[In the following excerpt, Anderson explores the dating, literary sources, and cultural origins and permutations of the Volsunga Saga.]

I

The unique parchment manuscript containing the Völsungasaga, henceforth called the Saga, was given to King Frederick III of Norway and Denmark in 1656 by Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skalholt, Iceland.¹ It was accepted at the Royal Library in Copenhagen and was then mislaid on the wrong floor of the Library. Not until 1821 did it receive its proper place and formal registration in the Library, where it is at present. As manuscripts of such age go, it is today in relatively good condition, and is known officially in the “New” collection as Ms Ny kgl. Saml. 1824 b4°, referred to henceforth as Codex. During the period in which it was “mislaid,” however, it must have been known to some, for a total of twelve paper manuscripts were found in Copenhagen alone, to be dated mostly from the late seventeenth century (with two or three from before 1800). Three more have turned up in Sweden, all from just before or after 1700, three from Iceland of about the same date, and three in Britain (two in the British Museum and one in the Bodleian at Oxford). There are twenty-one paper manuscripts in all. Before 1821 there had also been a printed edition: the first, editio princeps, by E. J. Björner at Stockholm in 1737,² which contained translations into Swedish and Latin. Another, by Van den Hagen in 1831, is negligible.

Codex contains in actuality two sagas. The first, long unnamed because its heading was missing, became the “so-called” Völsungasaga; the second became identified as the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrók, which purported to be a continuation of the Saga that could show the relationship of the Saga to the kings of Denmark, thus linking the Danish royal line with the mighty Völsungs and Gjukings. Indeed, an early translation of the Saga into German³ went so far as to say that the Saga was only the general introduction to the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrók, but, considering the fact that our Saga is almost as long as the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrók, this statement is absurd, and the whole theory has been discounted, for reasons that will appear later.

Following Björner and Van den Hagen, there comes the first important edition of the Saga, that by C. C. Rafn in Fornaldar Sögur Nordlands (Copenhagen, 1829), which considers not only the Saga but also that most valuable supplementary piece, the Nornageststháttr (see below). In 1865, however, came what we should consider the first “modern” edition, that by Sophus Bugge, which constitutes volume 8 of Det Norske Oldskriftselskab. Bugge was inclined to ignore the various paper MSS, which is a pity, for they are sometimes most useful when the parchment Codex is illegible. Yet his edition is still fundamental, having served as the basis for three or four important subsequent editions. These are by Ernst Wilken (Paderborn, 1877; 1895; 1912), Ranisch (Berlin, 1891; 1908), and Hannaä (Copenhagen, 1907). The most recent has been a synoptic edition and translation by Robert Finch (London, 1965), with a good translation, insufficient annotation, and no glossary. Of these various editions, I recommend Wilken's, especially the first two printings, for in his 1912 edition he has cut out almost all introductory material and relegated his glossary to a separate volume. Moreover, he has made some changes in readings that I believe are insufficiently explained. However, he includes the original texts of the Prose Edda and the Nornageststháttr.

It has been just over a century now since the first edition of Wilken's work, and during the first half of that century there has been a great deal of controversy about (1) the relation of the Saga to that of Ragnar Lodbrók; (2) the relation of the Saga to the poems of the Older (or Poetic) Edda; (3) the question of sources, whether immediate or indirect; (4) the inconsistencies involved in the portrayal of Brynhild; and (5) the virtually insoluble questions pertaining to the antecedents of the Saga.

The Eddic poems concerned, involving as they do nearly two-thirds of the Poetic Edda, have been put through the scholars' analytical mill, but with still inconclusive results (particularly as the different question of Celtic influences has begun to grow in importance). Moreover, while virtually everyone has conceded that the author of the Saga—hereafter called the Author—knew these Eddic poems, there remain always the questions: How well did he know them, and Were there others now lost? To the first question, the answer is easy: he knew them well, but some better than others. The second question is most difficult to answer, save by a qualified affirmative. The fact is that in the Codex Regius MS of the Poetic Edda (Regius 2365), there is a whole quarto of the manuscript missing. There has been general agreement that in this gap there was at least one longer poem about Sigurd (a Sigurdarkvida in meira to match the existing Sigurdarkvida in skamma). This longer poem accounts for the so-called Meiri theory, about which more in a moment. The gap, however, is large enough to include a few more short pieces, some of which may be gnomic or didactic poems of general worldly wisdom, which leads to a Forna or “ancient” theory. Chapters 20 to 28 of the Saga seem certainly to contain much material of the Meiri poetry; chapter 21, on the other hand, seems to be pointed toward the Forna (“ancient lore”) storehouse. Both these theories concerning the missing material have their supporters and are probably valid. In any event, nearly ten chapters of the Saga derive from unknown material, and there has been great disagreement about this perhaps most famous lacuna in medieval literature.

One of the last detailed analyses of the relation between the Eddic poems and the Saga is a vocabulary study by Per Wieselgren in 1934, which shows that the Author relied most heavily upon three Eddic poems, the Sigrdrifumál (“Ballad of the Victory-Bringer”), the Fáfnismál, (“Ballad of Fáfnir”), and the Gudrúnarkvida II (“Second Saying of Gudrun”), in that order, which is only natural, since the Author quotes directly sixteen stanzas from the Sigrdrifumál and includes from the Fáfnismál the long, rather ridiculous paratheological dialogue between Sigurd and the dying dragon. Wieselgren's study, however, merely confirms what we already know—that the Author was well acquainted with the Eddic poems, but does not merely render them into prose. Moreover, Wieselgren is the first to concede that the whole matter of sources is highly complicated, with so many possible factors that the whole matter seems insoluble.⁴

My own suggestion would be that the Author followed the Eddic poems and even used their language freely on certain occasions, but at other times he did not. He filled in the gap caused by the break in the Sigrdrifumál with material from a lost poem or poems (the Meiri theory), with a chapter (21, Olsen 22) of practical advice and homely wisdom (the Forna theory), and inserted almost verbatim a section of another Saga, the Thidrekssaga (see below), which constitutes chapter 22 (Olsen 23) of our Saga. For the remaining chapters up to chapter 30 (Olsen 32), the Author may be obligated to the Meiri theory or to an earlier prose saga on the same subject, for it is by no means certain that the Saga as we have it was the first full-length work to treat the story. As for the events that follow Sigurd's family difficulties and death (chapters 33 through 38), he follows rather closely the two Eddic poems Atlamál and Atlakvida, both of which carry the qualifying adjective groenlenzku, or Greenlandish, which is now regarded with suspicion if not downright distrust, for whether or not they are really Greenlandish is an open question.⁵ The final sad chapters 41 and 42 (Olsen 43 and 44) rely heavily on the two Eddic poems usually placed last in the collection, Gudrúnarhvöt (“Gudrun's Urging On”) and Hamdismál (“Ballad of Hamdir”).

Even with these reliances, however, there are several little divagations, indicating the Author's faulty memory of the Eddic poems. They are not serious, but in my opinion significant. Thus in chapter 37 (Olsen 39) Gunnar is cast into a snakepit, where he charms to sleep all of the serpents save one by playing a harp with his toes (his hands having been bound), and that is the way the Author puts it, whereas the Atlamál, stanza 62, describes the toes in a bold kenning as “sole-twigs,” or ilkvistar. This, of course, may be but another example of the Author's studious avoidance of kennings, the short metaphorical compound phrases characteristic of Germanic poetry. Yet his changes are not all from the poetic to the prosaic, as I shall attempt to show. In that same poem, Gudrun sees a block of wood (stanza 73), which she uses as a chopping block to cut the throats of her two sons by Atli. In the Saga the boys are merely playing with a block of wood. In short, the Author knows his sources well enough, but often imperfectly; perhaps it is enough to say that he remembers what he chooses to remember.

