The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs (Oxford World's Classics) Read Free

various medieval versions of the tale of Tristan and Isolde. Also in the Third Adventure Hagen gives us a retrospective account of Sivrit’s upbringing, telling of his superhuman strength and its origins, and of his acquisition of the priceless hoard of the Nibelungs, a race of dwarves resident somewhere to the north of the Netherlands.
    Like Sivrit, Gunther is soon intent on wooing. He seeks for his bride Prünhilt, Queen of Iceland, an Amazonian figure of supernatural strength. She and Sivrit are parallel, equally dominant personalities, who have an aura of myth about them, and the lay does indeed hint at their prior knowledge of one another. 5 The wooing expedition to Iceland ultimately proves successful, but only because Sivrit hasrecourse to supernatural means: his massive strength and his cloak of invisibility. Once established as queen in Burgundy, Prünhilt quarrels with Kriemhilt over the relative rank of their two husbands, and this dispute over precedence leads to a conspiracy to kill Sivrit.
    The second half of the lay tells of the vengeance Kriemhilt seeks to take upon the murderers of Sivrit. She marries for a second time, her husband now being Etzel, King of the Huns. Although Etzel owes his historical roots to Attila the Hun, he proves to be another weak king. Hagen shifts from being a brutal murderer to a stoic hero (or anti-hero), the ‘hope of the Nibelungs’. The name Nibelungs is transferred to the Burgundians, as they make their fatal journey to Hungary. Kriemhilt undergoes a character change, transformed from the innocent maiden of the early adventures to a ‘she-devil’.
    The supernatural elements found in the first half of the lay are for the most part lacking in the second half, with the exception of the water-sprites, the wise women who foretell to Hagen the fate of the Nibelungs. Instead a whole host of new characters are introduced. The marriage between Kriemhilt and Etzel is promoted by Rüedeger, Margrave of Pöchlarn, a powerful and magnanimous Austrian exile at Etzel’s court. Also in exile at the court are Dietrich of Bern and his retinue of warriors. Foremost among these is old Hildebrant, Dietrich’s master-at-arms. Both Dietrich and Hildebrant figure in the oldest surviving German heroic poem, the Old High German
Hildebrandslied
, whose manuscript dates from the early ninth century. (In the
Hildebrandslied
, however, Dietrich and Hildebrand are on opposite sides.)
    As the lay moves towards the final catastrophe, Volker of Alzey, the bloodthirsty minstrel, comes to play a prominent role on the Burgundian side. King Gunther now shakes off his weakness and becomes a heroic figure. Other characters on the Hunnish side make brief appearances in the battles: these include Blœdelin, Etzel’s brother, and Irinc, Margrave of Denmark. Ultimately, though, it is the central characters, Kriemhilt, Hagen, and Gunther, who determine the outcome and the doom of the Nibelungs.
An Heroic Poem in Courtly Times
    Near the beginning of Hartmann von Aue’s
Iwein
or
The Knight with the Lion
there is a brief catalogue of the leisure pursuits which arepopular at the court of King Arthur, and which we may take as an accurate reflection of courtly culture
c
.1200:
    When they had eaten that Whit Day, / many a man took such pleasure / as then suited him best of all. / Some conversed with the women, / some exercised themselves, / some danced, some sang, / some ran, some leapt, / some listened to the playing of string instruments, / some shot at the target, / some spoke of love’s sorrows, / some of valour. / Gawein attended to his arms. 6
    Almost all of these activities are to be found in the
Nibelungenlied
, and typify the way in which the lay, as written down in the late twelfth century, reflects the courtly world. Even two of the games that Prünhilt sets as challenges to Gunther in Iceland, leaping and shooting, are present here, though in the Seventh Adventure they have the ring of parody.
    The warfare