Sex and Politics? Etzel’s Role in the Nibelungenlied. A
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 vum 80. Geburtstag. Eds. Ursula Hennig and Herbert Kolb. Munich: Beck,
1971. 343-364.
Classen, Albrecht. “The Defeat of the Matriarch Brunhild in the Nibelungenlied,
with Some Thoughts on Matriarchy As Evinced in Literary Texts.” AGSN,
89-110.
Curschmann, Michael. “Nibelungenlied und Nibelungenklage. Uber
Miindlichkeit und Schrifdichkeit im ProzeB der Episierung.” Deutsche
Literatur im Mittelalter, Kontakte und Perspektiven. Ed. Christoph Cormeau.
Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979. 85-119.
Dickerson, Jr., Harold D. “Hagen: A Negative View.” Semasia 2 (1975): 43-59.
Diirrenrnatt, Nelly. Das Nibelungenlied im Kreis der hofischm Dicbtung.
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Diirrenrnatt, Nelly. Nibelungenlied Epoche— Werk— Wirkung. Munich: Beck,
1987.
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Kultur. Studien STi ihrer Geschichte im deulschen Siiden und Western Eds.
Albrecht Greule and Uwe Ruberg. Stuttgart: Sterner, 1989. 277-290.
Falk, Walter. Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Epoche: Revision eines romantischen
Mythos. Heidelberg: Winter, 1974.
Fenik, Bernard. Homer and the Nibelungenlied: Comparative Studies in Epic
Style. Cambridge, MA: Published for Oberlin College by Harvard University
Press, 1986.
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77.
Gentry, Francis G. “Hagen and the Problem of Individuality in the
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Gentry, Francis G. Triurve und Vriunt in the Nibelungenlied. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1975.
Gentry, Francis G. “Trends in Nibelungenlied Research Since 1949.” ABaG 7
 (1974): 125-139.
Gohler, Peter. Das Nibelungenlied. Erahlweise, Figuren, Weltanschauung
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Haug, Walter. “Montage und Individuality im Nibelungenlied.” PN, 277—293.
Haymes, Edward R. “Dietrich von Bern im Nibelungenlied.” ZDA 114 (1985):
159-165.
Haug, Walter. The Nibelungenlied: History and Interpretation. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Haug, Walter. “A Rhetorical Reading of the ’Hortforderungsszene5 in the

Nibelungenlied.” ASGN, 81-88.
Heinzle, Joachim. Das Nibelungenlied: eine Einjuhrung. Munich: Artemis,
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deutscher Wahn, ein deutscher AJptraum. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.
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Homann, Holger. “The Hagen Figure in the Nibelungenlied: Know Him by His
Lies.” MLN91 (1982): 759-769.
Ihlenburg, Karl Heinz. Das Nibelungenlied: Problem und Gehalt. Berlin:
Akademie, 1969.
Jaeger, C. Stephen. “The Nibelungen Poet and the Clerical Rebellion Against
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Kratz, Henry. “Inconsistencies in the Nibelungenlied.” AGSN, 71-80.
Kuhn, Hugo. “Tristan, Nibelungenlied, Artusstruktur.” I Nibelunghi, 7—21.
Martin, Bernhard R. Nibelungen-Metamorphosen: Die Geschichte eines Mythos.
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Maurer, Friedrich. Leid. Studien ur Bedeutungs- und Problemgeschichte
besonders in den groflen Epen der staufischen Zeit. Bern: Francke, 1951
McConnell, Winder. “Marriage in the ’Nibelungenlied’ and ’Kudrun.’”
Spectrum Medii Aevi: Essays in Early German Literature in Honor of George
Fenwick Jones. Goppingen: Kummerle, 1983. 299-320.
McConnell, Winder. The Nibelungenlied. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
McMahon, James V. “Hie Oddly Understated Marriage of Kriemhild and Etzel.”
AGSN, 131-48.
Mowatt, D. G. “Studies Towards an Interpretation of the Nibelungenlied.”
German Life and Letters 14 (1961): 257-270.
Mowatt, D. G., and Hugh Sacker. The Nibelungenlied: An Interpetative
Commentary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967.
Mueller, Werner A. The Nibelungenlied Today. Chapel Hill: University of North
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25S-268.
Nagel, Bert. “Das Dietnchbild des Nibelungenliedes II. Teil.” ZDP 79 (1960):
28-57.
Nagel, Bert. Das Nibelungenlied: Stoff—Form—Ethos. Frankfurt: Hirschgraben,
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Nelson, Charles G. “Virginity Pe)Valued: Kriemhild, Brunhild, and All That.”
AGSN, 111— 130.
Neumann, Friedrich. Das Nibelungenlied in seiner Zeit. Gottingen:
 Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1967.
Newmann, Gail. “The Two Brunhilds?’ ABdG 16 (1981): 69-78.
Osselman, Dawn. “The Three Sins of Kriemhilt.” Western Folklore 49 (1990):
226-332
Panzer, Friedrich Wilhelm. Nibelmgische Problematik: Siegfried und ~Xanten.
Heidelberg: Winter, 1954.
Panzer, Friedrich Wilhelm. Das Nibelungenlied: Entstehung und Gestalt.
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955.
Price, Arnold H. “Characterization in the Nibelungenlied.” Monatshefte 51
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Ranke, Friedrich, and Helmut de Boor. “Der Dichter des Nibelungenliedes um
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Reichert, Hermann. Nibelungenlied und Nibekngensage. Vienna: Bohlau, 1985.
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Schroder, Werner Nibelungenlied-Studien. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968.
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Splett, Jochen. Riidiger von Bechelaren. Studien %um yweiten Teil des
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Wenzel, Horst. “Szene und Gebarde: Zur visuellen Imagination im
Nibelungenlied.” ZDP 111 (1992): 321-343.

DIU KLAGE
The tide Diu Klage (“the Lament”) actually reflects the intention of the
anonymous poet: “ditze liet heizt diu klage” (“this song is called the lament”)
(4322). The Klage was probably written around 1220.
This poem is appended to all but one of the extant complete Nibelungenlied
manuscripts and, moreover, has the notable distinction of being a
contemporaneous commentary on the Nibelungenlied. It does not appear
independendy.

The poem begins with a retelling of the events leading up to the tragedy
in the second part of the Nibelungenlied. The siege of the Burgundian
warriors is recounted from the Huns’ perspective. Although Kriemhild is
die instigator of the eventual carnage, she is continually shown to be acting
out of loyalty to her slain husband, Siegfried. Conversely, Hagen as well as
the Burgundians are shown to be culpable for the tragedy because of their
arrogance and haughtiness. In spite of the Burgundians’ faults they are
nonetheless portrayed as great and valiant fighters. As the grisly task of
burying the dead proceeds, the chief slain warriors from both sides are
sorely lamented by the surviving warriors. Etzel almost despairs over the
loss of so many noble warriors, but Dietrich consoles him.
Messengers are sent to inform the bereaved parties of the tragedy. The
circumstances leading up to Riiedeger’s death are recounted to his wife,
Gotelint, and his daughter, who grieve for him. The messengers journey to
Pilgrim, the bishop of Passau and kinsman of the Burgundian royal family.
They then travel to the Rhine, where Brunhild and Uote, the queen mother,
 receive the dire news. Here, however, the mood shifts from grief to a
tentative optimism, since Gunther’s son, Siegfried, will now assume the
throne. Dual festivities occur at Worms (the coronation) and at Etzel’s
court, where Dietrich weds Herrat and then departs.

The poet of the Klage was reacting against the nihilism of the Nibelungenlied,
which ends with the annihilation of the Burgundian and Hunnish warrior-class.
In order to reassign blame for this great tragedy the poet consciously recasts the
chief figures of Kriemhild and Hagen. Indeed, a kind of role reversal occurs.
Kriemhild is depicted as a victim whose subsequent actions are shown to stem
from her loyalty to her murdered husband, Siegfried. In his effort to rehabilitate
Kriemhild the poet even rewards her loyalty with a place in heaven. On the
other hand, Hagen now assumes the role of valant (devil), whose superbia is the
blame for the ensuing catastrophe. Actually both the Burgundians and Siegfried
appear in a less favorable light; their demise is attributed to dieir arrogance.
The tragic events are further emphasized by the great outpouring of grief on
the part of the surviving figures. Most noteworthy is Etzel’s uncontrolled
mourning. The journey of die messengers, understandably, offers ample
opportunities to depict this unrestrained mourning and to praise the fallen
warriors.
Despite the unmistakable doleful tenor of the K/age its ultimate goal is to
reestablish the order destroyed at the end of die Nibelungenlied. Consequendy,
after all the wanton death and intense grieving, life is affirmed and celebrated.
The dire and pessimistic ending of the Nibelungenlied is now replaced by the
festive and upbeat mood generated by the crowning of Gunther’s son, Siegfried,
and the wedding of Dietrich and Herrat.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATION

Die KJage. Ed. Karl Bartsch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1964. DieKJage. Ed. Anton Edzardi. Hannover: Rumpler, 1875.
The Lament of the Nibelungen (Div Chlage). Tr. Winder McConnell. Columbia,
S.C.: Camden House, 1994.
Die Nibelunge Noth und die Klage. Ed. Karl Lachmann. 6th ed. Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1960.
Das Nibelunge Uetund Diu YJage. Ed. Werner Schroder. Cologne: Bohlau,
1969.
STUDIES
Curschmann, Michael. “Nibelungenlied und Nibelungenklage: Uber
Mundlichkeit und Schrifdichkeit im Prozess der Episierung.” Deutsche
Litenatur im Mittelalter: Kontakte und Perspektiven. Hugo Kuhn yum
Gedenken. Ed. Christoph Cormeau. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979. 85-119.
Fourquet, Jean. “Probleme der relativen Chronologie: Nibelungenlied, Parzival,
Klage” Festschriftpr Werner Schroder %um 75. Geburtstag. Eds. Kurt
Gartner and Joachim Heinzle. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1989. 243-256.
Kaiser, Gert. “Deutsche Heldenepik.” Europaisches Hochmittelalter. Ed. Hennig
Krauss. Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 1981. 181-216.
Korner, Josef. Die Klage und das Nibelungenlied. Leipzig: Reisland, 1920.
Giinzburger, Angelika. Studien %ur Nibelungenklage: Forschungsbericht,
Baujorm der Klage, Personendarstelhmg. Frankfurt: Lang, 1983.
Leicher, Richard. Die TotenkJage in der deutschen Epik von der dltesten Zeit bis
%ur Nibelungen-KJage. Breslau: Marcus, 1927.
McConnell, Winder. “The Problem of Continuity in Diu Klage.” Neophilologus
70 (1986): 248-255.
Scholler, Harald. A Word Index to the Nibelungenklage. Ann Arbor University
of Michigan Press, 1966.
Vogt, Friedrich Hermann Traugott. Zur Geschichte der Nibelungenklage.
Marburg: Koch, 1913.
Voorwinden, Norbert. “Nibelungenklage und Nibelungenlied.” HS, 102—113.
Wachinger, Burghart. “Die ’Klage’ und das Nibelungenlied.” HS, 90-101.

SIGURD’S YOUTH AND MURDER IN THE PIDREKSSAGA

The stories of Sigurd’s youth follow the Norse version of the story more closely,
but there are considerable differences in all directions.

Sigurd’s father, Sigmund, wins his wife, Sisibe, through a relatively

unproblematic bridewinning sequence. Not knowing she is pregnant, he
leaves her behind to go war. When he returns, a member of his court
 accuses her of unfaithfulness, and Sigmund banishes her without seeing her
or hearing her side of the story. The child is bom in the wild and placed in a
glass container, in which it floats to an island where it is nourished by a
hind. The smith Mimir finds the child, recognizes his special qualities, and
raises him as his apprentice. Sigurd tyrannizes the other apprentices, so
Mimir decides to get rid of him. He sends him to the forest to cut wood.
There Sigurd encounters a dragon (actually Mimir’s brother Regin), wliich
he proceeds to kill and eat. After tasting the dragon’s blood he understands
the language of die birds, who advise him to kill Mimir as well. He returns
to the sniidiy and is given excellent armor and a sword by Mimir, whom he
then kills. He then goes to Brynhild’s casde, where he is given die horse
Grani.
Later in die saga die story of Sigurd’s betrayal of Brynhild is woven into
the story of Gunnar’s bridewinning. Sigurd sleeps with Brynhild in
Gunnar’s shape to overcome her supernatural strength.
When Brynhild is brought back to Niflungaland, she argues with
Grimhild over precedence in the hall, and, when Grimhild tells her that
Sigurd had taken her virginity, Brynhild seeks revenge. She forces Gunnar
and his brothers to kill Sigurd. Hogni (Hagen) kills him in the forest in a
scene very similar to that in the Nibelungenlied.

The treatment of Young-Sigurd (Sigurdr-Sveinn, as he is invariably called) in

the Pidrekssaga combines elements we know from the North (see the summary
of the Volsungasaga below) and from die southern traditions behind the
Nibelungenlied. The story of Sigmund and Sisibe and the birth of Sigurd is
different from any other source, but it contains so many elements that are typical
of “hero births” that we could assume it to have arisen independendy of other
versions. The fight between the queens and the murder by Hogni/Hagen in the
forest are identical in their main points widi the treatment in the Nibelungenlied.
This is consonant widi the German (radier than Norse) versions of the legend we
find elsewhere in the saga.

volsungasaga
The Volsungasaga was written in Iceland sometime in the thirteenth century. It
is a relatively pedestrian retelling of die story of the Volsung family from its
origins to its final end in the story of Svanhild.

The saga begins with a genealogy leading from the god Odin to King
Volsung, the father of Sigmund. Volsung’s twin children, Sigmund and
Signy, are featured in the first real story. Signy is forced to marry a king
named Siggeir, who shows his gratitude to the Volsung family by killing
the king and all of his sons. Sigmund manages to escape to the forest,
where he lives in a cave. Signy sends her sons by Siggeir to Sigmund, but
they fail a test of courage and he kills them at their mother’s behest. Signy
then arranges to exchange shapes with a sorceress and spends three nights
with Sigmund. The child of this union is Sinfjodi, who aids his father in
avenging Volsung’s killing by burning Siggeir and his men in their hall.
Signy comes out of die burning hall to tell Sigmund he is Sinfjotli’s father
and dien returns to die beside her hated husband. After a number of
adventures involving Sigmund’s second son, Helgi Hundingsbani, Sinfjdtli
is poisoned by his stepmother. Sigmund is killed in batde when his sword
is shattered by contact with Odin’s spear.
Sigmund’s second wife, Hjordis, bears Sigurd after Sigmund’s deatii.
Sigurd is raised by a smitii named Regin, who tells the story of his own
family. He had had a brother named Ottr, who was in the habit of spending
his time in the shape of an otter. Odin and Loki killed the otter and
afterward sought shelter with Ottr’s father Hreidmar. The father demanded
compensation for his son. The gods were forced to cover completely the
flayed skin of die otter with gold. Loki then went to a waterfall, where a
pike named Andvari had a great horde of gold. Loki took all the gold
including a ring, which would have allowed Andvari to build up his
treasure again. Andvari cursed the ring when Loki took it away. When
Hreidmar had been compensated, his son Fafnir killed him and took the
gold, leaving Regin fatherless and destitute. Fafnir then turned himself into
a dragon to guard the gold, and Regin now wants Sigurd to kill him so
Regin can be avenged for his father’s death and receive his just portion of
the settlement for his other brother. Sigurd agrees to do so, but only after
he has avenged his own father.
After killing all those involved in the batde against his father Sigurd
goes and kills the dragon. After tasting the dragon’s blood he understands
the language of the birds, who warn him about Regin’s treacherous
intentions. Sigurd kills Regin and rides away with all die treasure.
Attracted by a bright glow, he comes to a rampart of shining shields inside of which is a sleeping
warrior. He cuts open the armor and discovers that it is a woman, Brynhild. The saga attempts to
combine several different versions of the story, but they all end with Brynhild and Sigurd
exchanging vows to marry no one else.
Sigurd goes to live at die court of King Gjuki, his sons Gunnar,
 Guttorm, and Hogni, and his daughter, Gudrun. Gjuki’s wife, Grimhild,
brews an “ale of forgetfulness,” and Sigurd forgets his oaths to Brynhild
and marries Gudrun. Sigurd agrees to help Gunnar win Brynhild (who is
now depicted as the daughter of Budli and sister of Atli). Gunnar is unable
to pass through the flame barrier around her hall, so Sigurd exchanges
shapes with him. Sigurd spends three nights disguised as Gunnar with
Brynhild with a drawn sword between them. Later, while bathing in the
river, Gudrun and Brynhild quarrel about their husbands. Gudrun shows
Brynhild the ring Sigurd had taken from her while disguised as Gunnar,
making the deception public. Brynhild claims that Sigurd had betrayed
Gunnar’s trust while disguised and urges that he be killed. Guttomi kills
Sigurd in his bed, but the victim is able to throw the sword back at his
killer and avenge himself. Brynhild laughs when she hears Gudrun’s cry,
tells Gunnar she had lied about Sigurd’s betrayal, and kills herself, joining
Sigurd on his funeral pyre.
Gudrun is married against her will to Alii, who desires the treasure that
had belonged to Sigurd. He invites the surviving brothers Gunnar and
Hogni to a feast, where they are attacked and killed. (The narration here
attempts to follow both the Atlakmda and the Atlamdl from the Poetic
Edda, see below). Gudrun avenges her brothers by killing her sons by Atil
and serving them to their father at his victory feast. When Atli is asleep,
she kills him and burns down die hall.
Gudrun attempts to kill herself by wading into the sea, but she is buoyed
up and washes ashore in the realm of a king named Jonak, who marries
her. Her daughter by Sigurd, Svanhild, is married to King Jormunrek
(Ermanaric), who has her trampled by horses following trumped-up
charges of adultery. Gudrun goads her three sons to go and kill Jormunrek,
but they quarrel along the way and the half-brother is killed. When they
attack the king, they are able to hack off his arms and legs, but are kept
from killing him by the king’s retainers. They lament that the king would
now be dead if they had not killed their brother. They are killed by stoning
since weapons cannot cut them.