Now, considering the relative dates of these Eddic poems (950 to 1150 or even 1200) and the Saga (probably composed in the later thirteenth century, with Codex at least a century later, or near 1400), such slips of memory are easy enough to explain. It must be remembered also that the Author has blended the two Eddic poems Atlamál and Atlakvida in skillful fashion, and omissions or alterations may be deliberate. I am inclined to believe, however, that it is impossible to maintain that the Author had the Eddic poems before him all the time. Besides—and this seems to me highly important—we can be sure that there were other forms of narrative, perhaps another saga or sagas, certainly other tales, stories within stories (thaettir), and prose pieces, in or out of an Eddic context, which the Author knew but which we have lost. Some idea of the nature and direction of the various controversies will be gleaned from a perusal of my comments in the bibliography.

II

Whatever approach one cares to take, one will have to assume that the Author composed the Saga as we have it as much as a century before Codex. That would mean around 1270-75, well after the close of the skaldic era, yet pretty much in the heart of the age of saga writing. The Saga is usually classed as a Heroic Saga (Heldensage), and shares with the Thidrekssaga the honor of being the most important member of this class. Yet it clearly deals with ancient matters, as does the Fornaldarsaga, and in its occasionally tense domestic scenes it has something in common with the Family saga. Moreover, the chivalric idealization of Sigurd, the knightly protagonist, and the presence of such words as kurteis, ást, and ágaetr for “courteous” (in the chivalric sense), “courtly love,” and “excellent,” respectively, reminds us of the Riddarsögur or Knightly Sagas much favored by King Haakon IV, or inn gamli (“the Old”), but I believe that too much can be made of this point, except that it argues for a date not much after 1270 for the composition of the Saga. Codex should then be dated 1375-1400.

At any rate, the Saga, as we have it here in Codex (always bearing in mind the possibility of an earlier lost version or versions) can obviously be divided into five parts, any one of which would be material for a saga in its own right. These five parts would be (1) the background of Sigurd, with cursory accounts of his ancestors back to Odin, and a considerable story of his father, Sigmund (whom I regard as the protagonist of an originally separate saga), his aunt, Signy, and his half-brother, Sinfjötli, including also the story within the story, or tháttr, of Helgi Hundingsbane; then (2) the youth and upbringing of Sigurd, his revenge on Lyngvi, slayer of his father, which culminates in the killing of the dragon Fafnir, the forestalling of his foster father Regin's treachery by his killing of Regin as well, the acquisition of Fafnir's treasure (the Accursed Treasure), along with his meeting with Brynhild on Hindarfell; next (3) the account of Sigurd's relations with the Gjukings, ending with his murder by one of his brothers-in-law. The story then shifts to (4) the subsequent life of his widow, Gudrun; her marriage to Atli; the killing of her brothers, Högni and Gunnar, who had fallen heir to Sigurd's treasure, which Atli coveted; and Gudrun's revenge on Atli. Finally, the story concludes with (5) Gudrun's marriage to Jonak, which involves her with Jörmunrek and his marriage to her daughter, Svanhild; Svanhild is put to death by Jörmunrek, and the attempt at revengè on Jörmunrek by her two half-brothers, Hamdir and Sorli, proves abortive, for they are killed and the Gjuking line comes to an end. All five of these parts are in effect subsagas, each having the required combination of introduction, involvement, climactic revenge or failure thereof, resolution, and conclusion.

To put all this in other words, for each of these five subsagas we are at liberty to assume short pieces of prose or verse, the rímur or thaettir already mentioned. Some of these may once have been committed to writing, of which there is some slight evidence, but most, I fear, have been lost irretrievably, for I doubt that any considerable part of those not yet salvaged will ever be recovered. In recent years, therefore, much of the controversy that began as far back as Bugge's edition of 1865 and raged until after the First World War or even a little later—something over a half-century—has said about all it has to say.

None the less, when we survey the battlefield we discover that some of the older theories have held their ground. Thus almost from the beginning there has been postulated an earlier Völsungasaga, or possibly two. In other words, Codex is not the earliest telling of the story, for it cannot have been written during the Author's lifetime. Besides, in Codex we come upon certain scraps of verse that cannot be referred to any surviving Eddic poem. These are most likely scraps of a version in verse (covering the story in part or in whole), although they are so scanty that it is often impossible to determine their metrical form. Other passages in verse, however, are from an Eddic poem that can easily be recognized, or they may be from the hypothetical Meiri and hence are unrecognized. The first eight chapters are a problem. No source has survived except for a slipshod ballad known as Rímur frá Völsungi hinum óborna (“Rhymes about Völsung the unborn”; i.e., not born in the usual way, for he was cut from his mother's body), incomplete, late and very cursory in its relevant parts. It is not a source, but rather an analogue. Therefore, failing proof, I consider it a reasonable assumption that there was a lost Sigmundarsaga or perhaps a shorter Sigmundarkvida—perhaps more than one, because in my opinion Sigmund is a not inconsiderable Germanic hero preceding Sigurd, very likely a hero of maritime persuasion, as I shall try to show in a moment.

Finally, there is still another source to be considered, one that has been constantly played down—the imagination and storytelling gift of the Author himself. For even if the Saga as we have it today in Codex may not be precisely the same as that composed by another author a century or so earlier—and, of course, we cannot prove that it is not—there is a little doubt that it is substantially the same, and the Author should be given due credit for what has survived. He has taken a mass of narrative elements and put this mass into an orderly tale, whatever one may think of his style.

III

We should now try to look for a historical terminus a quo for the Saga, because it has relations to the folktale, and a tale of this category, including myth, tends to arise out of actual occurrences befalling actual people. Here the obvious point of departure is the fourth century in Western Europe. This century represents a reasonably early stage of the so-called Heroic Age of the Germanic peoples. This term was first given wide currency in the successful book of that name by H. Munro Chadwick (The Heroic Age [Cambridge, 1912]).⁶ The book is an old book now, yet even so it is more “recent” than about three-fourths of the subsequent literature concerning the Saga. Chadwick's analysis there was both subsumed and then expanded in the later work that he wrote with his wife, Nora Kershaw Chadwick, The Growth of Literature (Cambridge, 1932-45).⁷

In recent years there has been a tendency to deride the term Heroic Age, on the ground that there are no such things as heroes any more—therefore there never were—and that more attention should be given to the social and cultural history of the fourth century than to its “bloody tyrants.” I prefer to ignore these objectors, leaving them nameless, but I must insist that while there may be no heroes today, there assuredly were many in the fourth century and later. Whoever takes such a limited view of history certainly knows nothing of the century in queston, but it would probably be wiser to think of the entire span from before the birth of Christ to about 1000 as the Mythopoeic Age of the Germanic and Celtic peoples. This is a period in the childhood of nations when ordinary mortals, because of leadership and personality and other idealized attributes, become magnified into legendary heroes of fictive nature (whether deservedly or not), even perhaps magnified to be gods (euhemerism), and the gods themselves can descend to be mortal heroes, while fairy tales, märchen, and etiological tales abound. Every nation has had them at this particular stage of its ethnic development, when he who best represents the ideal of that nation in terms of strength and powers of offense and defense and victorious achievement becomes an object of veneration and even worship. Now, because everyone knows what is meant by the expression, I shall continue to speak of the Heroic Age, by which I mean any time during the first thousand years of the Christian era and even a bit before and later.

