A sifting of the Nibelungen saga reveals a mythical element (the story of
Siegfried) and a historical element (the story of the Burgundians and
Etzel). How, when, and where these two elements were blended together
must remain largely a matter of conjecture. This united central body
received then from time to time accessions of other elements, some of
them originally historical in character, some of them pure inventions of
the poetic imagination.
The Siegfried myth is the oldest portion of the Nibelungen saga, and had
already passed through a long period of development before its union with
the story of the Burgundian kings. Like so many others of its kind, it is
part of the spiritual equipment of our Germanic ancestors at the dawn of
their recorded history. It grew gradually with the people themselves and
has its counterpart among other peoples. Such myths are a record of the
impressions made upon the mind of man by the mighty manifestations of the
world of nature in which he lives; their formation may be likened to the
unconscious impressions of its surroundings on the mind of the child. And
just as the grown man is unable to trace back the formation of his own
individuality to its very beginnings in infancy, so is it impossible for
the later nation in its advanced stage to peer back beyond the dawn of
its history. It is in the gloom beyond the dawn that such myths as this
of Siegfried have their origin.
Though modern authorities differ greatly in their conjectures, it is
generally agreed that the Siegfried story was in its original form a
nature-myth. The young day slays the mist-dragon and awakens the
sun-maiden that sleeps on the mountain; at evening he falls a prey to the
powers of gloom that draw the sun down again beneath the earth. With this
day-myth was probably combined the parallel myth of the changing seasons:
the light returns in spring, slays the cloud-dragon, and frees the
budding earth from the bonds of winter.[2]
[2] For the Siegfried saga in general see Symons in Paul's Grundriss der
germanischen Philologie, 2d ed., vol. III, pp. 651-671.
In the course of time this nature-myth became transformed into a
hero-saga; the liberating power of light was humanized into the person of
the light-hero Siegfried. This stage of development had already been
reached at the time of our earliest records, and the evidences point to
the Rhine Franks, a West Germanic tribe settled in the fifth century in
the country about Cologne, as the people among whom the transformation
from nature-myth to hero-saga took place, for it is among them that the
saga in its earliest form is localized. By the Rhine Siegfried is born,
there he wins the Nibelungen hoard, and in Frankenland he finds the
sleeping valkyrie. By the Rhine, too, he enters into service with the
Nibelungen kings and weds their sister.
The Franks had as neighbors up-stream in the first half of the fifth
century the Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe. These Burgundians, who
were closely allied to the Goths, had originally dwelt in the Baltic
region between the Vistula and the Oder, whence they had made their way
south westward across Germany and settled in the year 413 in _Germania
prima_ on the west bank of the Rhine about Worms. Here a tragic fate was
soon to overtake them. In the year 435 they had already suffered a
reverse in a conflict with the Romans under Aetius, and two years later,
in 437, they were practically annihilated by the Huns. Twenty thousand of
them, we are told, fell in battle, the remainder were scattered
southward. Beyond the brief record by a contemporary, Prosper, we know
but little of this event. It has been conjectured that the Huns were on
this occasion acting as auxiliaries of Aetius. At any rate it is fairly
certain that Attila was not personally on the scene.
We can easily imagine what a profound impression this extinction of the
Burgundians would produce upon the minds of their neighbors the Rhine
Franks. Fact, too, would soon become mingled with fiction. This new feat
was ascribed to Attila himself, already too well known as the scourge of
Europe and the subduer of so many German tribes. A very few years later,
however, fate was to subdue the mighty conqueror himself. With the great
battle of Chalons in 451 the tide turned against him, and two years
afterwards he died a mysterious death. The historian Jordanes of the
sixth century relates that on the morning after Attila's wedding with a
German princess named Ildico (Hildiko) he was found lying in bed in a
pool of blood, having died of a hemorrhage. The mysteriousness of
Attila's ending inspired his contemporaries with awe, and the popular
fancy was not slow to clothe this event also in a dress of fiction. The
attendant circumstances peculiarly favored such a process. Historians
soon recorded the belief that Attila had perished at the hands of his
wife, and it was only a step further for the imagination to find the
motive for the deed in the desire of Hildiko to avenge the death of her
German kinsmen who had perished through Attila. The saga of Attila's
death is before long connected with the growing Burgundian saga, Hildiko
becomes the sister of the Burgundian kings Gundahari, Godomar, and
Gislahari, and her deed is vengeance taken upon Attila for his
destruction of her brothers. As is seen at once from the outline I have
already given (Chapter 2.) of the saga as we find it in the Edda, this is
the stage of development it had reached when it began to find its way
northward from the Rhine country to Norway and Iceland.