The saga draws most of its material from the poems collected in the Poetic
Edda and must be considered a secondary source for the legends except in those
areas in which the Poetic Edda is lacking. It provides us with a clear view of
the way the Nibelung story as a whole was understood in thirteenth-century
Iceland and thus allows us to see the poems of the Poetic Edda as they related
to the central story.1 The writing of the Volsungasaga may well have proceeded
from the same antiquarian interest that apparendy drove the collection of poems
in the Poetic Edda, the retelling of heathen mythology in Snorri’s Edda, and the
composition of the great historical sagas.

1 Dietrich is absent from all Icelandic versions of the legendary material

except for the brief mention in die Poetic Edda, see below, p. 119.

The Vdlsungasaga is the only source for many specifically Norse aspects of
the legend, particularly die mythological connection between the human heroes
and the gods. Although many Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse genealogies of kings
begin with Odin, this is not a feature of any of the other versions of the
Nibelung legend. Without additional sources it is impossible to determine
whether the divine origin of Sigurd has any basis in the legendary tradition.
The saga appears with Ragnars saga Eoftbrokar in the only surviving
medieval manuscript of both works. The stories are connected by having
Ragnar, from whom the kings of Norway are descended, marry Aslaug, the
daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild. This linking is clearly an attempt to bring
together all the known legendary stories in one grand synthesis (and to have the
Norwegian kings descended from mytiiological ancestors). We can see the same
endeavor in the PidSrekssaga, using virtually all the German sources known in
Norway.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

The Saga of the Vohungs: Together with Excerpts from the Nornageststhattr and
Three Chapters from the Prose Edda. Tr. George K. Anderson. Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1982.
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. Tr. Jesse
L. Byock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Volsunga Saga. Ed. Uwe Ebel. Frankfurt: Haagand Herchen, 1983.
Volsunga Saga. Ed. and tr. R.G.Finch. London: Nelson, 1965. Facing page
translation with original text.
“Die Geschichte von den Volsungen.” Islandische Heldenromane. Tr. Paul
Herrmann. Jena: Diedenchs, 1923. 37-136. German translation often cited in
secondary literature.
STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. The Legend ofBrynhild. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1980.
Finch, R. G. “Atlakvida, Atlamal, and Volsunga Saga: A Study in Combination
and Integration.” Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel
Turville-Petre. Eds. Ursula Dronke et al. Odense: Odense University Press,
1981. 123-138.
Heinrichs, Anne. “Brynhild als Typ der prapatriarchalen Frau.” Arbeiten %ur
Skandimvistik. Ed. Heinrich Beck.. Frankfiirt: Lang, 1985. 45-66.

Nornagests PAttr
The story of Nomagest (“Guest of the Noms”) is found in two manuscripts of a
saga of King Olaf Tryggvason (r. in Norway 995—1000) written early in the
fourteenth century in Iceland.

A mysterious stranger appears at the court of Olaf Tryggvason in the

year 998. He asks for hospitality and promises to earn his keep by telling
stories and playing the harp. He tells of his past adventures stretching over
a supernatural lifetime of three hundred years. He summarizes the story of
Sigurd’s youth with Regin, the smith. He claims to have been present at
the batde against the sons of Hunding which he narrates in great detail, and
follows it with a summary of the story of Sigurd’s death, including both
versions (being killed in bed and being killed in the forest) and even
referring to a third version in which Gunnar and Hogni take Sigurd with
them to an assembly and kill him there. He is understandably unsure about
Sigurd’s death, since he only heard about it from others. Nornagest also
spent time with Ragnar lodbrok and other heroes. His final story concerns
his own infancy, when two female seers prophesied a long and happy life
for him. The third seer was incensed at being excluded and prophesied that
he would live only until the candle at his head burned down. The first seer
extinguished the candle and gave it to Gest’s mother, who passed it on to
him. At the end of the story Gest accepts baptism, lights his candle, and
dies when it bums down and goes out.

This odd litde story cannot be seen as an independent source for the legend of
Sigurd, since virtually everything in it is also contained in the Volsungasaga,
but it does show something about the attitudes of medieval Icelanders toward
these old stories. The passage in which Gest tells three different versions of
Sigurd’s death is particularly interesting, because it shows a restraint in
changing oral versions of a story, even if one or more of them is manifesdy
incorrect. The frame story of Gest’s long life, conversion, and death ties in well
with the theme of the saga as a whole, which presents Olaf as the first Christian
missionary king of Norway.
A translation of portions of this short text is included in Anderson’s
translation of the Volsungasaga cited above.

EDITION
Nornagests Pdttr. Fornaldar Sogur NorSur/anda. Ed. Gudni Jonsson. 3 vols.
Reykjavik: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954. Vol. 1, 305-335.

NLFLUNGA SAGA IN THE PLDREKSSAGA

As was indicated in the section on the PiSrekssaga, most of the Nibelung legend
is included within the story of Dietrich. The longest independent section of the
saga is the story of the fall of the Nibelungs, called here Nijlunga saga.
The story follows the Nibelungenlied so closely that it is necessary only to point out the
discrepancies to get a faidy complete version of the story. The first of these lies in die motivation
for die invitation. Here the motive of avarice on Attila’s part is added to Grimhild’s desire for
revenge. After the Niflungs arrive, Grimhild sends out her child to strike Hogni in order to get the
fighting started. (In the Nibelungenlied it is the news of the killing of the squires that starts the
batde—Hagen then strikes off the boy’s head.) In the saga I&gt;idrek enters the fray to avenge the
killing of Rodingeir (Riiedeger), not to bring the fighting to an end. He fights a very long batde
with Hogni that ends when he loses his composure and breathes fire at his opponent. Hogni
surrenders and is allowed to spend his last night alive with a woman with whom an heir is
conceived who will avenge him. Upon seeing Kriemhild thrusting a firebrand into the moudi of
her brodier Gisler to see whedier he was still alive (he died as a result), Eidrek, widi Attila’s
permission, kills her.

The close similarity of diis portion of die Pidrekssaga is the most persuasive
evidence for a written epic source for bodi this saga and the second half of the
Nibelungenlied. The major disagreement among scholars has been the
localization of this epic version. Heusler assumed it to be Austrian witiiout any
real evidence, but die widespread acceptance of his family tree of die
Nibelungenlied has swept most competing ideas away. Just as plausible is the
idea of a version from the Rhineland suggested by Heinrich Hempel and others.
Poetic Edda
The Poetic Edda is a manuscript collection of mythological and heroic poetry in
Old Norse that was written down in Iceland sometime around 1270. The
collectors of the poems were aware of the distinction between mythological and
heroic poetry and marked the beginning the section devoted to heroic poetry
with a large initial. The preponderance of the heroic poetry is devoted to the
Nibelung legend, while Dietrich is only mentioned in two of the prose bridges
and in one of the poems (The Third Lay of Gudrun). The combination of
Nibelung and Dietrich legends we know from German sources (including the
Pidrekssaga) seems to be almost unknown in these purely Norse versions.
The manuscript is missing at least one gathering in the midst of the Sigurd
poems. This gap has occasioned a vast amount of speculation about the contents
of the missing poems.
None of the poems can be dated with certainty before the beginning of the
thirteenth century, but die antiquity of the materials has led many scholars to
date some of the poems to a very early time. If our reconstruction of the origin
of Eddie poetry is correct, then the oldest poems can be no older than the ninth
or tenth centuries, i.e. after the establishment of skaldic verse in Iceland and the
Scandinavian courts. The latest poems are almost certainly products of the
twelfth or thirteenth century. Most scholars would date the poems into this
three- to four-hundred-year period, but few would agree on the criteria we can
use to date them more precisely.
A characteristic of the collection is the inclusion of several parallel poems on
each of the most important legends. There are thus at least two poems each on
Helgi Hundigsbana, Sigurd, Adi, and Gudrun. It will be easier to discuss these
if we group them under dieir topics.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

Edda. Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmalern. Ed. Gustav
Neckel. 4th ed. by Hans Kuhn. Heidelberg: Winter, 1962. Standard edition.
Poems of the Elder Edda. Tr. Patricia Terry. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
The Poetic Edda. Ed. and tr. Ursula Dronke. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969.
Exemplary edition and translation of a small portion of the whole text.
STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “The Lays in the Lacuna of Codex Regius.” Speculum
Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre. Eds. Ursula
Dronke et al. Odense: Odense University Press, 1981. 6-26.
Beck, Heinrich. “Eddaliedforschung heute: Bemerkungen zur Heldenlied-
Diskussion.” Helden und Heldensage: Otto Gschwaniler %um 60.
Geburtstag. Eds. Hermann Reichert and Gvinter Zimmermann. Vienna:
Fassbaender, 1990. 1—24.
Harris, Joseph. “Eddie Poetry.” Old Norse—Icelandic Literature: A Critical
Guide. Eds. Carol J. Clover and John Lindow. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1985. 68—156.
Harris, Joseph. “Eddie Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages
in the Helgi
Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance.” Edda: A Collection of
Essays. Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason. Winnipeg:
University of Manitoba Press, 1983. 210-242.
Kellogg, Robert L. “The Prehistory of Eddie Poetry.” PSMA, 187-99.
Kuhn, Hans. “Heldensage vor und auBerhalb der Dichtung.” Zur germamsch-
deutschen Heldensage. Ed. Karl Hauck. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1965. 173-194.
Neckel, Gustav. Beitrdge %ur Eddaforschung mit Exkursen ur Heldensage.
Dortmund: Ruhfus, 1908.
Sigurdsson, Gisli. “On the Classification of Eddie Heroic Poetry in View of the
Oral Theory.” PSMA, 245-255.

Helgi Hundingsbani
Two lays from the Poetic Edda concern themselves with Helgi, a half-brother to
Sigurd and Sinfjotli. He defeats a king named Hunding and falls in love with
Sigrun, a Valkyrie. She tells him she cannot marry him unless he defeats
another suitor, a king named Hodbrodd. He does this and marries Sigrun. The
first of the two lays ends at this point, but the second includes a grisly
continuation in which Helgi is killed and returns to Sigrun as a ghost. She goes
to meet him at his grave mound and soon dies. Both poems seem to be
defective. The story of Helgi does not seem to spill over into the rest of the
Volsung legend. There is no mention of Helgi in other versions of the story
(except for the Volsungasaga, which is dependent on these poems).

STUDIES
Harris, Joseph. “Eddie Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages
in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance.” Edda: A
Collection of Essays. Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason.
Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983. 210-242.
Harris, Joseph. “Satire and the Heroic Life, Two Studies: (Helgakvida
Hundingsbana I, 18, and Bjorn Hi’tdaelakappi’s Gramagaflim).” Oral
Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles
Foley. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1981. 322-340.

Sigurd and Brynhild

The lays regarding Sigurd and Brynhild make up a considerable portion of the
Poetic Edda, and it is clear that this complex was of great importance to the
collector. The stories follow generally the pattern we find in the Volsungasaga,
which seems to have used the narrative poems on Sigurd’s life and career as its
major source.
The section involving Sigurd begins with what is almost certainly one of the
younger poems of the collection, the Gripispd (“Prophecy of Gripir”). It is a
prophecy concerning Sigurd’s career placed in the mouth of the hero’s maternal
uncle, Gripir. The poem jumps from high point to high point in Sigurd’s career
as the young man forces his uncle onward through the future events, including
eventually the stories of treachery and death that form the central events of his
story. A dream and its interpretation or a prophecy regarding the hero’s future
are fairly standard features of Norse narrative in general and the fomaldarsogur
in particular.
Keginsmal (“The Story of Regin”) tells the same story of the killing of Ottr,
the robbing of Andvari, and the killing of Hreidmar we find in the
Volsungasaga, word for word in some parts. A version of diis poem was clearly
the source for the story in the saga. This section of the Edda concludes with the
batde with the sons of Hunding that is told in such detail in the tale of
Nomagest (see above).
 Fafnismal continues the story of the young Sigurd with a passage in prose
that tells of Regin’s urging Sigurd to kill the dragon Fafnir. The mortally
wounded dragon addresses his killer in verses. He warns him that the treasure
he has won will bring him an early death. Along widi specific prophecies
having to do with Sigurd there are a number of strophes that seem to come from
wisdom poems having nothing to do widi Sigurd. After Fafnir’s death Regin
reappears and clearly expects to share the spoils of Sigurd’s victory. Sigurd
roasts the dragon’s heart and, upon tasting the blood, is able to understand the
language of the birds. They warn him that Regin plans to kill him and advise
him to kill the dwarf instead, which Sigurd does. They then tell him of a maiden
who awaits him at Gjuki’s court and of a sleeping warrior maiden.
The manuscript continues without a break into a new section that is called
Sigrdrijamal in the editions. Sigurd sees a bright light on top of a hill and finds
“a man” asleep in full armor. He removes the helmet and discovers that it is a
woman. He frees her from the armor, and, after finding out who had awakened
her, she greets the day and the world. She says that she is called Sigrdrifa,
which means “victory driver,” and diat she was a valkyrie who had been
punished by Odin for disobedience. Most of die text is occupied first with
general advice concerning magic runes and later with proper and wise behavior.
In the middle of all this is a short passage that suggests that Sigurd and the
valkyrie swear to marry. There is no suggestion that Sigrdrifa is Brynhild, but
the author of the Volsungasaga clearly thought she was.
The missing part of the manuscript interrupts the text at this point. Following
the lacuna is die Brot af SigurdarkviSa (“Fragment of a Sigurd Lay”), which
was once probably the longer of the two Sigurd poems. It begins with the
murder plans of Gunnar and Hogni. Hogni opposes the murder, but Guttorm is
given the flesh of a wolf, a serpent, and a vulture to make him savage enough to
carry out die deed. Sigurd is killed in the forest, and birds prophesy the death of
Gunnar and Hogni in Atli’s court. In die night after the murder Brynhild enters
the hall and tells Gunnar and die others diat they have done a dreadful deed and
that she had lied about Sigurd’s having betrayed them. A short prose passage at
the end discusses the different versions of Sigurd’s death.
After the First Lay of GtiSrun (see below) we find the SigurdarkviSa inn
skammi (“Shorter Lay of Sigurd “j, a second telling of the story of Sigurd at the
court of the Gjukungs. Unfortunately this version is also very brief in its
treatment of the winning of Brynhild. There does not seem to have been any
betrothal between Sigurd and Brynhild, and the narration here is only at pains to
tell that Sigurd had laid the sword between them on the nights when they lay
together. We are not told why Sigurd spends three nights with Brynhild. Here
the murder is driven only by Brynhild’s desire for Sigurd. Guttorm is also the
killer here, but the version is the one told in the Volsungasaga, in which Sigurd
is killed in his bed and is able to avenge himself by throwing his sword at his
attacker. Most of the poem is taken up by Brynhild’s long speech in which she
foretells the future of Gunnar and Gudrun.
The section devoted to Sigurd and Brynhild concludes with the Helreid
Brynhildar (“Brynhild’s Ride to Hel”), a fantasy on the question of Brynhild’s
guilt in the catastrophes that have been inflicted or will be inflicted on Gunnar
and his clan. Here Brynhild identifies herself with the Sigrdrifa of the
Sigrdrijamal by citing the events in the Valkyrie’s career as events in her own
life. The poem is considered to be late and not to be useful as a separate source
for the legends.

STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “Beyond Epic and Romance: SigurdarkviSa in Meiri
Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in Honor of Hermann Palsson on His 65th birthday,
26th May 1986. Eds. Rudolf Simek, Jonas Kristjansson, and Hans Bekker-
Nielsen. Cologne: Bohlau, 1986. 1—12.
Andersson, Theodore M. The Legend ofBrynhild. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1980.
Bumke, Joachim. “Die Quellen der Brunhildfabel im Nibelungenlied.”
Luphorion 54 (1960): 1-38.
Classen, Albrecht. “The Defeat of the Matriarch Brunhild in the Nibelungenlied,
with Some Thoughts on Matriarchy As Evinced in Literary Texts.” AGSN,
89-110.
Ehrismann, Otfrid. “Die Fremde am Hof. Brunhild und die Philosophic der
Geschichte.” Begegnungmit dem ’Fremden.’ Grenvpn—Traditionen—
Vergleiche. Akten des VIII Internationarlen Gerwanisten-Kongresses. Ed.
Ejiro Iwasaki. Tokyo, 1990. Munich: Iudicium, 1991. 320-331.
Haimerl, Edgar. “Sigurd—ein Held des Mittelalters. Eine textimmanente
Interpretation der Jungsigurddichtung.” Alvissmdll (1993): 81-104.
Nelson, Charles G. “Virginity (De)Valued: Kriemhild, Brunhild, and All That.”
AGSN, 111— 130.
Newmann, Gail. “The Two Briinhilds?” ABdG 16 (1981): 69-78.
Ploss, Emil. Siegfried—Sigurd. Der Drachenkdmpfer. Cologne: Bohlau, 1966.
Reichert, Hermann. “Die Brynhild-Lieder der Edda im europaischen Kontext.”
PSMA, 71-95.
Toman, Lore. “Der Aufstand der Frauen. Ein strukturalistischer Blick auf die
Brunhild-Sage.” LiteraturundKritik 131 (1979): 25-32.