In considering the Western European epic heroes alone, I note that two Celtic gods related to nature-worship, Cuchulain and Gawain, have also become epic protagonists, eventually dying. Others, however, are historical figures: Charlemagne, Roland, Attila, El Cid, Hygelac, possibly even Arthur. They are all mortal, nevertheless. Others, like Beowulf and Lancelot, appear to be purely fictional. The historical Hygelac may coexist in the same epic poem with Beowulf—the historical uncle with a fictional nephew. Underneath all this, however, there runs the hard vein of history, and it is only our own abysmal ignorance of certain areas in the past that prevents us from working out some system of cause and effect.

In speaking of this fourth century, one basic historical fact that we know about (among the multitude of things we do not know) is the invasion of Eastern and then Western Europe by the Huns, a Turco-Mongol nation that, whatever the pressures behind them, debouched across the Volga River into Western Europe about the year 350, then ravaged their way through central and southern Europe, the Balkans, and the Carpathian area, overwhelming the Gothic (Germanic) and Gallic (Celtic) peoples whom they encountered, and even threatening Rome, where the Western Empire was approaching the last stages of decrepitude.

For about a century the Huns carried all before them but never actually took Rome, no doubt because of fiscal prearrangements made between the Empire and the Hunnish leaders. An Ostrogothic king named Ermanric (Hermanric, Eormanric) was among their earlier victims. His empire then embraced most of central Europe, yet when he saw himself threatened by these terrible Orientals, he is reported to have committed suicide in despair at the hopelessness of his situation—this according to the nearly contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus of the fourth century.⁸ Yet a chronicler who followed, the sixth-century historian of the Goths, Jordanes, has a more colorful account. According to him, Ermanric once had a woman named Sunilda executed by ordering her to be trodden to death by horses for the alleged treason of her husband, who was apparently not available at the time. Her two brothers, Sarus and Hamnius, in an attempt to avenge her, severely wounded Ermanric. From the valetudinarian condition arising from his wounds, Ermanric died soon thereafter at the overripe age of 110.⁹ In less than two centuries, therefore, a legend-making process had begun, and Ermanric takes his place as the protagonist of a story-cycle, if not precisely the “hero,” for he is known as a greedy, ruthless tyrant who did his people no good and who possessed an enormous treasure. He seems to have been one of the very first historical characters with whom we are acquainted in Germanic legendry, and hence it is no surprise to see him in the Saga as Jörmunrek; his victim, Svanhild; the would-be avengers who wound him severely, Sörli and Hamdir.

The next great victory of the Huns, as far as the Saga is concerned, was over the Burgundians, a Gothic nation, in 436 or 437. (Dates are particularly hard to fix with accuracy at this point, for the early chroniclers are reluctant to tell us. Nor is the precise site of the battle known.) The Burgundians were badly beaten and lost their king, Gundahari (Gundicarius), who is generally taken to be the Gunnar of the Saga. It seems, however, that the report that the Burgundians were extirpated is something of an exaggeration. They continue to be heard from until the year 513 or 514, at which time they were merged with the rising Frankish empire. About the year 500 their King Gundobad had drawn up the Lex Burgundionum, or Burgundian Law-Code, in which appear the names not only of Gundicarius but also of Gibica, Gondomar, and Gislhari.¹⁰ It is now generally agreed that the family of the Gjukings in the Saga (representing the Burgundians) derived its name from Gibica, but no evidence of the survival of the other two names in the Saga is at all convincing, although they appear in the southern or German versions. There is no doubt, however, about Attila, most famous of the Hunnish leaders,¹¹ eventually defeated by a Gothic-Roman army under the Gothic-Roman Aetius at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields (451), probably near Châlons. Attila survived the battle but died in 453 of a stroke, reputedly on his wedding night with Hildico (Ildico), supposedly a diminutive for Hilde, but attempts to identify her with Brynhild or Gudrun or Grimhild of the Saga have been at best desperate enterprises. Attila, however, survives in legend as Atli (German Etzel), who in the Saga is brother to Brynhild and in general an unsympathetic character, foreshadowed by his swarthy complexion. We are to regard him, in any event, as representing the Huns, just as the Gjukings represented the Burgundians, and the conflict between these two factions in chapters 30 to 35 of the Saga is a political allegory as well as the representation of a domestic feud.

Not long ago Gudmund Schutte¹² called attention to the presence in history of a King Sigismund of the Burgundians, whose second wife expressed dissatisfaction with her stepson, whom servants of the king proceeded to strangle, to the great dismay of Sigismund. An old man, not otherwise identified, observed that Sigismund should be grieving for himself rather than for his son.¹³ This, Schuette suggested, is a historical parallel to the death of Sinfjötli in chapter 10 of the Saga. More compelling, I believe, is the case of King Gundram of the Franks, whose second wife became extremely jealous of her stepson and gave him poison. After that she was dismissed and “did not live very long.”¹⁴ Both incidents are recorded in Gregory of Tours's Historia Francorum. I suggest that in folk memory these two incidents got mixed and influenced the development of the Saga. Again, Gregory tells of a princess and queen named Brunihildis, daughter of King Athanagild of the Visigoths, who was a very fair and gracious maiden but became a grim and overbearing older woman who played at power politics and paid for it with her life. She was married to King Sigibert of Metz, who was assassinated in bed by his sister-in-law Fredegund in 575. Later Brunihildis was married to King Maravech, who treated her abominably. She was in and out of prison and was finally executed for “regicide,” much in the manner of Sunilda, in either 613 or 614.¹⁵ It is further recorded that on at least one occasion she donned armor and fought as a man, in the manner of Brynhild or Gudrun in the Saga. Attempts have been made, despite her name, to make her the prototype of Grimhild or of Kriemhild in the southern branch. With this I myself am inclined to agree, though I believe that both Brynhild and Sigurd, as they appear in the Saga, belong together as the fairy princess and fairy prince of the märchen. They are both fictional and in a sense mythological in their origins.

These historical characters just mentioned, apart from Sigurd, Brynhild, and possibly Sigmund, give us at least hints and names, and although none of them can be called precisely a “hero”—some of them, indeed, quite the contrary—they were living in an age of legend-making, when there was very little written literature, and mythopoeia prevailed. There can be no argument, however, about the two great events in Europe between 350+ and 450+, the defeat of the Burgundians in 437 and the rout of the Huns in 451. It is well to bear in mind also that a national defeat can linger in folk memory as well as a national victory.

To the names already cited should be added that of Theodoric (Thidrek, Thydrick, Dietrich, Dirck, etc.), king of the Ostrogoths, who died in 526. He does not appear in our Saga, but another, the Thidrekssaga, makes him the protagonist, and he remains an important figure in the southern branch of the story, as the outlines of the Nibelungenlied and the Thidrekssaga below will show. We cannot be sure about Högni (Hagen in the southern form), although I see no special reason why we should not identify him with Hagen of Troyes,¹⁶ a Frankish count of contemporary insignificance who, however, grew mightily in legend. In fact, Hagen and Kriemhild tend to dominate the Nibelungenlied after the comparatively early death of Siegfried. I wonder, however, if we need to find historical prototypes for every character in the story. Some allowance must surely be made for the fictional process.

IV

The first reference to our Saga to survive in written literature comes in the Old English epic poem, Beowulf (ca. 725+ -ca. 750+), a southern Scandinavian story told in Old English, very likely the composition (oral, of course) of an Anglo-Saxon cleric of Norse antecedents living in central or southern England, well versed in the traditions of the accepted professional Old English bard, or scop, and speaking English. The manuscript in which it was written down (Cotton Vitellius A XV) is close to 1000 in date. The relevant passage, which I shall examine in a moment, was long regarded by German scholars as dunkel—obscure, cryptic. I see none of these qualities in it. The situation is clear enough. King Hrothgar of the Danes has been plagued for twelve years by a night-monster, Grendel, who visits his hall each night and devours thirty of his warriors. The news comes to Beowulf, a leader of the Geats, whose father, Ecgtheow, was once befriended by Hrothgar. As a recompense Beowulf goes to help Hrothgar in the latter's hall, Heorot, and when the night-monster Grendel appears, Beowulf mortally wounds him. (This, the so-called Bear's Son folk-motif, is one of the most widespread of folkloristic themes.) The Geats (O. N. Gautar¹⁷) follow Grendel's tracks to a mysterious mere, at the bottom of which is his abode. Satisfied that he has been disposed of, they begin their return journey to Hrothgar's hall, Heorot. They celebrate by racing their horses in sport, entertained meanwhile by the scop, who recounts the feat of Beowulf and sings his praise.