It is unnecessary here to record the speculations--for beyond
speculations we cannot go--as to how the union of this historical saga of
the Burgundians and Attila with the Siegfried saga took place. In the
course of time, and naturally with greatest probability among the Rhine
Franks who followed the Burgundians as occupants of _Germania prima_, the
two were brought together, and the three Burgundian kings and their
sister were identified with the three Nibelungen kings and their sister
of the already localized Siegfried saga. It is also beyond the scope of
this introduction to follow the course of the saga northward or to note
its further evolution during its wanderings and in its new home until it
was finally recorded in poetic form in the Edda. We have now to consider
briefly the transformation it passed through in Germany between this date
(about 500) and the time (about 1200) when it emerges in written record
as the Nibelungenlied.
An account has already been given (Chapter 3.) of the chief features in
which the Nibelungenlied differs from the Northern form. As we saw there,
the mythical element of the Siegfried saga has almost entirely evaporated
and the historical saga of the Burgundian kings and Attila has undergone
a complete transformation. That the originally mythical and heathen
Siegfried saga should dwindle away with the progress of civilization and
under the influence of Christianity was but natural. The character of the
valkyrie Brynhild who avenges upon Sigurd his infidelity to her, yet
voluntarily unites herself with him in death, as heathen custom demanded,
is no longer intelligible. She recedes into the background, and after
Siegfried's death, though she is still living, she plays no further part.
The Nibelungenlied found its final form on Upper German, doubtless
Austrian, territory. Here alone was it possible that that greatest of all
transformations could take place, namely, in the character of Attila. The
Franks of the Rhine knew him only as the awe-inspiring conqueror who had
annihilated their neighbors the Burgundians. In Austrian lands it was
quite otherwise. Many Germanic tribes, particularly the East Goths, had
fought under the banner of Attila, and in the tradition handed down from
them he lived as the embodiment of wisdom and generosity. Here it was
impossible that epic story should picture him as slaying the Burgundian
kings through a covetous desire for their gold. The annihilation of the
Burgundians is thus left without a motive. To supply this, Kriemhild's
character is placed upon an entirely different basis. Instead of avenging
upon Attila the death of her brothers the Burgundian kings, Kriemhild now
avenges upon her brothers the slaying of her first husband Siegfried.
This fundamental change in the character of Kriemhild has a deep ethical
reason. To the ancient heathen Germans the tie of blood-relationship was
stronger than that of wedlock, and thus in the original version of the
story Attila's wife avenges upon him the death of her _brothers_; to the
Christianized Germans of later times the marriage bond was the stronger,
and accordingly from the altered motive Kriemhild avenges upon her
brothers the slaying of her _husband_. In accordance, too, with this
ethical transformation the scene of the catastrophe is transferred from
Worms to Attila's court. Kriemhild now looms up as the central figure of
the second half of the drama, while Etzel remains to the last ignorant of
her designs for revenge.
This transformation of the fundamental parts of the saga was accompanied
by another process, namely, the addition of new characters. Some of these
are the product of the poetic faculty of the people or individuals who
preserved and remoulded the story in the course of centuries, others are
based upon history. To the former class belong the Margrave Ruediger, the
ideal of gentle chivalry, and Volker the Fiddler-knight, doubtless a
creation of the _spielleute_. To the second class belong Dietrich of
Bern, in whom we see the mighty East Gothic king, Theodoric of Verona;
also Bishop Pilgrim of Passau, a very late importation, besides several
others in whom are perpetuated in more or less faint outline actual
persons of history. This introduction of fresh characters from time to
time as the saga grew has led to some strange anachronisms, which however
are a disturbing element only to us readers of a modern day, who with
sacrilegious hand lift the veil through which they were seen in a uniform
haze of romance by the eye of the knights and ladies of seven centuries
ago. _They_ neither knew nor cared to know, for instance, that Attila was
dead before Theodoric was born, and that Bishop Pilgrim flourished at
Passau the trifling space of five hundred years later still.[3]
[3] Attila lived from about 406 to 453; Theodoric, 475 to 526. Pilgrim
was Bishop of Passau, 971 to 991.