Gudrun
There are four poems that are identified with Gudrun. The first of these
(Gudrunarkvida in fyrsta) is something of a fantasy on Gud run’s grief after
Sigurd’s death. Gudrun sits over Sigurd’s body, unable to weep. The other
women at the court tell of their sorrows until Gudrun is finally able to pour out
her tears. She complains of her sorrow and accuses her brothers of having killed
Sigurd for Fafnir’s gold. The poem concludes widi a condemnation of Brynhild
followed by a short prose passage in which we are told that Gudrun fled the
court seeking solitude and spent three and a half years with t&gt;ora, the
daughter of the Danish king. The same passages tells that Brynhild killed
herself in order to be burned with Sigurd.
The second Gudrunarkvida is perhaps more interesting. It assumes a version
of Sigurd’s death that is otherwise mentioned only in Nornagests Pdttr. Sigurd
had ridden with Gunnar and his brothers to a Tiling (assembly) and was killed
there. Gudrun wanders through the woods in search of his body. She eventually
arrives at the Danish court, where she spends three and a half years with
I&gt;ora, the daughter of the Danish king. Grimhild, her mother, comes and
prepares a draught of forgetfulness so that she will accept compensation and
marry Atli. She resists remarriage, particularly to Brynhild’s brother,
Apparendy under the influence of the draught she relents and is returned home
to marry Atli. The poem concludes with a strange sequence of strophes in
which the death of Gunnar and Hogni and the dreadful events that followed are
foretold.
The third GutirunarkviSa involves an event at Atli’s court. Atli’s former
mistress Herkja accuses Gudrun of having had improper relations with Eidrek
(who appears in the Edda only here and in the prose section of the second
GuSrunarkvibd). Gudrun undergoes the ordeal of boiling water and proves her
innocence. Her accuser fails the ordeal and is banished. The events of this poem
do not fit into the Adi story as it is told elsewhere because they take place after
the death of Hogni and Gunnar and before Atli’s death. Both Adi poems have
Gudrun’s revenge follow immediately after the death of her brothers.
The fourth Gudrun poem is discussed below in connection with the
Hambismal, p. 126.

STUDIES
Glendinning, Robert J. “Gudrunaqvida jorna. A Reconstruction and
Interpretation.” Edda: A Collection of Essays. Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and
Haraldur Bessason. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983. 258-282
Yestergaard, Elisabeth. “Gudrun/Kriemhild—soster eller husfru?” Arkiv for
nordisk filologi (1984): 63-78.

Oddrun
Oddrun does not seem to be a figure in the traditional legend, but she is
mentioned in the Short hay of Sigurd and in one of the prose bridges, and there
is a lament (Oddrunargrdtti) associated with her in the Edda. This poem
follows the third GudrunarkwSa in the manuscript. Oddrun is the sister of Atli
and Brynhild. After Brynhild’s death Gunnar seeks her hand but is refused by
Adi. Gunnar and Oddrun meet secredy but are discovered by Atli’s men. When
Hogni is killed and Gunnar put in the snake pit, Oddrun sets out to save him,
but Atli’s mother in the form of a serpent has already killed him. The poem is
clearly an attempt to tell the story of the fall of the Nibelungs from a different
point of view.

Atli
The two poems that tell of Atli’s invitation to his brothers-in-law, their
treacherous murder, and Gudrun’s revenge follow the same story quite closely,
but their emphases and narrative styles are quite distinct from one another.
There is general agreement among most scholars that the A.tlakviba is among
the older poems in the collection. It seems to reflect the earliest known version
of the story and to contain the most linguistic and stylistic indicators of early
composition. The poem is marked “the Greenlandic” in the manuscript, but
most scholars feel that this label is simply a contamination from the Atlamdl,
which is also so indicated and may actually come from Greenland.
The poem is one of the broadest of die Eddie narratives, but it is still highly
economical in comparison with any of the older materials from England or the
Continent. Ursula Dronke (13ff.) divides the narration into three “acts.” The
first consists of the invitation with its secret warning to the brothers (a wolf s
hair wrapped around the rings sent as a token), the farewell celebration, and the
voyage to Atli’s land.
The second act begins as the brodiers are fettered and the gold is demanded
of them. Gunnar refuses as long as Hogni is still alive. The trembling heart of
the coward Hjalli is brought before Gunnar, who recognizes the trick, and the
Huns go back and bring Hogni’s heart. Gunnar triumphandy announces that the
Rhine will keep the “inheritance of the Niflungs” as he is taken to the snake pit,
where he plays the harp as he awaits death.
The third act is devoted to Gud run’s vengeance. She invites the Huns to
partake of a festival meal. When they are suitably satiated and drunk, she tells
Atli that he has been eating the flesh of his sons. She then stabs him in his bed
and bums the hall down around them all.
The Atlamdl is less economical in its structure. The warning wolfs hair has
been replaced by runes subtiy altered by the treacherous messenger. Hogni’s
and Gunnar’s wives have dreams foretelling the catastrophe, but their husbands
interpret the dreams harmlessly. When they arrive at Atli’s farm (the events
seem to be in Iceland or Greenland rather than in the rich courts of Europe), the
messenger breaks down and reveals his treachery. He is summarily killed by
Hogni and Gunnar. The two are joined by their sister in the battle that takes
place in the hall. This time there is no mention of treasure as a reason for the
strife. The killing of Hogni concentrates on the cowardice of Hjalli (who is
spared at Hogni’s request), and Gunnar ends up in the snakepit playing the harp,
this time with his toes because his hands are bound.
Gudrun’s vengeance gains an almost tender scene with her sons before they
are killed, and the widespread motif of drinking vessels made out of skulls is
used here very effectively to link the death of the boys to Atli’s drunkenness.
The poem closes with a long dialogue between Gudrun and the dying Atli.
The Atlamal seems almost to point toward the ballad style, with its extensive
dialogues, dream visions, and brief treatment of the narrative itself. The style
and language point to a relatively late composition for the poem and most
scholars have leaned toward the eleventh or twelfth century.

STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “Did the Poet of Adamal Know Atlaqvida?” Edda: A
Collection of Essays. Eds. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason.
 Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983. 234-257.
Finch, R. G. “Atlakvida, Atlamal, and Volsunga Saga: A Study in Combination
and Integration.” Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel
Turville-Petre. Eds. Ursula Dronke et al. Odense: Odense University Press,
1981. 123-138.
Kroesen, Riti. “More than Just Human: Some Stylistic Remarks on the Old Atli
Lay.” Neophi/o/ogus 76 (1992): 409-424.

Hamdismal
After the death of Atli Gudrun sets out to drown herself, but the waves carry her
to the kingdom of Jonak, who marries her and fathers at least two sons, Hamdir
and Sorli, with her. A third son of Jonak, Erp, seems to be a half-brother.
Sigurd’s daughter Svanhild is married to King Jormunrek. She is accused of
adultery with her stepson Randver, and Jormunrek has her trampled by horses.
Gudrun learns of this and goads her sons to seek vengeance in the poem called
Gubrunarhvot (“Gud run’s Goading”). This poem also includes her
remembrance of the sufferings she has endured. It concludes when she is laid
out to be burned and calls on Sigurd to come from Hel to fetch her.
The HamSismdl proper tells of the journey of Hamdir, Sorli, and Erp to
avenge Svanhild. On the way Hamdir and Sorli quarrel with Erp. He is asked
how he will help diem. He says diat he will help them like one foot the other or
one hand the other. They interpret this as mockery and kill him. When they
attack Jormunrek in his hall, they manage to hack off the king’s feet and his
hands but are unable to reach his head to finish the job. They realize that the
head would be off if Erp had been there. The men in the hall stone the two
because they are protected by magic from cutting blades. This story is probably
the oldest element in this book, since it goes back to the death of Ermanaric in
375 (see Ermanaric above, p. 18), but it is also one of the most recent additions
to the Nibelung legend, since the combination of the Svanhild story with Sigurd
and Gudrun is found only in relatively late texts from Iceland.

STUDIES
Andersson, Theodore M. “Cassiodorus and the Gothic Legend of Ermanaric.”
Euphorion (1963): 28-43.
Boer, R. C. Die Sagen von Ermanarich und Dietrich von Bern. Halle:
 Waisenhaus, 1910.
Brady, Caroline. The Legends of Ermanaric. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1943.

Snorra Edda
The name “Edda” was not originally attached to the collection of poems we
most often associate with it. The name was the invention of Snorri Sturluson
(1179— 1241), the one writer of heroic narrative about whom we know more
than just a name. He was a prominent political figure at a time of great turmoil
in Iceland. In spite of his many political and business activities he was able to
write some of the most important works of Icelandic literature. Among diese is
the handbook for poets we call Snorra Edda (Snorri’s Edda) or the Prose Edda.
Much of the book is concerned with providing a narrative framework for the
surviving poems about pagan gods, but several heroic matters are told here as
well. The story of Sigurd is told very briefly in a few pages. It does not differ
materially (except in brevity) from the presentation of die same story in die
Volsungasaga.

EDITION AND TRANSLATION

Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jonsson. Copenhagen, 1931.
Snorri Studuson. Edda. Tr. Anthony Faulkes. London: Dent, 1987. Only
available translation of entire work; Nibelung legend 101-106.

Rosengar ten zu Worms

Rosengarten Worms was written down in the mid-thirteenth century. The poem
is composed in four-line strophes similar to the Nibelungenstrophe.

The setting is the kingdom of Worms along the Rhine. Kriemhild

possesses a magnificent rose garden that is guarded by twelve warriors,
among whom are her father, Gibech, her brothers, Gemot and Gunther, the
warrior Hagen, and Siegfried, the celebrated hero.
Kriemhild wishes to challenge Dietrich and his warriors and employs
one of her ladies-in-waiting, Bersabe, as a bribe in order to have Sabin, the
duke of Brabant, to act as her messenger. Sabin rides out with five hundred
men. At Dietrich’s court a hostage from Worms, a lady, identifies Sabin
 and escorts him to Dietrich. Kriemhild challenges Dietrich to assemble
twelve men to fight the twelve guardians of the rose garden. The winner(s)
will receive a rose wreath and a kiss from Kriemhild. This message is not
well received. Dietrich reacts angrily and the guests are in danger, but
Hildebrand intercedes and they are treated well. After the guests depart,
Dietrich seeks Hildebrand’s counsel in choosing his warriors. The twelfth
man is the monk Ilsan, who is Hildebrand’s brother. The warriors visit the
monastery where Ilsan receives permission to fight.
Sixty thousand of Dietrich’s men ride toward the Rhine. Gibech rides
out with five hundred men to welcome them. Dietrich still does not want to
fight over the rose garden. For eight days a truce is declared, and Dietrich
and his men are honored guests.
Twelve batdes occur involving the following matched opponents: 1)
Pusolt-Wolfhart; 2) Ortwin-Sigestap; 3) Schrutan-Heime; 4) Aspiran-
Witege; 5) Studenvuhs-Ilsan; 6) Walther-Diedeip; 7) Volker-Ortwin; 8)
Hagen-Eckehart; 9) Gemot-Helmschrot; 10) Gunther-Amelolt; 11) Gibech-
Hildebrand; 12) Siegfried-Dietrich.
Dietrich’s men all overcome their opponents, but Dietrich once again
shows a reluctance to fight. Ilsan returns to the rose garden to defeat an
additional fifty-two foes in order to receive fifty-two rose wreaths and
kisses from Kriemhild for his fellow monks. Gibech is forced to become a
vassal of Dietrich. Dietrich and his warriors return home to a celebration,
and tiien they go their separate ways.

This poem reunites the chief figures from Worms with those from Bern. The
main motifs are the rose garden and the batde between Siegfried and Dietrich.
The motif of the rose garden surrounded by a thread also occurs in Laurin,
where the rose garden is also the site of a batde.
Rosengarten Worms seems to have been heavily influenced by the
Nibelungenlied. One striking example is its vilification of Kriemhild. Like its
literary predecessor it blames Kriemhild for the death of many warriors (see
opening lines). Further she is portrayed as a haughty and arrogant woman. The
poet even employs the infamous Nibelungenlied word valandinne (she-devil) to
describe Kriemhild. This antifemale attitude is reinforced by Dietrich’s negative
reaction to Kriemhild’s public challenge. Dietrich’s stance is also a rejection of
the courtly-knightly concept of adventure. It is worth noting that Kriemhild
alone owns the rose garden, which places its twelve guardians under her
control. The vilification of Kriemhild, then, could be a reaction to a woman
exercising power and independence. At one point Kriemhild is portrayed taking
delight in the suffering of the battling warriors. The poet makes it clear that
Kriemhild is responsible for the pain and suffering. One major discrepancy
between the two poems is that Siegfried is portrayed as Kriemhild’s fiance in
the Rosengarten, a role he never plays in the Nibelungenlied.
The assembling of the two mighty groups of warriors and the subsequent
twelve batdes are the focus of this poem. The Siegfried-Dietrich batde is the
climax of the series. These batdes are formulaic; each is told in essentially the
same words. Siegfried appears here as an ally of Gibech, not as Kriemhild’s
husband. After cajoling (and in one case bribing) his eleven chosen warriors
Dietrich balks when he himself must fight. Only Hildebrand’s deception
(allowing Wolfhart to report him dead to Dietrich) prompts Dietrich to face
Siegfried. The poem shows vestiges of courtliness, but the battles themselves
depict a more precourdy ethic. While the giants are summarily slain, the
warrior- knights are spared, revealing a double standard. The poet appears to
poking fun at the notion of the “love reward” when he has the monk Ilsan fight
fifty-two opponents in order to demand fifty-two kisses from Kriemhild, who
must endure having her cheek rubbed raw because of his stubbly face. Absent
from the Nibelungen side are Giselher, the youngest brother, and Uote, the
queen- mother.
Within the context of the narrative time frame of the Dietrich cycle,
Rosengarten Worms occurs before Dietrich’s forced exile, since Heime and
Witege are portrayed as loyal followers of Dietrich. At least eighteen
manuscripts, many fragmentary, show the popularity of the poem in the Middle
Ages. Some of the versions differ gready from one another.

EDITIONS
Die Gedicbte vom Rosengarten Worms. Ed. Georg Holz. Halle: Niemeyer, 1893.
DerRosengarte. Ed. Wilhelm Grimm. Gottingen: Dietrich, 1836.
Spottlied, Marchen undHeldenlied vom Rosengarten. Ed. Hennk Becker. Halle:
Niemeyer, 1955.

STUDIES
Benedikt, Erich. Untersuchungen den Epen vom Wormser Rosengarten.
Unpublished dissertation, Vienna, 1951.
Boer, R. C. “Die Dichtungen von dem Kampfe im Rosengarten.” Arkiv 24
 (1908): 103—155, 260-291.
Boor, Helmut de. “Die literansche Stellung des Gedichtes vom Rosengarten in
Worms.” BGDSL (T) 81 (1959): 371-391.
Brestowsky, Carl Der Rosengarten Worms. Versucb einer Wiederherstellung der
Urgesta/t. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1920.
Grimm, Wilhelm. “Bruchstucke aus einem unbekannten Gedicht vom
Rosengarten.” Abhandlungen der phil-hist. KI. der konigUcben Akademie der
Wissenschaften Berlin 1859. Berlin, 1860. 483-500.
Klein, Klaus. “Eine wiedergefundene Handschrift mit Laurin und Rosengarten.”
ZDA 113 (1984): 214-228.
Lunzer, Justus. “Rosengartenmotive.” BGDSL 50 (1927): 161-213.
Nadler, Josef. “Goldhort/Rosengarten/Gral.” Festschrift fur Dietrich Kratik.
Horn: Berger, 1954. 111-129.

Das Lied vom Hurnen Seyfrid

The latest version of the Nibelung legend that can be considered in any way
medieval is this poem in strophes (“Hie Song of Hom-skinned Seyfrid”) that is
transmitted only in printed popular books of the sixteenth century and later. The
text is garbled and occasionally unintelligible. There seems to have been an
attempt to meld several different versions to produce a new text, but the
“editor” of the surviving text seems to have had litde luck in his endeavor to
provide a coherent narrative.

Seyfrid, the son of Sigmund, is a prince, but he is so badly behaved that

his parents send him away to be raised by a smith at the edge of the woods.
He wreaks so much havoc in the smithy that he is sent off to the forest in
the expectation that a dragon there would make an end of him.
He kills the dragon and then attacks a vast number of dragons and other
monsters by piling up trees, which he then sets afire. The monsters melt in
the fire, and Seyfrid applies the molten dragon skin to his own to produce
die horny covering that would protect him from all weapons everywhere
on his body but his back, where he cannot reach.
He then sets out for Worms, where he serves King Gybech and wins his
daughter.
 The story flashes back to the moment when a great dragon steals
Krimhilt from her family’s casde in Worms. The dragon turns into a man
briefly and tells her that he will wed her when he next assumes human
form in five years and diat she will accompany him to Hell. Seyfrid is
introduced anew, and he sets out to rescue the maiden from her captor.
He follows his dogs into the forest, where he encounters a dwarf named
Euglein, who tells him who his father and mother are and that a beautiful
maiden named Krimhilt is being held captive by the dragon on the
mountain.
On the way he encounters a giant named Kuprian, who has the key to
the dragon’s lair. Most of the poem is devoted to the batdes between
Seyfrid and Kuprian. Seyfrid eventually kills the giant and turns to face the
dragon, whom he also dispatches.
The dwarf tells him of his future, that he will be killed and that his wife
will avenge him. The poem concludes with the return to Worms and the
beginnings of a conspiracy against Seyfrid. We are told to read about that
story in a poem referred to as “Seyfrid’s Wedding.”

We can see all kinds of different versions of the Siegfried story thrown
together here. We can also see the tendency to tell stereotyped giant- and
dragon- killing stories about heroes, even if they do not fit into the hero’s
biography as the audience may have known it from other sources.
Since it is unlikely that the Norse versions of Siegfried’s story could have
become known in Germany, the presence in the Hurnen Seyfrid of many
elements from the version of Siegfried’s youth told there suggests that they
were also current in some form in Germany until this poem was written down.
Being raised in the forest by a smith, killing dragons, deriving invulnerability
from the dragon in some way, gaining a great treasure—all of these motifs are
well documented in the Norse versions, while they are given short shrift in the
Nibelungenlied. A lost late manuscript of the Nibelungenlied,\ known to us only
through a table of contents (the Darmstadter Aventiurenvereichnis), seems to
have incorporated these stories into the literary epic.
Hans Sachs, the prolific sixteenth-century adapter of medieval stories to the
taste of his time, wrote a tragedy based on the printed version of the poem and
an anonymous prose retelling in chapbook form kept the story in print until the
nineteenth century.