In more ancient times, no doubt, any hero performing an epic feat would himself celebrate it on the spot. Thus when Samson in Judges 15:16 slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass—a truly epic feat indeed—he rejoiced on the spot: “With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of an ass, have I slain a thousand men.” In the course of time, some thousands of years later, we find that there are professionals to help the hero celebrate. In Old English times they were called scops; in Old Norse, skalds; in Old Irish there was a graduated hierarchy of senchas, fili, ollamhs, the last group, the ollamhs, requiring a vigorous twelve-year period of training and a repertory of at least three hundred and fifty stories.¹⁸ If, as many believe, the Old English poem Widsith is a poem of application by a scop in quest of a patron, the applicant professes a knowledge of nearly one hundred and fifty kings and tribes. The scop's method of composition, whatever his ethnic background, was entirely oral. The process can still be found today, as Parry and Lord have demonstrated.¹⁹

Put in more technical terms, in the passage from Beowulf to be quoted below, we witness the beginning of epic composition. The bard (scop) tells of Beowulf's feat of the night before—what Chadwick has most aptly called the “occasional bardic lay”; that is, composition by a professional bard of a lay that met the standards of style, meter, and imagery required by tradition of that bard, to celebrate a particular occasion—an epic feat, some dire event, a victory or a defeat, a birth or a death. Of course the scop differs from the skald in his techniques, as the ollamh or fili does from both, and in varying degree. We can then trace the oral development; the connecting of more than one occasional lay with the same protagonist constitutes a heroic epic. Inevitably there will come Stage 3, a popularization of the material for the common people, not the ruling class. After this third stage comes a final stage (4) in which the material can go in more than one direction. In the Norse and Celtic, this later fashion of narrative dictates the prose saga; in the English and German, under French influence, the trend is toward the metrical and then the prose romance. In the long run, of course, the extended prose narrative begins to take over, not only in the saga but also in something like Malory's Morte Darthur, which is based on several long metrical romances and prose versions.

Except for Stage 3, this process is mainly from an aristocratic source. I think we should also remember that the tradition of the professional bard lingered in the tradition of educated men and women who were not of their company. Like Chaucer's Squire, they too could “endite.” One is reminded of an Icelander like Grettir Asmundarson, who could, after some notable feat, toss off a stanza or two of verse as well as any skald.

To return for a moment to the passage from Beowulf. Having celebrated Beowulf's feat (ll. 871-72), the scop goes on to tell—speak, recite, chant with harp?—of other heroes and other times. The entire passage is so revealing that I take the liberty of quoting it in its entirety, calling particular attention to italicized words and phrases.²⁰

Then the warriors                    and many a young man-too
Took their journey                    returning in joy,
Riding their horses                    from the mere as heroes [870]
On their white steeds.                    There was told the glorious deed
Of Beowulf; many a one                    often said that south nor north
By the two seas no other man,                    on the spacious earth
Under the expanse of sky,                    was better among shield-bearers,
Worthier of a kingdom.                    Nor did they in any way
Reproach gracious Hrothgar,                    for he was a good king! [875]
At times those battle-brave                    let leap ahead
Their light-colored horses,                    let them go racing,
Where earth-paths seemed fair,                    known for their excellence.
At times a thane of the king,                    a man laden [880]
With many a story of glorious deeds,
Mindful of heroic lays,                    one who remembered
A countless number                    of other stories,
Framed a new story                    founded upon fact.
This man began                    skillfully to recount [885]
The adventure of Beowulf                    and to utter well
An appropriate tale                    and to vary it with words.
He told nearly all                    that he had once heard
Of the mighty unknown                    deeds of Sigemund—
The struggle of the Waelsing                    and his far journeys, [890]
His feuds and crimes,                    of which the children of men
Knew but little;                    only Fitela with him,
Nephew with uncle,                    when one would say
Aught of his adventures,                    for they were boon companions [895]
In every fight.                    Their swords had slain
A mighty host                    of monster-broods.
To Sigemund himself                    after his death-day
No little glory when he,                    the brave in battle
Had killed the dragon,                    the hoard-guardian.
Beneath the gray rock,                    there alone did Sigemund [900]
Son of an atheling,                    venture on a deed courageous,
Nor this time                    was Fitela with him.
Yet it was granted him                    his sword pierced the wonder-worm,
That it stuck in the wall,                    that lordly iron.
The dragon died the death.                    Then the champion [905]
Dared so bravely                    to enjoy the ring-hoard
At his own discretion;                    he loaded the sea-ship,
Bearing there                    into the bosom of the boat
That bright treasure,                    did that son of Waels.
The heat within                    melted the serpent. [910]
          That man was of wanderers                    most widely known
Among the tribes of men,                    a defender of warriors
By deeds of courage;                    he prospered thus of yore.

If we keep in mind the approximate date of this passage as between 725 and 750, there are several points worthy of note:

1. Sigmund (note the Old English form Sigemund) was the most widely known of wandering heroes (l. 911), and was a Völsung (ll. 890 and 909)—more properly a son of Waels, for the Norse Völsung, as applied to an individual, must be incorrect, because the patronymic suffix -ung should not be applied as a given name to an individual.²¹ In 1. 909 the Beowulf Poet has got it right.
2. The teller of the story, the scop, a man who remembers a great many old stories (ll. 880-82), has a very large repertory that he can deliver according to the rules of his art, using repetition and synonyms and formulas and the required alliterative form (ll. 880-87)
3. The presence of these formulas, repetitive phrases, and the like, has been long familiar (although apparently rediscovered in 1953)²²; it is implied in varying it with words (l. 887), which also points toward the distinctive style of the scop. As for stories, he knew a countless number (l. 884). This last fact lends sense to the statement in Widsith that the poet knew kings and tribes from everywhere far beyond the limits of his own lifetime. Finally, it should be noted that the composition is entirely oral. The scop does not read from either notes or a script.

Now let us turn our attention to Sigmund, as the Norse called him. There is no earthly need to identify him with Sigismund of the Burgundians. His name, with the very common first element Sig- (“victory”) and the equally common second element -mund (“power over”), does not help us one way or another. And, as I have observed, the analogy between Sigismund and his slain son, as told by Gregory of Tours, is not quite so close as that between Gundram and his slain son, also told by Gregory.

In this passage from Beowulf, the “monsters” or “monster-broods” (l. 896) are called in Old English eotenas, which I think is correctly made cognate with the O.N. jötunn, meaning “giant.” But in Beowulf this word appears four times and is always applicable to “sea-monster,” once to the depredating Grendel himself (l. 761). This suggests that Sigmund may well have been originally a sea hero, especially since he loads the dragon's treasure into his “sea-ship” (l. 907). But in our Saga he makes only a normal sea voyage in chapter 5 with his father Völsung, although his ship is mentioned in the Eddic poem Gudrúnarkvida II, stanza 16. The matter does not admit any more evidence, and is perhaps a minor consideration. More important for us is the lavish praise bestowed upon Sigmund as a hero (ll. 911-12), which sounds comparable to the eulogy of Sigurd in the Saga.