EDITIONS
Das Lied vom Hurnen Seyfrid. Ed. Wolfgang Golther. Halle: Niemeyer, 1889.
Includes the 1726 Volksbuch vom gehbrnten Siegfried 2d ed. 1911.
Das Lied vom Hurnen Seyfrid Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes. Ed.
K.C. King. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958. Includes
extensive introduction and bibliography.

STUDIES
Brunner, Horst, “Hurnen Seyfrid,” Die deutsche Uteratur des Mittelalters:
Verfasserlexikon. Ed. Kurt Ruh et al. 2d ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977ff. Vol. 4,
cols. 317-326.
Kreyher, Yolker-Jeske. Der Hiirnen Seyfrid: Die Deutung der Siegfriedgestalt
im Spatmittelalter. Frankfurt: Lang, 1986.
Weigand, Karl. “Zu den Nibelungen.” ZDA 10 (1856): 142-146. Text of the
Damstddter A ventiurenvereichnis.
CHAPTER 9

Related Legends

WOLFDIETRICH-ORTNIT
This small, relatively close-knit group of texts is not directly related to either of
our major legendary cycles. The appearance of the name Dietrich, which occurs
in the poems as part of two compound names—Hugdietrich, the father, and
Wolfdietrich, the son—led the author of one version of the story (D) to identify
Wolf die trich as the grandfather of Dietrich of Bern. On the basis of name
evidence some scholars have identified Wolfdietrich with the Frankish king
Dietrich, grandson of Clovis.
The story of Wolfdietrich generally occurs in manuscripts together with the
bridewinning romance Ortnit. The two legends are connected through
Wolfdietrich’s later vengeance for Ortnit, leading to Wolfdietrich’s marriage
with Ortnit1 s widow. It would be a mistake, however, to look upon the two
poems as two parts of the same legend. It is much more likely that they were
entirely separate until they found their way into the medieval literary versions
we know. Both texts display the same strophic form in all their versions.

Ortnit
Ortnit combines a typical bridewinning story with an unusual dragon adventure.

The emperor Ortnit is urged by his advisors to seek a bride, but the only
one of appropriate rank and attractiveness is the daughter of a heathen
king, who has vowed diat he will never allow his daughter to marry, since
he intends to marry her himself when his wife dies. This evil design only
serves to spur Ortnit on in his desire to win the princess. Before departing
on the expedition he rides out in the countryside, where he encounters a
dwarf named Alberich, who is Ortnit’s father. The dwarf is invisible to all
except Ortnit and is able to help his son win the heathen bride. After his
daughter has been kidnapped, the heathen king sends dragon eggs to
 Ortnit’s kingdom of Lombardy, and the dragon that hatches is soon
devastating Ortnit’s lands.
Ortnit is one of the very few unsuccessful dragon fighters in medieval
literature. He sets out to fight the dragon but on the way falls asleep under
a magic tree so that the monster is able to carry him back as food for her
children. Hie dragon is unable to open Ortnit’s armor, so she sucks the
hapless knight out through the openings, leaving the armor and Ortnit’s
sword to the warrior who can eventually vanquish the dragon.
Ortnit appears as Hertnit in the PiSrekssaga.

Wolfdietrich D(B)
The common version of Wolfdietrich also begins widi a bridewinning
adventure, but this one leads up to the hero’s birth and not to his wedding.

Hugdietrich, being young and beardless, disguises himself as a princess

and goes to live widi the unattainable princess as a companion. Their
companionship is so close that the princess finds herself pregnant. After
the child is bom, the princess hides him in a basket that is lowered from
the tower window with a rope, allowing a wolf to steal the child. The child
is rescued by some of his grandfather’s hunters, and the ruse is exposed.
The child is named Wolfdietrich in honor of his having almost become a
wolfs breakfast. The infant’s baptism coincides with Hugdietrich’s return.
The general relief paves the way for a reconciliation between Hugdietrich
and his new father-in-law.
After his father’s death Wolfdietrich is driven from his rightful throne
by his younger brothers, who claim that he is illegitimate. The brothers
imprison Wolfdietrich’s loyal vassals, the sons of his foster- father,
Berchtung. Wolfdietrich spends years going through many adventures, all
the time hoping to be able to win his land back.
The story of Ortnit is repeated at this point, and Wolfdietrich assumes
the responsibility of avenging his old friend. He kills the dragon and
marries Ortnit’s widow. (Dietrich von Bern plays this role in the version of
the same story in the PiSrekssaga.)
He uses the forces from Lombardy to reconquer his land and free his
vassals from their imprisonment.
The D version concludes with an episode in which the aged Wolfdietrich
withdraws from his kingdom and becomes a monk. Shordy before his
death he spends a night dreaming that he is battling all of the men he had
 killed. He is then able to die in peace.

Wolfdietrich A
The A version of Wolfdietrich is found only in the Ambraser Heldetibuch of the
early sixteenth century and in a condensed version in die Dresdener
Heldenbuch of the 1480s. In this version Wolfdietrich is die youngest of
Hugdietrich’s sons and not the oldest. He is born while his father is absent at
war and the evil counselor Sabene casts doubt on his legitimacy. He is put out
in his baptismal garment and is miraculously saved by wolves, from whom he
takes his name. He is later raised by Berhtung, the faithful vassal. The older
brothers force him out of the kingdom and take Berhtung and his sons captive.
The adventures that follow do not differ in kind from those in the other
Wolfdietrich versions. The Ambras text is incomplete and the Dresden text is
heavily condensed, so that we have no authoritative conclusion to the text.

Wolfdietrich C
The C version of Wolfdietrich exists only in tiny fragments salvaged from
parchment used in book binding. There is enough material here to show that the
version was probably more different from either of the surviving versions than
they are from each other.

EDITION AND TRANSLATION

Ortmt and Wolfdietrich: Two Medieval Romances. Tr. J. W. Thomas. Columbia,
SC: Camden House, 1986.
Ortmt und die Wolfdietriche. Eds. Oskar Janicke and Arthur Amelung.
Deutsches Heldenbuch. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1871-1973. Vols. 3-4.
Reprinted 1968.

STUDIES
Baecker, Linde. Grundlagen der Geschichte des Wolfdietrichstoffes.
Unpublished dissertation, Mainz, 1961.
Dinkelacker, Wolfgang. Ortnit-Studien. Berlin: Schmidt, 1972.
Firestone, Ruth H. “A New Look at the Transmission of’Ortnit.’” ABaG 18
 (1982): 129-142.
Gehrts, Heino. “Der Schlaf des Drachenkampfers Ortnit.” Euphorion 11 (1983):
342-344.
Gottzmann, Carola. Heldendichtung des 13. Jahrhunderts. Siegfried—Dietrich
—Ortnit. Frankfurt: Lang, 1987.
Kratz, Bernd. “Gawein und Wolfdietrich: Zur Verwandschaft der Crone mit der
jungeren Heldendichtung.” Euphorion 66 (1972): 396-404.
Kratz, Bernd. “Yon Werwolfen, Gltickshauben und Wolfdietrichs Taufhemd.”
Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Uteraturen 211 (1974): 18
—30.
Lecouteux, Claude. “Des Konig Ortnits Schlaf.” Euphorion 73 (1979): 347-355.
Meyer, Elard H. “Quellenstudien zur mittelhochdeutschen Spielmannsdichtung
II.” ZDA 38 (1894): 65-95.

Rupp, Heinz. “Der ’Ortnit5—Heldendichtung oder Deutsche Heldenepik in

Tirol, Konig Laurin und Dietrich von Bern in der Dichtung des Mittelalters.
Beitriige der Neustifter Tagung 1977 des Sudtiroler Kulturinstituts. Ed. Egon
Kuhebacher. Bolzano: Athesia, 1979. 231-252.
Schmid-Cadalbert, Christian. Der ’Ortnit AW’ als Brautwerbungsdichtung. Ein
Beitrag %um Verstandnis mittelhochdeutscher Schemaliteratur. Bern:
Francke, 1985.
Schneider, Hermann. Die Gedichte und die Sage von Wolfdietrich. Munich:
Beck, 1913.
Seemiiller, Joseph. “Die Zwergensage im Ortnit.” ZDA. 26 (1882): 201-211.
Voorwinden, Norbert. “Zur Uberlieferung des Ortnit.” ABaG (1974): 183-194.

Kudrun
Kudrun was probably written between 1230 and 1240 in Southern Germany.
The author of this poem is unknown. The dating of Kudrun is largely based on a
reconstruction of the history of the Kudrun strophe, a four-line end-rhymed
stanza, which is similar to and almost certainly derived from the Nibelungenlied
strophe.
 Hagen, the son of Sigebant and Ute, is abducted by a griffin. He escapes
and is raised by three princesses, who later accompany him on his journey
home. When a rival of his father attempts to take him hostage, Hagen
throws thirty of the duke’s men overboard and forces him to sail to his
parents in Ireland. Hagen marries one of the princesses, Hilde of India, and
they have a daughter, Hilde, whom Hagen jealously guards.
King Hetel of the Hegelings sends three messengers (Wate, Horant, and
Morung) disguised as merchants to court the younger Hilde. Wate’s
appearance is so warrior-like that he attracts Hagen’s attention. The two
men eventually engage in combat. Meanwhile the princess Hilde is
approached by Horant, accepts Hetel’s proposal, and departs for Hetel’s
kingdom. Hagen discovers the plan and pursues his daughter by ship. A
batde ensues in which Hagen wounds Hetel but in turn is wounded by
Wate. Hilde finally intercedes and peace is declared. Hagen stays twelve
days and returns to report to his wife that their daughter is happily married.
Hetel and Hilde have a daughter named Kudrun and a son named
Ortwin. Kudrun’s beauty attracts many suitors, whom Hetel rejects.
Hartmut, son of Ludwig and Gerlint, has his proposal spumed because of
his low status (his father, Ludwig, is a vassal of Hetel). Years pass, and
Herwig and Hartmut separately journey to Hetel’s court to woo Kudrun.
After being rejected Herwig returns with 30,000 men. Impressed by
Herwig’s ferocity, Kudrun accepts his marriage proposal, but the wedding
is delayed for one year. Another rejected suitor, Siegfried, attacks Herwig,
who then asks Hetel for help. With Hetel’s land unprotected Hartmut and
Ludwig attack and carry off Kudrun and her ladies-in-waiting.
Hetel, Herwig, and Siegfried, their new ally, batde Hartmut’s and
Ludwig’s forces at Wulpensand, where Hetel is killed by Ludwig. The men
of Normandy escape. Only Wate dares to inform Hilde of the disaster.
Hilde secures a promise from the surviving warriors that they will
participate in the next invasion, which will have to wait for the next
generation and for a rebuilt fleet.
Kudrun is left in the care of Gerlint, Hartmut’s mother, who attempts to
break Kudrun’s strong will by forcing her to do increasingly more difficult
menial labor. During the last five and a half years of her captivity Kudrun
does laundry by the shore.
After thirteen years Hilde finally rebuilds her fleet. The reconstituted
invasion fleet lands quiedy at Normandy. Ortwin and Herwig set out alone
and encounter Kudrun and her faidiful lady, Hildeburg, washing. Kudrun
recognizes them first. Plans are made. As a ruse Kudrun consents to
 become Hartmut’s wife and is finally treated with the respect due her
station.
Hilde’s forces attack. Against Gerlint’s advice the warriors do not
remain within die fortress. Herwig slays Ludwig. Hartmut rescues Kudrun
from one of his mother’s assassins. Wate takes Hartmut prisoner but
beheads Gerlint.
Reunited with her mother, Kudrun almost immediately assumes the role
of peacemaker. Four royal weddings take place, bonding all the families.
Kudrun finally bids farewell to her mother, but not before pledging her and
Herwig’s loyalty to Hilde.

Kudrun has three main divisions. The first two sections are devoted to the
exploits of Kudrun’s maternal ancestors, concentrating on her grandfather
Hagen and her parents, Hilde and Hetel. The extension of the family history of
Kudrun backward dirough two generations is common to several medieval
German narratives. Both Varrival and Tristan tell the life stories of the heroes’
parents, and this pattern is also evident in Wolfdietrich and the Buch von Bern.
The third section, comprising some two thirds of the poem, focuses
alternatively on Kudrun and her mother, Hilde. Kudrun thus is a family saga
encompassing three generations.
With its emphasis on the sea, which is reflected in its vocabulary, story-line,
action in Denmark, the building of ships, and the invading fleets, Kudrun
celebrates the Age of the Vikings. Indeed, it can be argued that the depicted
Danish kingdom refers to the historical realm of Valdemar II (1202—1241).
The geography of Kudrun is noteworthy: while a number of places and names
are identifiable, their locations are not always accurate and others are pure
fantasy.
Kudrun and the Nibelungenlied seem to share a close bond. At the very least
the names of such figures as Siegfried, Ortwin, and Hagen indicate a Nibelung
and Dietrich influence. Thornton has tried to show diat the two works are
linguistically related. These two poems, however, also signal two distinct stages
of development and evolution. This difference is most evident in the manner by
which they treat alliances and revenge. The alliances in Kudrun, though strong,
tend to be more flexible. Revenge figures prominendy in Kudrun, but in stark
contrast to the Nibelungenlied it is more of an impetus, not a single overriding
force. While in Kudrun there is a clash between the courtly and feudal
demands, there is also a more concerted effort to cooperate.
Unlike the Nibelungenlied,\ Kudrun has a “happy ending”: the warring
families are reconciled. It should be pointed out, however, that this
reconciliation occurs only after the slaughter of men, women, and children in
Normandy. This positive outcome as well as die portrayal of certain figures has
prompted some critics to view Kudrun as an an ti-Nibelungenlied (Hoffmann,
Bender).
There has been a tendency to view this reconciliation along generational
lines. Wate and Ludwig certainly embody the fierce warrior ethos, in which
loyalty and revenge figure prominendy, whereas the younger generation of
warriors (Ortwin, Herwig, and Hartmut) appears to be more open to
cooperation.
This cooperative tendency of the poem may be attributed to its unmistakable
focus on female heroes. While the male figures continue to have the action
roles, a great deal of attention is directed at the two chief female protagonists,
Hilde and Kudrun. Like the men these two women represent the two competing
generational views. While Hilde exploits her warriors’ desire for revenge to
rebuild her fleet in order to rescue her daughter, Kudrun becomes the
peacemaker who orchestrates four royal weddings to forge alliances between
the quarreling families. The portrayal of Kudrun’s suffering is replete with
Christian imagery. Indeed, the concept of cooperation or reconciliation reflects
a courtly and Christian influence. Yet this poem also reflects and affirms feudal
order; Kudrun remains steadfasdy loyal to her clan.
In stark contrast to the Nibelungenlied there is only one extant manuscript,
the Am bras er Heldenbuch, a sixteendi-century collection made for Emperor
Maximilian I. Further, the Kudrun story probably has no traditional sources and
may indeed be the invention of the author.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

Kudrun. Ed. Karl Bartsch. 5th ed. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1980. Kudrun. Die
YLandschrift. Ed. Franz H. Bauml. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969.
Das Nibelungenlied. Kudrun. Ed. Werner Hoffmann. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972.
Kudrun. Tr. Sidney Johnson and Marion Gibbs. New York: Garland, 1992. 138
HEROIC LEGENDS OF THE NORTH
Kudrun. Tr. Winder McConnell. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992.
Kudrun. Tr. Brian Murdoch. London: Dent, 1987.
Kudrun. Ed. B. Symons. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1964.
Unterkircher, Franz, ed. Vollstiindige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des
Codex Vindobonesis. Seria nov 2663 der Osterreichsichen Nationalbibliothek.
Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlaganstalt, 1973.

STUDIES
Beck, Adolf. “Die Rache als Motiv und Problem in der ’Kudrun’: Interpretation
und sagengeschichtlicher Ausblick.” Germanisch-RomanischeMonatschrift
37 (1957): 305-330.
Bender, Ellen. Nibelungenlied und Kudrun: Eine vergeleichende Studie %ur
Zeitdarstellung und Geschichtdeutung. Frankfurt: Lang, 1967.
Blamires, David. “The Geography of Kudrun.” MLR 61 (1966): 436-445.
Boesch, Bruno. “Zur Frage der literarischen Schichten in der Kudrundichtung.”
Festschriftfur Siegfried Gutenbrunner. Eds. Oscar Bandle, Heinz
Klingenberg, and Fnedrich Maurer. Heidelberg: Winter, 1972. 15-31.
Campbell, Ian R. Kudrun: A Critical Appreciation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1978.
Campbell, Ian R. “Kudrun’s wilder Hagen, Valant aller Kiinige.” Seminar 6
(1970): 1-14.
Grimm, Gunter. “Die EheschlieBung in der Kudrun. Zur Frage der Verlobten-
oder Gattentreue Kudruns.” ZDP 90 (1971): 48-70.
Hoffmann, Werner. “Die Hauptprobleme der neueren ’Kudrun’-Forschung.”
WW 14 (1964): 183-196, 233-243.
Hoffmann, Werner. Kudrun: Ein Beitrag %ur Deutung der nachnibelungischen
Heldendichtung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967.
Huber, Eduard. “Die Kudrun um 1300: Eine Untersuchung.” ZDP 100 (1981):
357-380.
Jungbluth, Gunther. “Einige ’Kudrun’ episoden: Ein Beitrag zum
Textverstandnis.” Neophilologus 42 (1958): 289-299.
Kettner, Emil. “Der EinfluG des Nibelungenliedes auf die Gudrun.” ZDP 23
 (1891): 145- 217.
Loerzer, Eckart. Eheschliefiung und Werbung in der “Kudrun” Munich: Beck,
1971.
McConnell, Winder. “Death in Kudrun.” Fifteenth Century Studies 17 (1990):
229-243.
McConnell, Winder. The Epic of Kudrun: A Critical Commentary. Goppingen:
Kummerle Verlag, 1986.
McConnell, Winder Wate and Wada.” MLN (1977): 572-576.
Nolte, Theodor. Das Kudrunepos: Ein Frauenroman? Tubingen: Niemeyer,
1985.
Panzer, Friedrich. Hilde-Gudrun. Eine sagen- und literargeschichtliche
Untersuchung. Halle: Niemeyer, 1901.
Pearson, Mark. “Sigeband’s Courtship of Ute in the Kudrun.” Colloquia
Germanica 25.2 (1992): 101-111.
Rosenfeld, Hellmut. “Die Kudrun: Nordseedichtung oder Donaudichtung?”
ZDP 81 (1962): 289-314.
Rupp, Heinz, ed. Nibelungenlied und Kudrun. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1976.
Samples, Susann T. “Maternal Loyalty in the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun.” Von
Otfried von Weifienburg bis %um 15. ]abrhundert. Ed. Albrecht Classen.
Goppingen: Kummerle, 1991. 103-112.
Schulze, Ursula. “Nibelungen und Kudrun.” Epische Stoffe des Mittelalters.
Eds. Volker Mertens and Ulnch Miiller. Stuttgart: Kroner, 1984. 111-140.
Siefken, Hinrich. Uberindividuelle Form en und derAxfbau des Kudrunepos.
Munich: Fink, 1967.
Ten Venne, Ingmar. “Einige Uberlegungen zu Handlungsstrukturen
mittelhochdeutscher Heldenepen am Beispiel des Kudrun-Epos.” Jahrbuch
der Keineke Gesellschaft 2 (1992): 241-254.
Thomas Perry Thorton. “Die Nibelungenstrophen in der Gudrun.” MLN 67
(1952): 304— 309.
Wailes, Stephen L. “The Romance of Kudrun.” Speculum 58 (1983): 347-367.
Ward, Donald J., and Franz H. Bauml. “Zur Kudrun-Problematik: Ballade und
Epos.” ZDP 88 (1969): 19-27.
Wisniewski, Roswitha, Kudrun. Heldendichtung III. 2d ed. Stuttgart: Metzler,
1969. Wild, Inga. Zur Uberlieferung und Reception des “Kudrun”.
Goppingen: Kummerle, 1979.

Rother
This poem in rhymed couplets was written down sometime after the middle of
the twelfth century. Its author is unknown.
The story of the Western emperor Rother has been included in our book
because of its kinship with the Dietrich legend. Some of the common
characteristics are easily recognizable. For instance, like Dietrich, Rother is
portrayed as the emperor of Rome and as such embodies the ideal ruler, being
gracious, brave, and generous. Both Rother and Dietrich demonstrate a fierce
and strong loyalty to their men that sets them apart from their chief antagonists,
Constantine and Ermanich, respectively. Rother*s selection of the alias Dietrich
while he is in feigned exile at Constantine’s court calls forth associations with
the literary Dietrich. The close affinity of Rother to the Dietrich legend can also
be evidenced by its Brautwerbung (“bridewinning”) episode, which shares a
number of unusual motifs with one portrayed in the Pidrekssaga.

Rother is the Western emperor who is persuaded by his loyal subjects to

woo the daughter of Constantine, the Eastern emperor. Twelve messengers
under die leadership of Luppold depart for Constantinople on a ship laden
with fabulous riches.

Upon learning of the messengers’ intentions, Constantino has them thrown

into prison, where they suffer great deprivation. Constantine then impounds the
ship and its riches.
The long absence of his messengers causes Rother to be concerned and
prompts him to take action. In his deliberations Rother consults with Berchter, a
faithful counselor-warrior, as well as his other knights. Instead of amassing an
army it is decided that Rother will visit Constantine’s court as a wealthy and
powerful exiled knight to determine the fate of his messengers. Rother’s alias in
Constantinople is Dietrich.
Among his companions are giants who frighten and intimidate Constantine’s
court. At Berchter’s suggestion Dietrich-Rother leaves Constantine’s court and
establishes his own court. He is quickly widely known and esteemed for his
great generosity and soon has a large following.
Constantine’s daughter, curious to see this famed knight, persuades her father
to hold a festival. A quarrel breaks out between kinsmen of Constantine and
Dietrich-Rodier’s giants. Constantine refuses to become involved.
The young queen sends Herlind, her lady-in-waiting, to Dietrich- Rother with
request that he visit her. After a carefully planned diversion and a Schuhprobe
(“shoe test”) he finally reveals his true identity to her and enlists her aid to free
his imprisoned messengers.
Ymelot, a ruler from the East, is about to attack Constantinople. Rother is the
de facto leader of the defending army. Thanks to the efforts of his men,
especially his fierce giants, Rother is able to vanquish the invading army. As a
reward for such loyal service Rodier is allowed to act as messenger to
Constantine’s wife and daughter. Rother, however, has other plans and departs
with Constantine’s daughter to Rome.
Rother’s wife is then kidnapped at die behest of her father and brought back
to Constantinople. Rother amasses a mighty army and sails to Constantinople.
Meanwhile Ymelot, who has escaped earlier, has conquered Constantinople
and has forced Constantine to give his daughter (who is with child by Rother) to
his son. Rother and two trusted men pose as pilgrims to spy on Constantine’s
court but are forced to reveal themselves. Their execution is thwarted by a loyal
knight Arnold, his men, and Rother’s forces. The heathen army is vanquished.
Rother spares both Constantinople and Constantine’s life. He is reunited with
his wife, who bears a son, Pippin, who will be an ancestor of the great ruler
Charlemagne.
After Pippin is knighted, Rother and some of his trusted men withdraw into a
monastery. Rother’s wife likewise retires to a convent.
Rother offers a fascinating and idealized portrait of trends and events of
twelfth-century German society. The bridewinning sequence may indeed reflect
a historical event that occurred in 1143—1144, when Roger II of Sicily courted
the daughter of a Byzantine emperor. The work also reveals a Crusade
influence. Rother’s residence, Bari, was an important pilgrim-crusade port. The
battles against the heathen Ymelot exude a crusading fervor.
In contrast to many of our poems Rother focuses more on the court than on
battles. The scenes depicting court life are much more descriptive and vibrant
than those depicting warfare. The two courts and their respective rulers
underscore the inherent differences between the East (Byzantium) and the West
(Rome). Some humor is interjected by the presence and antics of the uncouth
and muscle-bound giants, who appear as Rother’s faithful allies.
While the other poems may occasionally hint at a historical event or
personage, at Rothefs conclusion its unknown author attempts to place it firmly
within a historical context. Rother is shown to be an illustrious ancestor of the
Carolingian line; he is the father of Pippin, the grandfather of Charlemagne.
This tendency could also reflect the poet’s desire to extol the Staufen dynasty
by linking it with Charlemagne, thereby affirming its legitimacy and enhancing
its glory.

EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

KingRother. Tr. Robert Lichtenstein. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1962.
Konig Rother. Editor. Giinter Kramer. Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1961.
Konig Rother. Eds. Theodor Frings, Joachim Kuhnt, and Ingeborg Koppe-
Benath. Halle: Niemeyer, 1968.

STUDIES
Bauml, Franz H. “A Note to Konig Rother.” MLN 71 (1956): 351-353.
Curschmann, Michael. “Spielmannsepik.” Wege und Ergebnisse der Forschung
1907—1965. Mit Erganungen und Nachtrdgen bis 1967. Uber/ieferung und
mundliche Kompositionsform. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968.
Frings, Theodor. “Rothan—Roger—Rothere.” BGDSL 67 (1945): 368-370.
Fromm, Hans. “Die Erzahlkunst des Rother-Epikers.” Euphorion 54 (1960):
347-379.
Gellinek, Christian. Konig Rother. Studie ur literarischen Deutung. Bern:
Francke, 1968.
Hunnerkopf, Richard. “Die Rothersage in der Thidrekssaga.” BGDSL 45 (1921):
291-297.
Krogmann, Willy. “Ein verkummertes Motiv im Konig Rother.” ZDP 62 (1937):
244-248.
Neuendorff, Dagmar. “Kaiser und Konige, Grafen und Herzoge im Epos von
 Konig Rother.” Neuphilologiscbe Mitteilungen 85 (1984): 45-58.
Ortmann, Christa, and Hedda Ragotzky. “Brautwerbung, Reichsherrschaft und
staufische Politik: Zur politischen Bezeichnungsfahigkeit literanscher
Strukturmuster am Beispiel des ’Konig Rother.’” ZDP 112 (1993): 321-343.
Pogatscher, Franz. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des mhd. Gedichtes vom Konig
Rother. Halle: Niemeyer, 1913.
Schroder, Walter Johannes. “Konig Rother. Gehalt und Figur.” DVLG 29 (1955):
301-322. “Zu Konig Rother v. 45-133.” BGDSL (V) 80 (1958): 67-72.
Glossary of Names

The following list attempts to provide something of a cross index to the names of
figures that occur throughout the legends. The individual entries are designed to
provide a quick overview of the appearances of the figure in the literary works
described above, not to provide an independent treatment of the figures. For a
more detailed list see George T. Gillespie, A Catalogue of Persons Named in
German Heroic Literature (700—1600): Including Named Animals and Objects
and Ethnic Names (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973). Except for secondary literature
devoted exclusively or largely to the figure in question, there has been no
attempt to repeat the bibliographical materials covered under the literary works
in the previous chapter.

ALBERICH: Dwarf name applied to two figures in die literary texts we are
examining. In the Nibelungenlied Alberich is the keeper of Sifrit’s treasure. Sifrit
approaches his casdes in disguise and is involved in a mighty wrestling match
with Alberich before he identifies himself. In the Ortnit Alberich is the hero’s
father. He appears to be a small child, but his strength is that of several men and
he is visible only to the wearer of a special ring. Alberich helps his son win his
bride from her heathen father.

ALDRIAN: Name that appears to have been among those floating about for
general use. In the Nibelungenlied it is the name of Hagen’s father. In the
Pidrekssaga Aldrian is the father of Gunnar, Gisler, and Gemoz.

ALPHART: Young kinsman of Hildebrand in Alpharts Tod who embodies both the
strengths and weakness of the knighdy ethos. While he is not usually present as a
member of the Dietrich circle, he resurfaces in Buch von Bern, where he dies
twice at the hands of two different opponents.

AMELUNG: Name derived from the clan name of Theoderic the Great, Amal. The
names ending in -ung originally indicated the descendants of someone, so that
the Amelungen would have been the descendants of Amal. Jordanes mentions a
king named Amal (ch. 14) in his description of die lineage of the Amali. In the
Pidrekssaga die Amelungs are £&gt;idrek’s own men as opposed to those he
rules for Erminrek. It is also used there and elsewhere as a personal name. There
is, however, no legendary story attached to a person of that name.

BERHTUNG: Faithful vassal of Hugdietrich and Wolfdietrich in the Wolfdietrich

poems. He and his ten sons are the “eleven vassals” Wolfdietrich makes into a
kind of batde cry throughout the poem. The name may be derived from Kother,
where a similar figure appears with the name Berhter.

BLKKI: See SiBECHE.

BITEROLF: Father of Diedeip. In Biterolf und Dietleip Biterolf abandons his wife,
Diedint, his son, and his kingdom in Toledo to seek out Etzel’s famous court.
Years later father and son engage in combat, but a tragic outcome is averted (cf.
Hildebrandslied). Etzel eventually gives Biterolf and Diedeip Styria as a reward
for their loyal service. In die Kosengarten Worms he is critical of Dietrich’s
acceptance of Kriemhild’s challenge. In Virginal he and his son fight side by side
as Dietrich’s allies in order to free the young warrior from Nitger. In the
Pidrekssaga Biterolf also appears as the father of I&gt;edeif, but the story is
entirely different.

BRDNHILD (PRUNHILT, BRYNHILD): Her extraordinary and almost supernatural

powers hark back to an earlier, perhaps mythic tradition. The Volsungasaga
identifies her with the valkyrie Sigrdrifa, whom Sigurd had awakened in the
Sigrdnfamal of the Poetic Edda. There may be an echo of this in the supernatural
powers she displays in the Nibelungenlied. where she is the queen of
Isenstein/Iceland in her own right and later the wife of Gunther. The most
complete account of her life is told in the Volsungasaga, where she and Sigurd
promise to marry each other. (There she also appears as the sister of Atli/Attila.)
In the Nibelungenlied,\ however, no such vow occurs. In both narratives Sigurd-
Siegfried is only able to overcome Brunhild by a combination of magic and
treachery. Her loss of virginity signals her loss of power. She figures prominendy
in the murder of Sigurd-Siegfried. While she essentially recedes into the
background after his murder in the Nibelungenlied,\ she defiandy stabs herself
and throws herself onto Sigurd’s funeral pyre in the Volsungasaga. In Biterolf
und Dietleip she appears as the gracious hostess of a kingdom free of internecine
strife.
Andersson, Theodore M. The Legend oJBrynhild. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1980.
Classen, Albrecht. “The Defeat of the Matriarch Brunhild in the Nibelungenlied,
with Some Thoughts on Matriarchy As Evinced in Literary Texts.” AGSN, 89-
110.
Ehnsmann, Otfnd. “Die Fremde am Hof. Brunhild und die Philosophic der
Geschichte.” Begegnung mit dem “Vremden.” Grenen—Traditionen—
Vergleiche. Akten des VIII Internationarlen Germanisten-Kongresses. Ed.
Ejiro Iwasaki. Munich: Iudicium, 1991. 320—331.
Newmann, Gail. “The Two Brunhilds?” ABdG 16 (1981): 69-78.
See, Klaus von. “Die Werbung urn Brunhild.” ZDA 88 (1957): 1-20’.

DANCRAT: See Gibech.

DIETLEIP (PETLEIF): Son of Biterolf. See Biterolf and Dietleip for his story.
I&gt;etleif the Dane in the Pidrekssaga has a very different story, although he
is also given a father named Biterolf, who plays an important part. I&gt;edeif is
a layabout as a boy and no one expects anything of him. Suddenly he rides out
and distinguishes himself in a batde alongside his father against a band of
robbers. He undergoes a number of unique adventures on the way to Rome,
where he eventually proves himself worthy of joining Eidrek’s court. Gillespie
suggests in his Catalogue that a confusion of the names Skane/Spanje led to
Eedeifs being moved to Denmark, Skane having been a province of Denmark for
most of the Middle Ages.

DLETMAR: Father of Dietrich of Bern in almost all versions. Ffis name appears
as Thiudimer in ancient sources and as tetmar in the Pidrekssaga.

DIETRICH: Legendary figure based loosely on the historical Ostrogothic king

Theoderic, who ruled in Northern Italy from 493 to 526. For his legendary
biography see above p. 6.

ECKE: Giant who sets out to test his metde against Dietrich in Eckenlied. When
faced with the choice of life or dishonor in the eyes of the three queens he
serves, Ecke chooses death. Essentially the same story is told about Ekka in the
Pidrekssaga. In one Middle High German version of the Eckenliet Ecke appears
as a totally negative figure, who terrorizes the queens.
EGIL: Brother of Weland in several version of the smith’s story. In the
Volundarkvida Egil is married to a Valkyrie named Olrun, and he goes to search
for her when she flies away.
Egil’s name also appears in runes on die Franks casket.1

1 See the description of the casket and its runes in Ralph W.V. Elliott, Runes:
An Introduction. 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin, 1989). 123-139.

ERMENRICH (EMMERICH, JORMUNREK): Nemesis of Dietrich in the PiSrekssaga

and in the Middle High German “historical” Dietrich narratives. He seems to
have taken over the role originally occupied by the historical Odoacer (see
above, p. 20). His name comes from die Godiic king Ermanaric, who lived a
century before Dietrich. The Hamdismal from die Poetic Edda and the
Volsungasaga seem to preserve versions of a story of die historical Ermanaric.
(See p. 18, above.) Because of his insertion in place of Odoacer, he seems to
play his major role at the beginning of the German (and thus also the
PiSrekssaga) version of the legend, while the attempted murder story occurring
at the end of the Poetic Edda and Volsungasaga accounts places him in a later
generation. The two stories appear in a confused form in Ermenrikes Dot.

ETZEL (ATTILA, ATLI): Dignified and powerful king of the Huns in the various
versions of both the Nibelung and Dietrich legends. In stark contrast to the
church-influenced chronicles most of die literary works treated here depict a
flattering image of diis figure. In most German narratives he appears as a
gracious and loyal lord to the exiled Dietrich, while in the Scandinavian versions
of the stories he is often depicted as avaricious and occasionally cowardly. His
first wife is named Helche, and she appears as the supporter of Dietrich in the
“historical” Dietrich poems. After Helche’s death he marries Kriemhild
(Grimhild, Gudrun), bringing him into the Nibelung legend. In Rabenschlacht
and the PiSrekssaga Etzel is the father of two sons who perish while in the care
of Dietrich.

FAFNIR: Dragon killed by Sigurd in the Volsungasaga and in the songs of the
Poetic Edda. The saga identifies him as the brother of the smith Regin, who
raises Sigurd in the wild. The dying Fafnir tells Sigurd about his future in the
Eddie Fafnisnmal.

FLTELA: See SlNFJOTLI.

GERNOT (GERNOZ): Middle brother and co-king of the Burgundians. Throughout
most of the Nibelungenlied he is in the background. Nonetheless, he shows
himself initially to be sympathetic and loyal to his sister, Kriemhild. Both he and
his younger brother, Giselher, argue against Siegfried’s murder and later are
identified as her trusted relations. During the siege by the Huns Gemot
demonstrates great courage and is the slayer of Riiedeger. Gemot also appears as
a proven warrior in Rosengarten Worms and Biterolf und Dietleip.
In the Edda and the Volsungasaga Gemot is replaced by Guttorm, whose role
is quite different but whose name seems to reflect the Godomar of the Lex
Burgondionum.

GLBECH (GJUKL): Fadier of Kriemhild, Gemot, and Gunther in Rosengarten

Worms, the Pidrekssaga, the Hi/men Seyfrid\ and the Heldenbuch-Prose.
Gibech’s importance as a warrior is indicated when he is matched with stalwart
Hildebrant in the Rosengarten. After the defeat of all die guardians of the rose
garden by the challengers Gibech is forced to become a vassal of Dietrich. In the
Icelandic tradition the name appears as Gjuki. Both of these forms are clearly
derived from the eady name Gibica that appears in the Lex Burgondium. In the
Nibelungenlied the father of the Burgundian kings is Dancrat.