One other little point obtrudes itself. Fitela (of course the Sinfjötli of the Saga) is called the nephew of Sigmund (l. 893). The Old English nefa is, of course, Modern English nephew. In rare instances it can mean “cousin” or even “grandson,” but I see no reason for such interpretations here. Often this uncle-nephew relationship is expressed as “sister's son,” which, in the ancient world of Germanic matriarchy, seems to have been at one time a closer relationship than “brother's son.” Now, it is true that Sinfjötli is Sigmund's “sister's son,” but it has been an incestuous relationship, as we learn from chapter 7 of the Saga. Perhaps the Beowulf Poet as a cleric might object to this union and so suppress the fact; there is no way of telling. Perhaps, for that matter, he knew nothing of the incest, for this detail may be a later Norse addition. There is little doubt, however, that as late as the tenth century, when there was composed an elegy on the death of King Eirik of Northumbria—the Eiriksmál (954)—the two great heroes who are preparing Valhalla for the arrival of their newest guest, Eirik, the two most famous occupants of Valhalla save Odin himself, are these same two, Sigmund and Sinfjötli. Nearly two centuries after the probable composition of Beowulf, there is still no mention of Sigurd.

It appears likely, then, whether or not he derived his name from the Burgundian King Sigismund, that Sigmund had his origins on Germanic soil. Meanwhile, on the evidence of the Beowulf passage alone, there is every indication that Sigmund was the protagonist of a saga of his own, the Sigmundarsaga, which the Author must have followed for the first eight chapters of the Saga.

V

Meanwhile, what of Sigurd (Siegfried, Sigfrit, Seyfrit, etc.)? The older idea, still commonly held, is that he was a mythical, fictional character originating on Frankish-Burgundian soil, whose fame gradually drifted northward and eastward. A persistent school of critics, however, although rejecting as his prototype Sigibert, King of Metz and first husband (d. 575) of the redoubtable Brunihildis, have insisted that Sigurd has a historical origin. Led by the tireless Vigfusson,²³ these critics have kept preaching that Sigurd was a real person with a real beginning, even though no one by that name has been properly identified, and even though the first element of his name is extremely common. About fifteen years ago Otto Höfler²⁴ first suggested that the name Siegfried was symbolic of the Chersoni leader Hermann, or Arminius, who defeated the Roman legions under Varus in the year 9 at the great Battle of the Teutoburger Forest in Westphalia, supporting his thesis with some plausible circumstantial evidence. Indeed, in my opinion the evidence is a little too plausible, and the theory seems strained and somewhat made to order to fit a Procrustean bed. And in his latest publication (1978) Höfler even goes as far as to identify the Accursed Treasure of the Nibelungs with an archaeological find made more than a century ago in the general vicinity of the Teutoburger Wald, considering it to be the private treasure of the Roman general Varus, transmuted by time and romance from mostly silver to immeasurable gold. Why, one may ask, should a Roman general be carrying along a vast private treasure into the confines of darkest Germania? Was he trying to bribe the natives? His soldiers were being paid in coin of the Empire.

There has always been some objection to “Arminius” as a non-Roman name. Yet with all due concessions to folk-memory—and there have been some remarkable instances—from the year 9 to about 1000, virtually a thousand years, is a long, long stretch. I cannot frankly accept Höfler's theories, but I must respect them. In retrospect it all seems a little forced. In the Saga, Sigurd is a manly ideal, a fairy prince, and fairy princes have been around a great deal longer than Hermann or Arminius. Like Sigmund, if Sigurd ever was a historical character, he has long since been translated into folklore. But as Symbolik he looms large.

As to the joining of Sigmund and Sigurd as father and son, since it has not yet happened by 954 in the Eiríksmál, we can still do no more than guess that the union took place not before 1000—in other words, the eleventh century.

VI

Granted that Sigmund and Sigurd both had a Franco-Burgundian origin, how did their stories reach Scandinavia? We may assume that they moved on the Continent, north and east from “Frankland” into Denmark, as Nornagest did, thence into the Scandinavian peninsula. British chroniclers of about this same time (sixth to eighth centuries), such as Gildas, know little about the Norse, although they have plenty to say about the Angles and Saxons and Jutes. Once in the Scandinavian peninsula, the Norse suddenly exploded westward and southward in the eighth century, colliding with the Celts in the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, the north of Britain (Gaels), and Ireland (Gaels). They crossed the Atlantic to Iceland, to Greenland, to Finland (probably Labrador and Newfoundland). Blend of destructiveness and commercial activity as this so-called Norse Scourge tended to be, it brought the Vikings into contact with a literary tradition that was more advanced than their own by two or three centuries, for the Irish had accepted Christianity as early as the fifth century, and the Welsh narrative literature had advanced to the epic poem, as exemplified in Y Goddodin by Aneirin (ca. 600), and even to the prose saga. In every aspect of literature, it can be maintained, the Celtic got there first.

This makes for enormous problems. The earliest known Norse skald, the half-legendary Bragi Boddason inn gamli (“the old”)²⁵ flourished about 850; the Icelanders can boast of Úlfr inn Óargi (“Ulf the Fierce”), who appears to have been roughly contemporary with Bragi. The skaldic tradition blossomed during the reign of Harald Fairhair (860-933). This tradition, however, soon began to decline in Norway but continued to thrive in Iceland, especially during the eleventh century. One can only make surmises about the nature of oral composition in Scandinavia before 800. From what is known of oral epic composition elsewhere, one can still postulate the occasional bardic lay, even perhaps the combination of more than one lay. A hypothesis this must remain, however.

Similarly, one can see resemblances in the metrical structures of the various poems. Thus alliteration locking the hemistichs (half-lines) is a feature of Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German, and of the formal fornyrdislag of Old Norse. But we can find it in the pre-Padraican verse of Ireland as well as in the epic verse of Wales. Yet strophic structure is a prime characteristic of Old Norse poetry, as it is in Old Welsh and post-Padraican Irish, although it is a comparative rarity in Old English. This whole matter needs further extensive comparative study.

All in all, if we discount that which has been lost forever, I am prepared to suggest that the Celtic literature that the Old Norse met in their explosive expansion had a primary influence on the Norse. This is not to say that there is a Celto-Germanic relationship comparable to the Graeco-Roman. The Norse rune and the Gaelic ogham do not make for a common written literature, but in oral traditions there can certainly be much interplay. In his excellent study of some twenty years ago, Kelten und Germanen (Berlin-Munich, 1960), Jan de Vries discusses the resemblances and differences between the two races as to language, literature, religion, and general culture, and finds almost as many resemblances as differences. What should be of special interest to us is that in considering the story of Sigurd he cites these parallels:

1. Sigurd's testing of the sharpness of his sword Gram by a wolf's hair and a strand of wool is found in an incident of Cuchulain's career.
2. The horny hide that Siegfried attains by bathing in dragon's blood is matched in the Irish Tain Bo Cuailgne, when the hero, Ferdiad, acquired a similar keratosis in the same way.
3. There is a fatal physical vulnerability (the epic flaw) revealed to Siegfried's enemies by his wife (almost a universal Indo-European theme).
4. Sigurd learns the language of birds by tasting dragon's blood, as does Finn by cooking and eating a magic salmon.
5. The “flickering flame” or vafrloga surrounding the abode of Brynhild in the Saga is matched in one of the voyages of Maeldun, where an entire island is discovered to be surrounded by flames.

To these should be added the many “Celtic” motifs recognized long before de Vries: the sword in the stone or tree trunk, to be pulled out only by a chosen warrior; the curative weasel, as in Marie de France's Eliduc, assisted in the Saga by Odin in the guise of a raven, as in chapter 9 of the Saga; the mysterious old man in a boat (Odin) who carries off the body of Sinfjötli in chapter 10 of the Saga; finally, the incestuous relationship between Sigmund and his sister, Signy, to produce Sinfjötli, and the incestuous union of King Arthur and his half-sister Belisande to produce the villainous Modred. One could use a great deal more of this kind of comparative study, for the resemblances are too many to be passed over. Nor are they only in the literary materials. In prosody, some of the Old Irish genealogical poems have the same kind of interlocking alliteration as the Germanic poetry, and can be scanned in almost Sieversian manner. The great stumbling-block, of course, is the comparative paucity of Old Irish sagas, not so much in oral tradition as on the printed page, although I am sure that the Old Irish Texts Society is doing its best.

In any event, the northern part of our story, as exemplified in the Saga, is rich in folklore, could we but understand it all. Chapter 20, for example, the scene between Brynhild and Sigurd on Hindarfell, takes us back into the folklore of a bygone age, in which we can recognize names but do not fully grasp the mythological or folkloristic implications. We know only that some of these, especially in their märchen or fairy-tale aspects, can be found over all the Indo-European terrain and elsewhere: tree worship, sea spells, traditions concerning wild animals, semi-deities, and even the gods themselves. What I am emphasizing, however, is that the northern branch of our story is richer in such imponderables than the southern, for its locales are wilder, more remote, and certainly less sophisticated than those in the southern areas. For that reason I am including a brief synopsis of both the Nibelungenlied and the Thidrekssaga at the end of the present translation.

VII

If I were to hazard a theory as to the chronology of the development of the Saga, it would be in stages something like this:

1. Oral tradition concerning individual incidents, beginning at the latest in the sixth century, starting with individual lays that tended to expand and pick up details.
2. A lost Sigmundarsaga, originating in the same way. Both were, of course, first oral until someone interested enough and skillful enough reduced them to writing, at first possibly in verse, but then put into prose later by him or by others.
3. The Eddic poems, those surviving as well as those lost (of which there were probably many), which came to the Saga Men, the Authors, before the Saga was written down.
4. The so-called Meiri and Forna poems hypothesized for the great gap in The Poetic Edda. Some of this material, of course, could be subsumed under (3) above, but in other cases it treated the Sigmund story, which does not appear in the extant Eddic poems.
5. The brief prose accounts like those in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, which still have nothing to say about many aspects of the Saga.
6. One or even more Ur-Saga(s), or original prose telling(s) of the whole story.
7. The Saga itself, as we have it.
8. The material in the Nornageststháttr²⁶ and lost ballads or rímur.
9. A late popularization such as the Rímur frá Völsungi hinum óborna, which I consider to be later than the other material.

We are still, however, so much in the dark as to the popularizations of the story that it may be, as E. V. Gordon put it, that the unknown Author “collected all the stories he could find about the Völsungs, and arranged them” in a continuous narrative.²⁷ Some of these stories were oral, some written. He was also capable of rearranging and even of inventing, and, writing as he did rather late in the thirteenth century, when the fire of Eddic composition had begun to die down, he sometimes achieved a product quite different from the Eddic.

At the same time, I doubt very much that this Author has ever received his proper due. It was no mean accomplishment to assemble, in a generally connected, not to say fluent, prose narrative, all of the chief ingredients for one of the greatest of medieval stories, perhaps not the most significant of Norse sagas from the standpoint of sheer narrative art, but undeniably central, the most important and influential to appear in the gallery of medieval European literature, when taken in the gross. This Author's version is always readable, and although he tends to retreat from the poetic, as almost all of his critics have complained (even to the point where they see no poetry in him at all), still he is by no means a mere wooden clodhopper. It is true that his work as a whole is most uneven. He is clearly interested, however, in the careers of Sigmund and Sinfjötli, whom he treats with some humor and not a little drama. There are many little touches that should attract the reader: the rather grotesque matter of Bredi's Memorial Snowdrift; the scene around Barnstock (or Branstock); the bizarre episode of the murderous she-wolf, said to be Siggeir's mother; the moving final scene between Sigmund and Signy, their revenge accomplished; the death of Sinfjötli, much better handled, I believe, than in its Eddic counterpart; the scene between the dying Sigmund and his wife, Hjördis, on the battlefield; the chitchat over drinks in Hjalprek's hall, so reminiscent of a present-day vapid cocktail party; and many more. These are, of course, only subjective reactions, but others can no doubt find memorable scenes on their own.

The first meeting of Brynhild and Sigurd on Hindarfell, whatever its fairy-tale atmosphere or märchen origins, gives promise of a great romantic human love that later events cannot bring to fruition. To be sure, it is obvious that the Author has not succeeded in reconciling the two characters in Brynhild, but he manages to make her a schizophrenic, if that ugly word be permitted, and therefore all the more interesting to a modern reader. Yet the speech of Brynhild as she mounts the funeral pyre to accompany Sigurd to Hel; the drama of the battle between Atli and the Gjukings, Huns against Burgundians, including the bathetic characterization of the thrall Hjalli; the confused dream-sequences and their general misinterpretations; Gunnar in the snake pit, which brings to culmination the inevitable passing of the Gjukings (in which, as compared to the pertinent Eddic poems, the Author has brought order out of chaos); the ultimate woeful actions of Gudrun against Atli, offering a symbolic revenge for the defeat of the Burgundians by the Huns eight hundred and more years before—all these are to be credited to the Author's skill as a storyteller.

At the same time, the Author never tries to be poetic, although he quotes some poetry, and he lacks a good sense of artistic proportion. Thus, while the story of Gudrun following the murder of Sigurd is well maintained, her third marriage (this time to Jonak), with the hitching on (Anknüpfung) of the Legend of Ermanric and the abortive attempts of her sons to avenge the death of their half-sister Svanhild—to say nothing of the execution of Svanhild herself—are all compressed into two short chapters, and the telling is almost indecent in its haste. Yet unevenness of this kind is not unknown in other sagas. The Author manages also to make his often gory narrative sound decorous; he is never so carried away by the violence as to rejoice in the killing and the torture for their own sakes. By the same sign, objections can be made that the pace of the earlier chapters leading up to the birth of Sigurd is both too long-drawn-out and too digressive, especially chapter 9, which is virtually a Helgatháttr. Yet even here the narrative is never perfunctory, and much would be missed if that chapter were omitted. The resolute figures of Sigmund, Sinfjötli, and Signy lend emphasis to the fact that there is a story of the Völsungs before Sigurd.

I am persuaded also that the Author's use of Odin²⁸ as a kind of central motif is handled with considerable dramatic effect. He is the progenitor who gets the story of the Völsungs underway and he is there when the last of the Gjukings have been killed. No less than eleven times does he appear (all but once in the earlier part of the Saga, which tends to associate him with Sigmund and young Sigurd). This part is not at all under Eddic influence.

1. He is the originator of the Völsung line.
2. He is a befriender and rescuer of his son Sigi.
3. He is the donor of Sigmund's sword Gram by way of the sword-in-the-tree-trunk motif.
4. He gives the fructifying apple to Rerir and his wife, thereby making possible the birth of Völsung.
5. He, in the guise of a weasel and of a raven, helps Sinfjötli recover from the attack made on him by Sigmund, which the boy had brought on himself by sheer filial impudence.
6. He, in the guise of an old man in a tiny boat, takes Sinfjötli's body and disappears, presumably taking it to Valhalla.
7. He intervenes in the battle between Sigmund and Lyngvi, causing Sigmund's death and assuring him also a place in Valhalla.
8. He assists Sigurd in his choice of the steed Grani.
9. He quiets a storm for Sigurd before his battle against Lyngvi.
10. He advises Sigurd how best to protect himself in his forthcoming combat with Fafnir; and finally,
11. He brings about the destruction of Hamdir and Sörli in their attempts to kill Jörmunrek in revenge for Svanhild, thus bringing, in the Author's judgment (for he has forgotton about Helgi and Aslaug), the Völsung-Gjuki line to an end, in the approved Germanic manner, dead in combat.