GLSELHER: Youngest brodier and co-king of the Burgundians in the

Nibelungenlied and the Pidrekssaga, where his name is spelled Gisler. Of the
three brothers Giselher is the closest to his sister, Kriemhild. Consequendy, when
Etzel proposes to Kriemhild, she seeks out both her mother’s and her youngest
brother’s advice. When the Burgundians journey to Etzel’s court, he becomes
engaged to Riiedeger5s daughter. When the warfare breaks out at Etzel’s court,
Giselher pointedly refrains from fighting Riiedeger. His valiant death is also
lamented in the K/age. This figure does not appear in the northern retellings of
the legends outside of the German-influenced Pidrekssaga. The name is related
to the Gislaharius of the Lex Burgundionum.

GOTELINT: Wife of Riiedeger who appears in the Nibelungenlied and the K/age.
In the former poem she is the gracious hostess and happy mother whose
daughter is betrothed to Giselher, the Burgundian co-regent. By contrast she
appears as the grieving widow in the K/age. In the Pidrekssaga her name appears
as Gudilinda.

GRIMHILD: See UOTE and KRIEMHILD.

GUNTHER (GUNNAR): Son of Uote and Dancrat and the brother of Gemot,
Giselher, and Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied. Widi his two younger brothers he
is co-king of the Burgundians in Worms, although he is clearly die ruling
monarch. Before Siegfried’s murder he appears as a somewhat ineffective ruler
and lackadaisical warrior. Later in the epic he demonstrates repeatedly that he is
indeed a valiant warrior. His loyalty to Hagen never wavers. He also appears in
the same role in Rosengarten Worms and Biterolf und Dietleip.
In the North Gunnar is given die featured role in the confrontation with Atli
(Etzel/Attila), while he plays a secondary role in the parallel scene in the
Nibelungenlied (and its reflex in the Pidrekssaga). The name appears already as
Gundaharius in the Lex Burgondionum.
He also appears in the Waltharius (and other versions of the Walther story) as
the avaricious king who, together with his brother Hagano, attempts to take a
treasure away from the refugees Waltharius and Hiltgunt.

GUTTORM: See gernot.

GUDRTLN: See Kriemhilt.

HAGEN (HOGNI, HAGANO): Loyal vassal and kinsman to the Burgundian kings in
the Nibelungenlied. In his role as royal advisor Hagen exerts great power.
Indeed, he at times overshadows his lords. He is the slayer of Siegfried and the
destroyer of the Hort (Siegfried’s treasure) and thus Kriemhild’s arch-antagonist.
Their enmity eventually leads to the deaths of coundess warriors. He is slain by
Kriemhild. Hagen also appears in Kosengarten Worms and Biterolf und Dietleip,
where he acquits himself well as a warrior.
As Hagano this figure also plays a major role in the Waltharius and the other
versions of the Walther legend.
In the North Hogni is a brother to Gunnar and the second most important
personage in the confrontation widi Atli (Etzel). In the Pidrekssaga he is only a
half-brother, his father being a supernatural being who appeared to his mother
during the king’s absence.
A warrior-king of the same name appears in Kudrun.

Backenkohler, Gerd. Untersuchungen %ur Gestalt Hagens von Tronje in den

mittelalterlichen Nibelungendichtungen. Bonn: Universitat, 1961.
Dickerson Jr., Harold D. “Hagen: A Negative View.” Semasia 2 (1975): 43-59.
Gentry, Francis G. “Hagen and the Problem of Individuality in the
 Nibelungenlied.” Monatshefie 68 (1976): 5-12.
Haymes, Edward R. “A Rhetorical Reading of the ’Hortforderungsszene’ in the
Nibelungenlied.” AGSN, 81-88.
Haymes, Edward R. “Hagen the Hero.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 43 (1979):
149-155.
Homann, Holger. “The Hagen Figure in the Nibelungenlied: Know Him by His
Lies.” MLN 97 (1982): 759-769.
Stout, Jacob. Und ouch Hagene. Groningen: Walters, 1963.
Wapnewski, Peter. “Hagen: ein Gegenspieler?” Gegenspieler. Eds. Thomas
Cramer and Werner Dahlheim. Munich: Hanser, 1993. 62-73.

HARLUNGEN: The story of the Harlungs is frequendy mentioned in the

background of other stories, but only in the Pidrekssaga is it told in any extent.
The name of the brothers is sometimes derived from a father named Harlung. In
the saga, however, Egard and Aki, the sons of Aki Aurlungatrausti, which
preserves the name Harlung, are falsely accused of threatening the queen’s virtue
and are hanged by Erminrek. The father’s name also appears as Aki
Omlungatrausti, associating him with the Amelungs. The names of the sons
appear as Emerca and Fridla in Widsifi and as Embrica and Frida in the
Quedlinburg Annals.

HEIME (HEIMIR, HAMA): Comrade in arms to Witege, whom he rescues from

Alphart in Alpharts Tod. Although an able warrior, he is treacherous and thus
frequendy allied with Emmerich. In the Pidrekssaga he shares these
characteristics and spends some of his last years in a monastery, an experiment
that eventually fails as Eidrek appears to call him back to a warrior life.

HELCHE: The Christian wife of the pagan Etzel in the Dietrich legends. In the
Buch von Bern and Rabenschlacht she demonstrates a strong loyalty to the
exiled Dietrich. Refined and cultured, she is an active participant who provides
Dietrich with men, goods, and a wife. Her loyalty, however, is sorely tested in
Rabenschlacht (and the parallel passage in the Pidrekssaga) when her two sons
are killed while under the protection of Dietrich. She is a natural complement to
Riiedeger, and both figures have harmonious relations with each other in the
aforementioned poems as well as in Biterolf und Dietleip. In the Nibelungenlied
Helche’s death prompts Etzel to seek out Kriemhild for his wife.
HELGI HUNDINGSBANI: The second son of Sigmund in the Volsungasaga and the
Poetic Edda. He is thus half-brother to both Sinfjodi and Sigurd. He avenges his
father and goes on to win the love of a Valkyrie.

HERBORT: Nephew of Pidrek in the Pidrekssaga, he woos the beautiful Hild for
his uncle but falls in love with her himself. He escapes with her after fighting off
the pursuing army. The story has connections both to the Tristan legend (of
which it seems to be a parody) and the Walther story. Herbort also appears with a
version of a similar story in Biterolf und Dietleip without the Tristan echoes.

Frings, Theodor. “Herbort: Studien zur Thidrekssaga I.” Berichte uber die
Verhandlungen der Siichsischen A.kademie der Wissenschaften,
Philosophisch-historische KJasse 95/5 (1943): 1—37.

HERRAT (HERAD): The wife or intended of Dietrich in many of the Dietrich

legends. She is a member of Helche’s entourage at Etzel’s court. It is due to
Helche’s efforts that she is betrothed to Dietrich in Buch von Bern (Dietrichs
Flucht). Their wedding preparations are interrupted in Rabenschlacht when
Emmerich attacks Dietrich’s lands. At the end of the Klage her marriage to
Dietrich produces a more optimistic outcome than in the Nibelungenlied. In the
Pidrekssaga she accompanies Eidrek back to Bern where she later dies.

HERTNID: Name attached to at least two figures in the Pidrekssaga, one of whom
is an unlucky king married to a witch. The other figure is clearly a version of the
Ortnit story, in which the role of Wolfdietrich is taken over by Eidrek himself.
The two kings may be identical, but it is not clear from the narrative or the
place- names.

HLLDE: Name applied to two figures in the Kudrun. The elder of the two is
Hilde of India, the wife of the fierce warrior Hagen. The younger Hilde is their
daughter. She and her husband, Hetel, have two children, Kudrun and Ortwin.
After Hetel is slain in battle, Hilde becomes the ruler even though their son is of
age. While her gender ultimately restricts her from taking an active role in the
battle to rescue her daughter, Hilde is shown to be the driving force behind the
endeavor. With this act Hilde exhibits her strong loyalty to her daughter. Initially
driven by revenge, Hilde eventually is reconciled with her foes.

HILDEBRAND: Dietrich’s weapons-master who in the German poems and the

Pidrekssaga is invariably called Master Hildebrand. He makes his first
appearance in the Old High German Hildebrandslied.\ where he engages in
batde with his son. In the high medieval narratives Hildebrand and Dietrich are
virtually inseparable companions. Hildebrand appears as the ageless-aged
advisor-warrior who understandably often functions as a kind of surrogate father
to Dietrich.

HLLDEGUNT: Beloved and later wife of Waldier in Waltharius, Waldere, Walther

und Hildegunt, and the Pidrekssaga. Like Walther she is a noble hostage at
Attila’s court. Having fallen in love with Walther, she agrees to run away with
him.

HUGDIETRICH: Father of Wolfdietrich in the Middle High German poems about

the latter. In the D-version, Hugdietrich has an adventure of his own in which he,
while still young enough to get away with it, disguises himself as a young
princess in exile. He manages to become the companion of his intended and
eventually even shares die same bed with her. The result of all this is
Wolfdietrich, whose premarital birth later allows his brothers to question his
legitimacy. Hugdietrich appears in the versions A, By and D of the Wolfdietrich.

KRIEMHILD (GRIMHILD, GUDRUN): Best-known female figure in medieval

Germanic literature. In the famous opening lines of die Nibelungenlied she is
shown to be responsible for die deadis of coundess warriors. It can be argued
that the Nibelungenlied is a kind of Entwicklungsroman (development novel) in
terms of her characterization: she appears as a young maiden, happy wife,
grieving widow, and vengeful queen. Her loyalty to her murdered husband,
Siegfried, causes her to seek vengeance on her brothers and their chief advisor,
Hagen. While Rosengarten Worms continues the negative portrayal of the
Nibelungenlied,\ the K/age attempts to rehabilitate her.
Her name appears as Grimhild in the Pidrekssaga. In the Norse versions of the
legends found in the Volsungasaga, and the Eddasy she appears as Gudrun.
There are three late poems dealing widi her in the Edda. In all diese versions
she survives Adi to marry a third time and become die mother of Hamdir and
Sorh.
The northern Gudrun seems to have no connection to the heroine of the South
German epic Kudrun.

Anderson, Philip N. “Kriemhild’s Quest” Euphorion 79 (1985): 3-12.

Frakes, Jerold C. “Kriemhild’s Three Dreams: A Structural Interpretation.” ZDA
 113 (1984): 173-187.
Nelson, Charles G. “Virginity (De)Valued: Kriemhild, Brunhild, and All That.”
AGSN, 111— 130.
Osselman, Dawn. “The Three Sins of Kriemhilt.” Western Folklore (1990): 226-
232.
Schmidt-Wiegand, Ruth. “Kriemhilds Rache. Zu Funktion und Wertung des
Rechts im Nibelungenlied.” Tradition als historische Kraft. Eds. Norbert
Kamp and Joachim Wollasch. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982. 372-387.
Schroder, Werner. “Die Tragodie Kriemhilts im Nibelungenlied.” ZDA 90 (1960-
1961): 41- 80,123-160.
Vestergaard, Elisabeth. “Gudrun/Kriemhild-soster eller husfru?” Arkiv for
nordisk filologi (1984): 63-78.

KUDRUN: Granddaughter of the fierce warrior Hagen and Hilde of India and
daughter of Hilde and Hetel of the Hegelings. She is the major figure of the epic
poem that bears her name. “Kudrun” is a reconstructed form. The name appears
as “Chaudraun” in the late manuscript of the poem. The figure in the Middle
High German epic has no connection with die Norse Gudrun.

LAURIN: In the poem bearing his name a dwarf king who rules over a
subterranean kingdom inside a mountain, where he is the guardian of a rose
garden protected only by a silken thread.

MLMIR: In the PiSrekssaga Mimir replaces Regin as the dwarf who raises
Sigurd. In this text the name Regin is transferred to the dragon-brother killed by
Sigurd.

NIBELUNG (NIFLUNGAR): One of the most puzzling names in the history of

German heroic legend. Most scholars associate the root with modern German
Nebel (“fog”), but its use as a designation for a people seems enveloped in the
same fog. The name appears in Norse both as Niflungar and Hniflungar. The
latter spelling calls the derivation from Nebel/Nifl into question.
In the PiSrekssaga the people in Worms on the Rhine who are ruled over by
Gunnar and his brothers are referred to throughout as Niflungar.
In the Nibelungenlied this designation initially refers to a dynasty that
Siegfried conquers and whose men later appear as bis allies during the bridal
quest of Brunhild (ch. 8). After die Burgundians have crossed the Danube, they
are given this appellation. Some critics have suggested that the name is applied
to the owners of the Nibelung treasure and is thus transferred from Siegfried to
the Burgundians along widi the treasure.

ORTNIT (OTNIT): The story of Ortnit is almost always attached to Wolfdietrich in

the medieval manuscripts. Ortnit sets out to woo a heathen princess with the help
of his dwarf father Alberich. He gains the princess, but his father-in-law seeks
revenge by sending dragon eggs into his kingdom. Ortnit sets out alone to fight
the dragon that hatches from them but falls asleep under a magic tree. This
allows the dragon to capture and devour him. The name appears in the
Pidrekssaga as Hertnid.

OTACHER: The historical Odoacer (see above, p. 20) appears in the

Hildebrandslied under this name. Elsewhere he is replaced in the Dietrich stories
by Ermanaric.

ROTHER: The ruler of the Western Empire, with his capital in Italy in Konig
Kother. In his story he bears a strong resemblance to Dietrich in his behavior (in
fact he even uses Dietrich as an alias).
In the Pidrekssaga his bridewinning story is attached to a northern king
named Osantrix.

RUEDEGER (RODINGEIR): Vassal of Etzel. He is best known for his role in the
Nibelungenlied, where he experiences an acute conflict of loyalties resulting
from his bonds both with Etzel and Kriemhild and with the Burgundians. In the
end, the demands of state win out, and Riiedeger is forced to fight the
Burgundians and is killed by Gemot. He plays essentially die same role in the
Pidrekssaga. As a vassal of Etzel, Riiedeger appears in number of the Dietrich
poems, most notably Buch von Bern (Dietrichs Flucht) and Kabenschlacht.

SEBECHE (SLFKA, BROA?): Ally and advisor to Ermanrich/Emmerich In a number

of the Dietrich poems . His treachery is well known; typically he falsely advises
Emmerich in order to destroy this clan. In the Pidrekssaga he appears as Sifka
whose treachery is justified by Erminrek’s seduction of Sifka’s wife, Odila. The
same story is told in the Heldenbuch-Prose. He is probably identical to the evil
counselor Bikki in the Yiamdismal.

SIEGFRIED (SIGURD, SIFRIT, SEYFRID): In some ways the central figure of this
book and in other ways almost marginal. The Pidrekssaga concludes its telling
of Sigurd’s death with the words “everyone said that no man now lived or ever
after would be bom who would be like him in strength, courage, and in all sorts
of courtesy, as well as in boldness and generosity that he had above all other
men, and that his name will never perish in the German tongue, and the same
was true widi the Norsemen.” (ch. 348) This impression is widespread in the
literature, but Siegfried remains a frustrating hero. He never establishes himself
as a king (except in the Nibelungenlied) and his main achievement is the killing
of at least one dragon. He is always described as promising, but his early death
prevents his fulfilling that promise.
Siegfried is certainly the most important figure for whom no historical model
seems to exist. This frustrating situation has led scholars to attempt to associate
him with the first-century Germanic leader Arminius (Hofler) and with various
members of the Merovingian royal house. Except among the members of the
relatively small group of Arminius supporters there is general agreement that the
hero’s name is Frankish, probably Merovingian, where Sigi- names abound.
In all sources but the Nibelungenlied, where he is given a proper courtly
upbringing, Siegfried is raised by a smith in the wild. The smith sends him off to
fight a dragon, and he returns after the successful fight with a great hoard of
treasure. In the Norse sources Sigurd meets Brunhild, who provides him his
horse, Grani. and promises to wed the Valkyrie/princess/amazon (see above
under brunhild). He arrives as a wanderer at the court of the sons of
Gjuki/Gibech and successfully woos their sister, Kriemhild/Gudrun. He helps
Gunther/Gunnar win Brunhild through some form of trickery. He is later killed
by Hagen/Hogni or Guttorm.
This story is told in the songs of the Poetic Edda, in the Snorra Edda, in the
Volsungasaga, Nomagests Pattr, the Pidrekssaga, the Nibelungenlied (with
considerable weakening of the youth in the wilderness motif), and the Hiirnen
Seyfrid.

Andersson, Theodore M. “Why Does Siegfried Die?’ Germanic Studies in

Honor of Otto Springer. Ed. Stephen J. Kaplowitt. Pittsburgh: K & S, 1979.
29-39.
Bauml, Franz H. “The Unmaking of the Hero: Some Critical Implications of the
Transition from Oral to Written Epic.” The Epic in Medieval Society. Ed.
Harald Scholler. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1977. 86-99.
Beck, Heinrich. “Zu Otto Hoflers Siegfried Arminius Untersuchungen.” BGDSL
 107 (1985): 91-107.
Boor, Helmut de. “Hat Siegfried gelebt?” Zurgermanisch-deutschen Heldensage.
Ed Karl Hauck. Wege der Forschung 14. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1965. 31—51.
Byock, Jesse L. “Sigurdr Fafnisbani: An Eddie Hero Carved on Norwegian
Stave Churches.” PSMA, 620-628.
Eifler, Giinter. “Siegfried zwischen Xanten und Worms: Wolfgang Kleiber zu
seinem 60. Geburtstag.” Sprache—Literatur—Kultur. Studien ihrer Geschichte
im deutschen Suden und IVesten. Eds Albrecht Greule and Uwe Ruberg.
Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989. 277-290.
Fechter, Werner. Siegfrieds Schuld und das Weltbild des Nibelungenliedes.
Hamburg: Toth, 1948.