To the present-day reader, Odin is thus revealed as the force that gives and that takes away, disposing of us all, showing preference toward some and rejecting others. This, of course, is not the Christian way, but it would be unwarranted to look for that here, especially in the northern version of the Saga, in which Christianity was the last creed to conquer.

In conclusion, consider the last dozen stanzas of the Eddic poem Gudrúnarhvöt (“The Urging-On by Gudrun”) and compare them to the last paragraph of the Saga:²⁹

9. Weeping, Gudrun,
          Gjuki's daughter,
          Went with reluctant steps
          To sit by the entrance
          And to relate,
          With tears of grief
          In many a way.
10. “Three fires have I known,
                    Three hearths have I known,
                    To three husbands' homes
                    Have I been carried.
                    And Sigurd was to me
                    Better than all,
                    He whom my brothers
                    Put to death.
11. “A heavier wound
                    I never knew nor saw;
                    Yet more it seemed to me,
                    A greater torment to me,
                    When the princes
                    Gave me to Atli.
12. “My keen young boys I called
                    To secret talk with me.
                    For my woes I could not
                    Get me compensation,
                    Till I had hewed off
                    The heads of the Niblungs.
13. “I went to the shore,
                    Angry at the Norns;
                    I wished to hurl myself
                    From their harassment.
                    High waves litted me
                    Without drowning me;
                    Thus on land I climbed,
                    For I was fated to live.
14. “I went to bed
                    (I had planned something better)
                    For yet a third time
                    With a great king.
                    I bore him children,
                    Rightful heirs,
                    Sons of Jonak.
15. “And around Svanhild
                    Sat her serving-women,
                    Whom I of my children
                    Loved best of all.
                    So was Svanhild
                    In my own hall,
                    As if she were to look at
                    As glorious as a sunbeam.
16. “I endowed her with gold
                    And with costly robes,
                    Before I gave her
                    To the Gothic people.
                    To me the cruelest
                    Of all my griefs
                    Is for the blonde
                    Locks of Svanhild—
                    They trod them in the mud
                    Under the feet of horses.
17. “And the most sorrowful,
                    When my Sigurd
                    They stripped of triumph,
                    And slew him in bed;
                    And the harshest
                    When those gleaming serpents
                    Slithered toward Gunnar,
                    Deprived him of life,
                    When they flayed to the heart
                    That uncowardly king,
                    Slit him still living.
18. “Many songs I remember …
19. “Bridle now, Sigurd!
                    Your black steed,
                    Swift-coursing steed.
                    Let him come galloping!
                    Here sits now
                    No son's wife or daughter
                    Who can to Gudrun
                    Bring priceless gifts!
20. “Do you remember, Sigurd,
                    What we two swore
                    When we two in bed
                    Lay both together—
                    That you would remember me,
                    Proud one, and visit me
                    Even from Death and Hell, my hero!
                    And I you from this world!
21. “Build high, my lords!
                    That pyre of oakwood,
                    And pile it under heaven
                    Highest of all!
                    May it burn the breast
                    Most curse-filled of all!
                    May the sorrows melt
                    That weigh down my heart!”

Now, if we leave aside a brief six-line stanza that indicates that the foregoing is intended to lessen the troubles of all of us, men and women alike, because these woes have been recited, let us concede that this Eddic poem is of heroic dimensions, and the climax truly a Wagnerian brass choir indicating that Gudrun is preparing for suicide by fire, like Signy and Brynhild before her. Now place beside it the account in the Saga, the ungarnished prose of chapter 41, particularly at the point where it reaches stanza 10 of the poem:

But Gudrun went to her bower, her sorrow increasing, and said: “To three men I have been wedded: first to Sigurd Fafnirsbane, and he was betrayed, and that was for me the greatest woe. Then I was given in marriage to King Atli, and my heart was turned so cruel toward him that I killed our sons in my grief. Then I went to the sea and was carried by great waves to this land, and then I was wedded to this king. Then I gave Svanhild in marriage away from here, with great treasure, and it has been for me the sorest of sorrows, next to Sigurd, when she was trodden under the feet of horses. And it was most grim for me when Gunnar was cast in the snake pit, and the keenest when the heart was cut out of Högni. For it would be better if Sigurd should come to me and bear me off in his arms. Here sits now no son or daughter to comfort me. Do you remember, Sigurd, what we two said when we entered one bed, that you would come to me and stay with me, even out of Hel itself?” Then she ended her lamentation.

We find nothing here to imply impending suicide, even though we know that the Author must know that that is the way the story should end. I wonder, however, if the Author may not be finessing the reader. At the end of chapter 38 he has told us that after the death of Atli, Gudrun did not wish to live, “but the end of her days had not yet come.” Regardless of the Eddic poem, the Author is not fumbling here; he knows exactly what he is doing. For all we are ever told, Gudrun is to live in sorrow and grow old and be forgotten, as is the misfortune of most of us. This is not heroic, but rather the way things are.

Notes

1. Since both the editor of the diplomatic text of the Saga, Magnus Olsen, and the editor of the most accessible modern edition, Ernst Wilken (Paderborn, 1877; 1912) seem to differ on the dates—Olsen dates the appearance of Codex in Denmark as early as 1641, when Christian IV was king, and Wilken tends to follow suit—I thought it best, because the beneficence of Bishop Sweinsson was well known, to seek the advice of the Royal Library (Det Kongelige Bibliotek) in Copenhagen, where Codex is housed. I received a very helpful report from Dr. Tue Gad of the Library staff, of which the following paragraphs represent the gist:

   Bishop Sveinsson made more than one donation of Old Icelandic manuscripts to the royal court in Copenhagen. We are interested in Codex, which appeared in 1656, and with it two more manuscripts, of which one was the Flateyjarbók, containing inter alia a version of the Nornageststháttr. In 1662 a total of twelve more manuscripts was added, including the priceless MS of The Poetic Edda.

   In 1784 all these various manuscripts were given a number and entered in a written catalogue; all fifteen manuscripts were thus registered, except for that of the Völsungasaga, which was apparently missing. It was not until 1821 that it was located in the Royal Chamber of Arts (or Museum), where it apparently had been lying for 165 years. That is why its official designation is Ny. kgl. Saml (New Royal Collection), whereas all the other manuscripts (the other fourteen) are designated in Gl. kgl. Saml (Old Royal Collection). The miracle of this is that the Saga survived at all; it is a true nightmare for the specialist in Library Science.

2. It has yet to be determined how or even where Björner prepared his edition.

3. Anton Edzardi, trans., Die Sage von den Völsungen und den Nibelungen (Stuttgart, 1881), p.1. The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrók has been translated by Margaret Schlauch, The Story of the Volsungs (New York, 1930).

4. Per Wieselgren, “Quellenstudien zur Völsungasaga,” Acta et Commentationes Universitatis Tartunensis (Tartu, 1938). In writing about the great amount of scholarly literature devoted to the study of the Saga and its relationship to the Continental (i.e., southern) form of the story, he notes the desirability of establishing a connection between the northern and southern branches, and yet “we cannot consider this matter solved. And it is a nice question indeed, whether it ever will be solved. There are so many unknown factors which call upon so many hypotheses for us to recognize the matter as settled once and for all” (p. 6).

5. Ursula Browne Dronke, ed. and trans., The Poetic Edda, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1969), especially pp. 107-11.