Fleet, Mary. “Siegfried as Gunther1 s Vassal.” Oxford German Studies 14 (1983):

1—7.
Haimerl, Edgar. “Sigurd—Ein Held des Mittelalters. Eine textimmanente
Interpretation der Jungsigurddichtung.” Alvismdll (1993): 81-104.
Haustein, Jens. “Siegfrieds Schuld.” ZDA 122 (1993): 373-387.
Hoffmann, Werner Das Siegfriedbild in der Forschung. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979.
Hofler, Otto. Siegfried, Arminius und der Nibelungenhort. Vienna:
Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaft, 1978.
Hofler, Otto. Siegfried, Arminius und die Symbolik. Heidelberg: Winter, 1961.
Kralik, Dietrich von Die Sigfridtrilogie im Nibelungenlied und in der
Thidrekssaga I. Halle: Niemeyer, 1941.
Peeters, Joachim. “Siegfried von Niderlant und die Wikinger am Niederrhein.”
ZDA 115 (1986): 1-21.
Ploss, Emil. Siegfried—Sigurd. DerDrachenkampjer. Cologne: Bohlau, 1966.
Quak, Arend. “Siegfried und die niederlandischen Wikinger.” ZDA 116 (1987):
280-283.
SLGELEND: Mother of Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied.

SIGMUND: In the Old English Beowulf Sigmund is the dragon slayer and the
wanderer in the woods with his son Fitela (Old Norse Sinfjotli). Elsewhere
Sigmund appears always as the father of Siegfried/Sigurd, although different
stories are attached to him. In the Poetic Edda he is mentioned as the father of
Helgi, Sinfjotli, and Sigurd, and on one occasion we are told of the death of his
killer, but no stories are told about him. There is an extensive section of the
Volsungasaga devoted to him. In the Pidrekssaga he appears as a king in
Tarlungaland (perhaps originally Karlungaland, i.e. the land of the Carolingians)
who woos the princess Sisibe in Spain. He is successful, but evil counselors libel
her while he is away fighting and she is exiled and bears her child in the wild. In
the Nibelungenlied and the Hurnen Seyfrid Sigmund is a very ordinary king
about whom no heroic stories are told.

SLGNY: Twin sister of Sigmund in the Volsungasaga. In order to produce a son

able to help her brother avenge her father, she changes shape with a sorceress,
sleeps three nights with her brother, and bears him a son, Sinfjotli.

SINFJOTLI (FITELA): Son of Sigmund and his twin sister Signy in the
Volsungasaga. Sinfjotli helps his father avenge his grandfather. Sinfjotli wanders
for several years through the forest with his father in the shape of wolves.
There seems to be something of the werewolf adventure in the reference in
Beowulf to his wandering through the world on adventures with his father.

UOTE (ODA): Queen-mother of Kriemhild, Gunther, Gemot, and Giselher and

widow of Dancrat in the Nibelungenlied. She is an important member of
Kriemhild’s trusted relations during her stay in Worms after Siegfried’s murder.
She is best remembered for her interpretation of the young Kriemhild’s dream
and her own futile attempt to warn her sons and their men of their impending
doom as they set off for Etzel’s kingdom. In the Klage she dies upon learning of
the deaths of her children at Etzel’s court. Uote also appears in the PiSrekssaga
as Oda, but the nordiem tradition generally has the name Grimhild for the wife
of Gjuki.

VOLKER: Minstrel-warrior and stalwart companion to Hagen in the

Nibelungenlied. He is a vassal of the Burgundian court. In the batde with the
Huns at Etzel’s court he distinguishes himself as a competent warrior. In the
PiSrekssaga his name appears as Folkher.
VOLSUNG: Name of Sigurd’s clan in the Eddie and Volsungasaga tradition in
Scandinavia. In Beowulf Sigmund is referred to as the son of Wads, based on the
same root. The Volsungasaga uses the name Volsung to refer to Sigmund’s father
as well as to the clan as a whole.

WALTHER: Hostage at Attila’s court who escapes with his beloved Hildegunt and
engages in batde with Gunther and Hagen in the Vosges forest. He appears in
Waltharius, Waldere, Walther und Hildegunt, Biterolf und Dietleip, and the
PiSrekssaga. See section above on Walther and Hildegunt (p. 59 )

WATE: Fierce warrior who demonstrates an intense loyalty first to his lord,
Hetel, and then to Hetel’s widow, Hilde, in Kudrun. He has the distinction of
besting Hilde’s “imposing” father, Hagen. His warrior’s stance and conduct
appear to hark back to an earlier, precourdy time, but in the end, he too (after
much bloodletting during the invasion) grudgingly accepts Kudrun’s efforts at
peacemaking.
The same name in its Norse form, Vadi, is attached in the PiSrekssaga to the
father of Velent (Wieland). There he is the giant offspring of King Vilkinus and a
nameless mermaid.

McConnell, Winder. “Wate and Wada.” MLN (1977): 572-576.

WIELAND (WAYLAND, VOLUND): The legend of Wieland (Weland, Weland,

Volund, Velent) die Smith was apparendy known throughout the period when the
legends flourished. The only more or less complete versions of the story are the
VolundarkviSa in the Poetic Edda and the story of Velent in the PiSrekssaga.
Velent is important in the heroic world because he is the son of the giant Vadi
(Wate) and the father of the hero Vidga (Witege). Wieland’s story is also referred
to in the Old English Deor. There are numerous references to special armor and
weapons as having been his work.

WITEGE (VIDGA): Usually typecast as the disloyal warrior who betrays his lord,
Dietrich, for Ermanrich. In this villainous role he not only slays the idealistic
Alphart (Alpharts Tod) but also Dietrich’s brother Diether and Etzel’s two young
sons (Rabenschlachl). In Laurin and Kosengarten Worms Witege appears as a
trusted warrior of the Dietrich circle. In the Pidrekssaga he is the son of Velent
(Wieland) and plays the same role he does in Kabenschlacht. After killing the
sons of Attila and tidrek’s brother t&gt;ether Vidga escapes into the sea, where
he is presumably protected by his grandmother, a sea-nymph.
 He is often paired with Heime/Heimir, who has a similarly checkered career.
The pairing goes back to Old English, where we find Widia and Hama
mentioned together in Widsip.

WOLFDIETRICH: Figure unknown outside of the poems that bear his name. The
wolf element of his name probably refers to his long period of exile, a condition
that was often associated with wolves in German legend. The etiological stories
associating him with real wolves are probably a late invention. In all versions of
the story Wolfdietrich is driven from his rightful throne by his brothers who also
imprison his loyal vassals. After many years of adventures he is able to return,
free his vassals and assume his rightful position. See the discussion of the
Wolfdietrich poems (p. 133) for his story.
Index

---A---
Abeling, Theodor, 107
Adacarus, 30
Aetius, 18, 19, 30, 32
Aki Omlungatrausti, 69, 150
Alberich, 133, 145, 154
Aldrian, 145
Alexander, Michael, 60, 63
alliterative verse, 12, 39, 41, 75
Alphart, 81, 145, 151, 158
Alpharts Tody 42, 81, 82, 145, 151, 158
Amelung, 68, 146
Amelung, Arthur, 135
Anastasius, 30
Anderson, George K, 117
Anderson, Philip N., 107, 153
Andersson, Theodore M., Jr., 35, 37, 41, 47, 60, 71, 73, 104, 108, 117, 120,
122, 125, 126, 147, 155
Andvari, 115, 121
Apollonius of Tira, 69, 70
Arian Heresy, 16
Armstrong, Marianne Wahl, 108
Arthur, 3, 11, 14, 33, 70, 90, 96
Artus, 69, 70, 87
Aslaug, 116
AtlakviSa., 44, 116, 117, 124, 125
Atlamdly 4, 116, 117, 124, 125
Attila, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 17, 19, 20, 23, 30, 31, 32, 47, 58, 60, 61, 68, 69, 70, 72,
116, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 158
Atli, 116, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 148, 149, 150, 153
Etzel, 6, 32, 63, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 89, 90, 91, 95, 96, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106,
108, 110, 112, 116, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154,
157
Avars, 28

---B---
Backenkohler, Gerd, 150
Baecker, Linde, 135
ballad, 36, 42, 76, 97, 125
Bamberg, 31
barditus, 10
Bartsch, Karl, 107, 112, 138
Batts, Michael S., 107
Bauml, Franz H., 47, 108, 142, 155
Bavaria, 13, 46
Beck, Heinrich, 47, 48, 73, 74, 87, 108, 109, 117, 120, 136, 139, 155
Becker, Henrik, 129
Bede, 29
Behr, Hans-Joachim, 82
Bekker, Hugo, 108
Bender, Ellen, 108, 139
Benedikt, Erich, 73, 129
Benerton, 82
Benkert-Dodrill, Renate L, 108
Benson, Larry D., 60
Benzing, Josef, 88
Beowulf 12, 39, 40, 41, 53, 54, 59, 60, 62, 156, 157
Berchtung, 135, 146
Bernreuther, Marie Luise, 86
Bertangaland, 69
Bertelsen, Henrik, 72
Bessason, Haraldur, 48, 64, 120, 121, 125
Beyschlag, Siegfried, 101, 108
Biblical narrative, 40
Bibung, 83
Bindheim, Dietlind, 78
Birkhilt, 85
Biterolf, 83, 89, 90, 91, 96, 106, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151
Biterolf und Dietleip, 89, 90
Blamires, David, 139
Bleda, 30
Bloedelinck, 97
Boehringer, Michael, 108
Boer, R. C, 67, 86, 97, 126, 129
Boesch, Bruno, 139
Boethius, 21, 32
Boor, Helmut de, 67, 86, 87, 107, 108, 110, 129, 155
Boos, G., 86
Bornholm, 10
Bostock, J. K, 108
Bowra, Cecil Maurice, 47
Brackert, Helmut, 107, 108
Brady, Caroline, 22, 73, 97, 126
Braune, Wilhelm, 76
Bremen, 71
Brestowsky, Carl, 129
Brevart, Francis B., 86
Brosings, 60
Brot af Sigurdarkvida, 122
Brunhild, 3, 6, 21, 22, 27, 46, 69, 90, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110, 112, 123,
146, 147, 153, 155
Brynhild, 69, 73, 114, 115, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 146, 147
Brunichildis, 22, 46
Brunner, Horst, 131
Buch von Bern, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 95, 97, 137, 145, 151, 154
Buckmann, Ludwig, 80
Burgundians, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25, 46, 61, 62, 90, 91, 101, 103, 104,
105, 106, 108, 111, 112, 148, 149, 153, 154
Bums, Thomas S., 22
Byock, Jesse L., 117, 155

---C---
Campbell, Ian R., 139
Campbell, Joseph, 8, 14
Carolingian, 16, 17, 39, 142
Cassiodorus, 25, 126
Catalaunian Fields, 19
Chalon, 19
Chambers, R.W., 59
Charlemagne, 3, 16, 17, 33, 71, 141, 142
Chase, Colin, 60
Chilperic, 21, 22, 26
Chlothar, 21
Classen, Albrecht, 108, 111, 123, 140, 147
Clover, Carol J., 54, 120
Clovis, 11, 15, 17, 21, 28, 58, 133
Codex Regius, 45, 119, 120
Cologne Kings’ Chronicle (Kolner Konigschronik), 33
comitates, 12
Constantine, 71, 140, 141
Constantinople, 15, 20, 25, 28, 140, 141
Cormeau, Christoph, 108, 113
Curschmann, Michael, 47, 67, 73, 108, 113
Custer, Legend of, 7, 8

---D---
Dahlberg, Torsten, 93
D’Alquen, Richard, 76
Dancrat, 19, 156
Deor, 57, 58, 59, 63
Dickerson, Jr. Harold D., 108, 150
Diether, 69, 79, 158
Diedeip, 68, 79, 83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 106, 127, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151
Dietmar, 32, 77, 147
Dietrich, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 21, 22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 40, 44, 53, 54, 60, 67,
68, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93,
94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112, 118, 119, 126, 127, 128,
129, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154,
156, 158
Dirick, 97
Peodric, 57, 58, 62
Dietrich und Wenzelan, 95
Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt see Virginal
Dinkelacker, Wolfgang, 101, 135
Dobbie, Elhott Van Kirk, 59
drap Niflunga, 45
Drekanflis, 87
Dresdener Heldenbuch, 85, 86, 96, 97, 135
Droege, Karl, 73
Dronke, Ursula, 117, 120, 125
Dunlap, Thomas J., 14, 23
Durrenmatt, Nelly, 109

---E---
Ebbinghaus, Ernst A., 76
Ebel, Uwe, 73, 76, 117
Ebenbauer, Alfred, 34, 37, 47, 91
Ebenrot, 84
Ecke, 68, 84, 85, 86, 88, 147
Ekka, 68, 87, 147
Eckenlied, 82, 84
Eckerth, W., 63
Edda,, 5, 13, 14, 18, 36, 37, 41, 44, 45, 48, 60, 63, 64, 73, 74, 116, 117, 119,
120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 148, 151, 153, 155, 156, 157
Eddie poetry, 45, 119
Edzardi, Anton, 112
Eggerich, 88
Egil (Brother of Wieland), 63, 64, 65, 147
Egil Skallagrimsson, 36, 43
Egilssaga Skallabrimssonar, 43
Ehrismann, Otfrid, 109, 123, 147
Eifler, Giinter, 109, 155
Eis, Gerhard, 88, 96
Ekkehard of St. Gall, 61
Elbe, 30
Engels, Heinz, 107
epic, 8, 10, 12, 13, 21, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 63, 74, 104, 106,
107, 119, 130, 149, 153
Erichsen, Fine, 72
Ermanaric, 10, 11, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 30, 31, 46, 58, 69, 73, 97, 98, 116, 126,
148, 154
Armentrik, King of, 97

Emmerich, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 91, 140, 148, 151, 154, 158
Eormanric, 58, 60
Ermanrich, 6
Erminrek, 68, 69, 70, 72, 146, 150
Ermenrikes Dot., 42, 97, 148
Erp, 97, 126
Euglein, 130

---F---
Fafhir, 45, 115, 121, 148
Eajnismal, 121
Falk, Walter, 109
Fallone, Eva-Maria, 108
Fechter, Werner, 155
Fenik, Bernard, 109
Eight at Finnsburh, 60
Finch, R. G., 117, 125
Finnegan, Ruth, 39
Firestone, Ruth H., 67, 91, 96, 135
Fleet, Mary, 109, 155
Flood, John L., 86, 88, 93
Foley, John Miles, 14, 48, 77, 91, 96, 121
Foote, Peter, 74
formula, 13, 14, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 128
formulas, 38, 41
Forster, Leonard, 73
Fourquet, Jean, 113
Era dauda Sinjjotla, 45
Frakes, Jerold C., 153
Franks, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 21, 23, 26, 34, 46, 58, 61, 147
Frantzen, J.J.A.A., 73
Fredegar, 27
Fredegund, 21, 22, 27
Frederick I “Barbarossa,” German
Emperor, 33
Freiberg, Otto, 86
Friese, Hans, 73
Frings, Theodor, 73, 142, 151
Fromm, Hans, 109, 142
Frutolf von Michelsberg, 31, 32, 33, 34, 58
Fulda, 75

---G---
Galsuintha, 22
Gaul, 18, 20, 26, 30
Gehrts, Heino, 135
Geiserich, 29
Gellinek, Christian, 142
Genesis, 41
Gentry, Francis G., 109, 150
Gepids, 16
Gerald, Brother, 61
Gerlint, 136, 137
Gemot, 3, 6, 79, 90, 91, 102, 103, 127, 148, 149, 154, 156
Gesta Theodericiy 27
Getica, 21, 26
Gibbs, Marion, 138
Gibica, 18, 25, 58
Gibech, 19, 25, 127, 128, 149, 155
Gjuki, 19, 115, 149, 155, 157
Gybech, 130
Gillespie, George T., 145
Giselher, 3, 6, 18, 25, 102, 103, 106, 128, 148, 149, 156
Gisler, 18, 25, 149
Gisler, 119, 145, 149
Glendinning, Robert J., 48, 64, 120, 121, 125
Godden, Malcolm, 54
Godomar, 18, 25
Goffart, Walter, 23, 34
Gohler, Peter, 109
Goldemar, 82, 89, 92
Goossens, Jan, 74
Gordon, C. D., 23
Gotelint, 112, 149
Gothic, 10, 11, 16, 20, 21, 26, 28, 30, 34, 46, 126, 148
Goths, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30, 45, 46, 47, 58
Gottzmann, Carola, 67, 135
Gregory of Tours, 22, 23, 26, 34
Gregory the Great, Pope, 26, 32
Grendel, 59, 60
Grim, 87, 88
Grimhild, 69, 70, 114, 115, 118, 123, 124, 148, 157
Grimm, Gunter., 139
Grimm, Wilhelm, 34, 42, 129
Grimstad, Kaaren, 64
Gripir, 121
Gripispd, 121
Gronvik, Ottar, 76
GuSrunarkvida, 123, 124
Gudrun, 115, 116, 119, 123, 124, 125, 150, 155
Gundobad, 25
Gunther, 3, 6, 11, 18, 20, 25, 60, 61, 62, 69, 79, 90, 91, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106,
111, 112, 127, 146, 149, 155, 156
Gundaharius, 11, 18, 25
Gunnar, 18, 63, 69, 73, 114, 115, 116, 117, 122, 123, 124, 125, 145, 149, 150,
153, 155
Guntram, 26
Giinzburger, Angelika, 113
Guttorm, 19, 25, 115, 122, 148, 150, 155

---H---
Hadubrand, 59, 75, 76
Hagen, 6, 7, 11, 58, 61, 63, 70, 79, 90, 91, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107,
108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 118, 127, 136, 137, 138, 139, 149, 150, 152, 153,
155, 157
Hogni, 63, 70, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 124, 125, 150, 155
Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich von der, 97, 100
Hagenmeyer, Alfred, 91
Haimed, Edgar, 123, 156
Hakon the Old (Norwegian King), 68
Halasz, Katalin, 93
Hamdir, 97, 126, 153
Ammius, 18
Hamidus, 30
Hamdismal, 18, 97, 126, 148
Harlungen, 150
Harris, Joseph, 48, 59, 76, 120, 121, 124
Hartmut, 136, 137, 138
Hatto, A.T., 14, 107
Hauck, Karl, 77, 108, 109, 120, 155
Haug, Walter, 97, 109
Haupt, M., 89
Haupt, Waldemar, 74
Haustein, Jens, 156
Havamal, 44
Haymes, Edward R., 14, 40, 48, 72, 74, 109, 150
Heime, 58, 60, 68, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 91, 127, 128, 151
Heimir, 68, 70, 151, 158
Heinrichs, Anne, 117
Heinzle, Joachim, 54, 67, 93, 98, 99, 109, 113
Helche, 77, 78, 79, 80, 103, 104, 148, 151
Heldenbuch, 78, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 135,
138, 149, 154
Heldenbuch Prose, 86, 98
Heldenlied,, 37, 40, 41, 47, 48, 49, 120, 129
Helferich, 83
Helgi Hundingsbani, 48, 115, 119, 120, 121, 151, 156
Heliand, 40, 41
Helreid Brynhildar, 44, 122
Hempel, Heinrich, 74, 119
Hennig, Ursula, 87, 108, 113
Henry VI, German Emperor, 33
Herbort, 69, 73, 151
Herburt, 69
heroic epic, 21, 36, 40, 42
heroic legend, 5, 17, 18, 22, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 43, 45, 46, 97, 153
Herrad, 70, 79, 112, 151
Herrmann, Paul, 117
Hertnit, 134, 151
Herwig, 23, 136, 137, 138
Hetel, 58, 136, 137, 152, 153, 157
Heusler, Andreas, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 48, 74, 101, 109, 119
Hilde, 136, 137, 138, 139, 152, 153, 157
Hildebrand, 3, 6, 59, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 103, 105,
106, 127, 128, 145, 152
Hildibrand, 68, 70
Hillebrand, 97
Hildebrandslied 4, 21, 37, 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 58, 75, 76, 77, 146, 154
Hildebrandslied, “Younger”, 42, 76
Hildegund, 60, 61, 63, 69, 152
Hildigunn, 69, 72
History of the Franks, 26, 34
Hoffmann, Werner, 14, 54, 80, 89, 109, 138, 139, 156
Hofler, Otto, 109, 156
Hofmann, Dietrich, 74
Holz, Georg, 93, 129
Homann, Holger, 110, 150
Horant, 136
Hreidmar, 115, 121
Huber, Eduard, 139
Hugdietrich, 133, 134, 146, 152
Hugus, Frank, 74
Hunding, 117, 120, 121
Hunnerkopf, Richard, 74, 142
Huns, 10, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 30, 46, 58, 61, 90, 103, 111, 125, 148, 157
Hitmen Seyfrid, 42, 99, 130, 131, 149
Hylten-Cavallius, Olof, 73

---I---
Ibelin, 83
Iceland, 5, 9, 43, 44, 45, 46, 54, 71, 72, 74, 114, 117, 119, 120, 125, 126, 146
Ihlenburg, Karl Heinz, 110
Ildico, 20
lis an, 127, 128
Irminfrid, 30
Iron, 69

---J---
Jaeger, C. Stephen, 110
Jakob Twinger von Konigshofen, 31
James, Edward, 14, 23
Janicke, Oskar, 34, 91, 92, 135
Jeraspunt, 83
Jiriczek, Otto, 67, 82
John I, Pope, 21, 26, 29, 30, 32
Johnson, Sidney, 138
Jones, George Fenwick, 67
Jonsson, Gudni, 72, 118
Jordanes, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 29, 31, 34, 146
Jormunrek, 116, 126, 148
Julius Caesar, 32
Jung, Carl Gustav, 38
Jungbluth, Gunther, 139
Justinus, Emperor, 30

---K---
Kaiser, Gert, 113
Kaiserchronik, 32, 33, 34
Kalevala, 36
Kellogg, Robert L., 48, 120
Kemenaten, Albrecht von, 82, 89
Kemp Malone, 58, 59, 60
kenning, 45
Kettner, Emil, 82, 139
Kieman, Kevin S., 60
King, ICG, 131
Klaeber, Friedrich, 60, 62
Klage, Diu,, 90, 107, 111, 112, 113, 149, 151, 157
Klare, Andreas, 76
Klein, Klaus, 93, 129
Knapp, Fritz Peter, 91
knighthood, 32, 80, 85, 90, 91
Kolb, Herbert, 87
Kolbigk, Tanzlied von, 42
Koppe-Benath, Ingeborg, 142
Komer, Josef, 113
Kralik, Dietrich von, 74
Kramer, Gunter, 142
Kratz, Bemd, 135
Kratz, Dennis M., 62
Kratz, Henry, 86, 110
Kraus, Carl von, 84
Kreyher, Volker-Jeske, 131
Kriemhild, 3, 4, 6, 69, 90, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 118,
123, 124, 127, 128, 130, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156
Kristjansson, Jonas, 74, 122
Kroesen, Riti, 126
Krogmann, Willy, 46, 48, 74, 76, 107, 142
Kudrun, 42, 58, 63, 108, 110, 111, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 150, 152, 153, 157
Kuhn, Hans, 119, 120
Kuhn, Hugo, 84, 110
Kuhnt, Joachim, 142
Kiinhilt, 92, 93
Kuprian, 130

---L---
Lachmann, Karl, 36, 37, 40, 113
Lapidge, Michael, 54
Lassbiegler, H., 86
Laurien, Hanna-Renate, 68
Laurin, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 128, 129, 136, 153, 158
Lecouteux, Claude, 135
Lehmann, Winfred P., 48
Leicher, Richard, 113
Leitzmann, Albert, 78, 80
Leo, Emperor, 27, 28
Lex Burgundionumy 25, 149
Leyen, Friedrich von der, 48
Lichtenstein, Robert, 142
Uedertheorie, 36
Lindow, John, 54, 73, 120
Liudegast, 102
Liudeger, 102
Loerzer, Eckart, 139
Lohse, Gerhart, 74
Loki, 115
Lombard, 16, 46
Lombards, 17, 46
Lonnrot, Elias, 36
Lonnrodi, Lars, 73
Lord, Albert Bates, 13, 14, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 48, 121
Lunzer, Justus, 84, 91, 96, 129
Lutz, Hans Dieter, 48

---M---
Magoun, Jr., Francis Peabody, 59, 62, 63
Marold, Edith, 74
Martin, Bernhard R, 110
Martin, Ernst, 78, 80, 82
Maurer, Friedrich, 110
McConnell, Winder, 74, 110, 113, 139, 157
McDonald, William C, 77
McMahon, James V., 110
McTurk, Rory, 74
Meier, Hans-Heinrich, 77
Meier, John, 76, 97
Merovingian, 21, 22, 26, 155
Mertens, Volker, 67
Metzner, Ernst Erich, 42, 48
Meyer, ElardH., 135
Meyer, Matthias, 87
Middle High German, 14, 42, 53, 54, 58, 63, 67, 70, 87, 147, 148
Mime, 153
Mimir, 113, 153
minne,, 89, 91, 105
Mohr, Wolfgang, 68
Moselle, 33
Mowatt, D. G., 110
Mueller, Werner, 110
Miillenhoff, Karl, 34
Muller, Ulrich, 67
Mundt, Marina, 74
Munster, 71
Murko, Matija, 37
Musset, Lucien, 23
Muter, 83

---N---
Nadler, Josef, 129
Nagel, Bert., 110
Neckel, Gustav, 119, 120
Nelson, Charles G., 110, 123, 153
Neo-Heuslerians, 41, 42
Neuendorff, Dagmar, 142
Neumann, Friedrich, 110
Newmann, Gail, 110, 123, 147
Nibelung, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 36, 44, 46, 60, 75, 101, 116, 118, 119,
126, 129, 138, 148, 153, 154
Niflunga, 45, 69, 71, 73, 74, 101, 108, 118, 125
Nibelungenlied, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 35, 36, 42, 46, 47, 48, 54, 61, 63, 69, 73,
74, 75, 79, 80, 90, 91, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111,
112, 113, 114, 118, 119, 123, 128, 130, 136, 138, 139, 140, 145, 146, 147, 148,
149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157
Niflunga saga, 71, 73, 108, 118
Nitger, 83, 146
Nolte, Theodor, 139
Nornagest, 117, 121

---O---
Oddrun, 124
Oddrunargrattr, 124
Odin, 64, 114, 115, 122
Odoacer, 10, 11, 17, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 46, 59, 148, 154
Ofen, 32
Old English, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 54, 57, 59, 62, 63, 156, 158
Old High German, 21, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 75, 77
Old Norse, 36, 39, 40, 43, 54, 63, 71, 73, 76, 116, 119, 120
Old Saxon, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45
Omlung, 68
oral poetry, 12, 35, 37, 38, 40, 43
oral tradition, 4, 7, 12, 13, 21, 25, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 45, 47, 71
Ortmann, Christa, 143
Ortnit, 42, 67, 98, 99, 133, 134, 135, 136, 145, 151, 154
Ortwin, 136, 137, 138, 152
Osantrix, 69, 72, 154
Osselman, Dawn, 110, 153
Ostrogoths, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22
Otfrid von Weissenburg, 41, 42

---P---
Paff, William J., 74
Palsson, Hermann, 48, 74, 122
Panzer, Friedrich, 74, 110, 139
Parry, Milman, 37, 38, 41, 48
Patzig, Hermann, 68, 74
Pearson, Mark, 139
Peeters, Joachim, 156
Pettursson, Einar G., 74
Pilgrim, 112
Ploss, Emil, 101, 123, 156
Plotzeneder, Gisela, 68
Pogatscher, Franz, 143
Premerstein, Richard von, 79, 80
Pretzel, Ulrich, 107
Price, Arnold H., 110
Primisser, Alois, 97
Priscus, 19
Prose Edda, 45, 117
Ptolomaeus, 27, 28
Piitz, Horst P., 68, 75

---Q---
Quak, Arend, 156
QuedlinburgAnnals, 29, 31, 151

---R---
Rabenschlacht, 42, 78, 79, 80, 81, 95, 148, 151, 154, 158
Ragnar lodbrok, 116, 117
Ragotzky, Hedda, 143
Ranke, Friedrich, 110
Rauff, Willy, 91
Ravenna, 3, 17, 30, 32
Regensburg, 32
Regin, 114, 115, 117, 121, 148, 153
Reginsmal, 121
Reichert, Hermann, 34, 47, 48, 75, 111, 120, 123
Reinhold of Meilan, 97
Renoir, Alain, 77
Rentwin, 83, 87
Ritter-Schaumburg, Heinz, 73, 75
Robert, Brother, 70
Rodingeir, 118, 154
Roman Empire, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19
Rosenberg, Bruce, 8
Rosenfeld, Hellmut, 88, 140
Rosengarten Worms, 70, 90, 93, 98, 99, 105, 106, 127, 128, 129, 146, 148, 149,
150, 152, 158
Rosomoni, 18
Rother, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 154
Riiedeger, 77, 79, 80, 90, 91, 95, 103, 106, 112, 118, 148, 149, 151, 154
Rupp, Heinz, 136, 140
rustici, 31
Ryder, Frank G., 107

---S---
Sabene, 135
Sachs, Hans, 130
Saelde, Frau, 96
saga, 5, 18, 44, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 87, 108, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119,
121, 137, 148, 150
saints’ lives, 40
Salerno, 68
Samples, Susann T., Ill, 140
Samson, 68, 70
Schiltunc, 94
Schmid-Cadalbert, Christian, 136
Schmidt, Ernst A, 84
Schmidt, Gerhard, 111
Schmidt-Wiegand, Rudi, 153
Schneider, Hermann, 136
Schnyder, Andre, 91
Scholler, Harald, 113
Schroder, Edward, 96
Schroder, Walter Johannes, 111, 143
Schroder, Werner, 49, 111, 113, 153
Schroer, K J., 93
Schulze, Ursula, 140
See, Klaus von, 147
Seemiiller, Joseph, 136
Short, Douglas D., 60
Sibeche, 78, 79, 81, 146, 154
Sifka, 69, 70, 72, 79, 154
Siegfried, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 22, 46, 60, 67, 69, 73, 90, 92, 98, 101, 102, 103,
104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 123, 127, 128, 130, 131, 135, 137, 138, 139, 146,
148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157
Seyfrid, 42, 99, 129, 130, 131, 149, 155, 156
Sigelind, 156
Sigilind, 102
Sigenot, 82, 87, 88, 89
Sigibert, 21, 22, 26
Sigmund, 39, 60, 102, 113, 114, 115, 129, 151, 156, 157
Signy, 114, 156
Sigrdrifa, 122
Sigrdnfamal, 121
Sigurd, 5, 60, 69, 101, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123,
124, 126, 146, 148, 151, 153, 154, 156
Sigurdarkvida inn skammi, 122
Sigurdsson, Gisli, 120
Simek, Rudolf, 122
Sinfjotli, 60, 114, 120, 148, 151, 156
Fitela, 60, 148, 156
singers, 5, 12, 13, 35, 36, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 58
skaldic poetry, 44
skaldic verse, 43
Slagfidr, 63
Slay, Desmond, 74
Smyser, H.M., 62
Snorri Sturluson, 45, 71, 116
Heimskringla, 45, 71
Sorli
Sarus, 18
Serla, 30
Spain, 10, 17, 20, 22, 46, 156
Spielmann, Edda, 108
Splett, Jochen, 111
Stark, Franz, 84
Steche, Theodor, 80
Stein, Peter KL, 49
Steinmeyer, Elias von, 89
Stephens, W. E. D., 75, 87
Stout, Jacob, 150
Strasbourg, 31, 98, 99
Stutz, Elfriede, 34, 77
Styria, 32, 92, 146
Symmachus, 21, 26, 29, 30, 32
Symons, B., 139

---T---
Tacitus, 9, 10, 14, 39, 42
Tarnkappe, 92, 102
Taylor, Archer, 14
TeU, Wilhelm, 70
Ten Venne, Ingmar, 140
Terry, Patricia, 14, 120
Thelen, Lynn D., 111
Theoderic, xii, 3, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
46, 47, 57, 58, 68, 71, 146, 147
Theoderic Strabo, 20
Thomas, J.W., 135
Todd, Malcolm, 14, 23
Toman, Lore, 123
Toulouse, 17, 30
Tristan, 69, 70, 110, 137, 151
Tristram, 70
Trutmunt, 89
Tyler, Lee Edgar, 77

---U---
Uberschlag, Doris, 107
Unger, C. R., 72
Unterkircher, Franz, 139
Unwerth, Wolf von, 75
Uodelgart, 85
Ureland, P. Sture, 73
Ute, 102, 103, 105, 112, 128, 136, 139, 149, 156, 157

---V---
Valentinian, Emperor, 30
Vansina, Jan, 14
Vasolt, 84, 85, 86
Fasolt, 87
Velent, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 72, 157, 158
Verona, 3, 30, 68
Vestergaard, Elisabeth, 124, 153
Vidga, 57, 64, 68, 72, 157, 158
Virginal, 7, 82, 83, 84, 87, 146
Visigoth, 28
Vogelsang, Heinz, 82
Vogt, Friedrich, 87, 113
Volker, 67, 127, 140, 157
Folkher, 157
Volsung, 114, 120, 157
Volsungasaga, 5, 13, 18, 45, 60, 71, 114, 118, 120, 121, 122, 146, 148, 151,
155, 156, 157
Volund, 63, 64, 157
Volundarkvida,, 44, 63, 64, 65, 147, 157
Voluspd, 44
Voorwinden, Norbert, 79, 80, 113, 136
Vries, Jan de, 77
Vulcanus, 26, 32

---W---
Wachinger, Burghart, 111, 113
Wagner, Norbert, 79
Wailes, Stephen L., 111, 140
Walberan, 93, 94, 95
Waldschmidt, Anneliese, 109
Walshe, M. O’C., 54
Walther, 60, 61, 62, 63, 69, 88, 127, 149, 151, 152, 157
Valtari, 63, 69, 72
Waldere, 41, 62, 152
Waltharius, 61, 62, 63, 149, 152
Wapnewski, Peter, 150
Ward, Donald J., 108, 140
Wate, 136, 137, 138, 139, 157
Wayland, 63, 157
Weber, Gerd Wolfgang, 73
Weber, Gottfried, 111
Wenzel, Horst, 111
Wenzelan, 91, 95, 96
Wessels, P. B., 68, 93
Widsip, 46, 47, 58, 63, 151, 158
Wieland, 4, 57, 62, 63, 64, 68, 147, 157, 158
Wierschin, Martin, 86
Wild Hunt, 33
Wild, Inga, 140
Williams, Jennifer, 91
Wilmanns, W., 84
Wisniewski, Roswitha, 27, 54, 75, 107, 140
Witege, 57, 58, 62, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92, 93, 94, 127, 128, 151, 157,
158
Wolf, Alois, 49
Wolfdietrich, 42, 58, 98, 99, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 146, 151, 152, 154, 158
Wolfhart, 77, 79, 92, 94, 95, 106, 127, 128
Wolfram, Herwig, 14, 23
Worms, 6, 18, 46, 61, 70, 81, 89, 90, 91, 102, 104, 109, 112, 127, 128, 129, 130,
146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158
Wulf and Eadwacer, 59
Wunderer, Der, 96, 97
Wyss, Ulrich, 75

---X---
Xanten, 102, 109, 110, 155

---Y---
Yugoslavia, 37
 ---Z---
Zadoukal, Klaus, 79, 80, 82, 91
Zeno, Emperor, 30, 32
Zimmer, Uwe, 82
Zimmermann, Gunter, 82, 91
Zimmermann, Hans Joachim, 68
Zingerle, I. V., 87
Zink, Georges, 68, 87, 97
Zips, Manfred, 93
Zupitza, Julius, 84, 86, 88, 89, 96

---P---
Pether, 69, 158
Eedeif, 68, 146, 147
Petmar, 68, 147
Pidrek, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 87, 118, 124, 146, 151
Pidrekssaga, 4, 5, 14, 33, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 81, 87,
88, 90, 98, 99, 113, 114, 118, 119, 134, 140, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151,
152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158