6. More detailed references to Chadwick's work are given in the bibliography, nos. 2 and 3.

7. See n. 6 above.

8. Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum gestarum libri qui supersunt (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1939), chap. 31, par. iii, pp. 396-97, merely states that in his discouragement Ermanric died a voluntary death (voluntaria morte), which sounds like suicide to me.

9. Jordanes, De Origine Actibusque Getarum, ed. Anton Holder (Freiburg i.P. and Tübingen, 1889), chap. 24. The question of Ermanric's suicide being something of a moot point, we compare his “voluntary death” mentioned in preceding note 8 with Jordanes's statement, in his purported continuation of the great Roman historian Tacitus, himself a Goth. Ermanric, having been badly wounded by Sarus and Amnius after the Sunilda affair, died “full of days” at the age of 110. The implication is that the combination of his severe wounds and old age caused his death.

10. These names will be found in Louis de Solis, ed., Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Leges (sec. 1) (Hannover, 1882), 2:43

11. Attila. There have been two useful studies of this figure. It has been proposed that his name is derived from the Gothic atta, a child's name for “father,” with a diminutive suffix—hence “little father” or the like. But Imeljan Pritsak, “Der Titel Attila,” Festschrift für Max Vosmer (bibliography no. 104), shows that atta (as in the Gothic version of the Lord's Prayer) was a Hunnish rather than a Gothic word; hence “Attila” in Hunnish would be “little father.” More important, of course, is Helmut de Boor's Das Attilabild: in Geschichte, Legende, und heroischer Bildung (Bern, 1932), which considers three aspects of this character: (1) the churchly view of Attila as the Scourge of God; (2) the German baronial concept; (3) the role of brother of Brynhild and opponent of the Gjukings; and finds that all three of these distinctions can be traced to the account of Attila in Jordanes.

12. See Gudmund Schütte, Sigfrid und Brünhild (Copenhagen, 1935). He attacks the idea of Sigurd and Brynhild as mythical creations, referring to the story told in Gregory of Tours (see nn. 13 and 14 below). But with these two we are dealing with the stuff of fairy tales: sleeping beauty, father avenged, wicked mother-in-law, dragon slain, unapproachable female won, and only later, when the Author brings them back to earth, so to speak, are they mortals. I am therefore not prepared to accept Brunihildis and Sigbert of Metz as prototypes; as for Brunihildis, let her be the original of Grimhild or Kriemhild.

13. The story is told in Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, ed. Henri Omont (Paris, 1886), 3, sec. 5.

14. Gregory of Tours, 4, sec. 25.

15. The same uncertainty of date prevails here as in the case of the Huns versus the Burgundians.

16. Troyes. Although Hagen is sometimes called Hagen of Tronek, he is sometimes called Hagen of Troja, which comes near enough.

17. Geats … Gautar. These people, whose tribal names in the two languages are strictly cognate, have usually been identified as a Scandinavian group from the ancient Swedish province of Götarike, south of the two great lakes of Väner and Vätter. Two notable dissidents, however, have been Gudmund Schütte, “The ‘Geats’ of Beowulf,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 11(1912): 574-602, and Elis Wadstein, “The Beowulf Poem as a National English Epic,” Acta Philologica Scandinavica 8 (1933-34): 273-91. Both believe them to be the Jutes, despite the fact that the initial consonant would be a Modern English y, and the j derived from the French had not yet arrived in the language—that is, in initial position. On the other hand, it seems impossible that the Geats can be the ancient nation of the Getae (see Jane A. Leake, The Geats of “Beowulf” [Madison, Wis., 1967]), a tribe of prehistoric Thrace, although it might be phonetically possible to wrench the word into that form. Normally, however, *Getae would become West Saxon *Gietas. In spite of the to me frivolous suggestion by Robert Kaske, “The Eotenas of ‘Beowulf,’” Studies in Old English Poetry, ed. Robert P. Creed (Providence, R. I., 1967), pp. 285-310, I concede that the study is well done, but for various reasons it fails to convince me. I agree, nevertheless, that the tribe in the Finnsburg Episode of Beowulf (ll. 1068-1158a) are in likelihood the Jutes.

18. “It was the duty of the fili of the various ranks to memorize stories, genealogies, and topographical traditions, and to master the hundreds of Gaelic metres. The ollamh, graduating after twelve years' study, was required to know by heart three hundred and fifty classic narratives.” Aodh de Blácam, Gaelic Literature Surveyed, rev.ed. (New York, 1974), p. 28. There is no question but that the interrelationship of Germanic skaldic verse and Celtic bardic verse should be examined much further than it has been. The intrinsic difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that both were originally entirely oral.

19. See in particular Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).

20. The translation given here is my own.

21. In other words, the name of Sigemund's ancestor should be Waels, and in the Norse story it should be Völs. The older explanation was that the word is cognate to the Gothic walis, to be found only in the Ulfilan translation of the Pauline Epistles Colossians 3:12; Philippians 4:3; 1 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4. In all of these the accepted meaning is “chosen,” “respected,” “faithful.” The word is also applied to an ancient Slavic deity. I am not enamored of either explanation, and I doubt that many today would disagree with my reservation.

22. This matter was common knowledge among students of Old English ever since the first edition by Friedrich Klaeber (Beowulf; Boston, 1922), a statement that is repeated in his last edition (1957), where the formulaic structure is noted (p. lxvi). But Francis P. Magoun, in “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” Speculum 28 (1953): 446-67, called attention to this characteristic on an extensive scale, seeing, as it were, a “formula” behind every bush. Unfortunately, many of his disciples ignored the word narrative in his title and could not always agree on what a “formula” really was. In consequence, one of them was confident that he would find 4,000 formulas in Beowulf alone, a poem of 3,182 lines, or something better than a formula to every line. We have been hearing much less about this matter in the last quarter-century, chiefly because of the continuing indecision about what constitutes a formula. Mere repetition of a word or even a special phrase is hardly enough.

23. Gudmund Vigfusson, in Grimm Festschrift (Berlin, 1885), pp. 1-21. An actually more militant pioneer was Adolf Giesebrecht, “Ueber den Ursprung der Siegfriedssage,” Neues Jahrbuch der deutschen Sprache 2 (1837) 203-34.

24. For the various works by Höfler and the theories contained therein, see bibliography, items 59, 60, and 61.

25. Bragi Boddason inn gamli, who flourished between 825 and 850, was a half-legendary poet who is considered by many the initiator of the tradition of skaldic verse. It is possible that he is the euhemeristic origin of the god of poetry, whose name was Bragi. The god is mentioned frequently by Snorri Sturluson in The Prose Edda.

26. The tháttr is defined as a story within a story.

27. E. V. Gordon, Introduction to Old Norse, rev.ed. (Oxford, 1957), p. 21.

28. The role played by Odin has, of course, been recognized from the beginning, and it is easy enough to say that he is a deus ex machina assisting the Völsungs as long as it suits his purpose to do so. One old explanation, offered by Adolf Rassmann, “Woden und die Nibelungen,” Germania 26 (1881): 279-315, is that Odin favors the Nibelungs because of the insult visited upon him by Hreidmar, his captivity until the wergild is paid, and the harsh exaction of that same blood-money by both Hreidmar and Fafnir. The difficulty here is that Rassmann was oriented toward The Nibelungenlied, or at any rate toward the southern version of the story. It must not be forgotten that Odin concerns himself almost exclusively with Sigmund, Sigurd, and their forbears. See also n. 167 below. We have here another instance of the blindness to the Sigmund story in favor of the material on Sigurd as it appears in the Eddic poems, and Rassmann compounds the felony by observing that no other people in the world would think of having its highest god given the task of saving a family of heroes, a chosen group. This sounds most parochial, although in reality it is not. But did he never hear of Jehovah?

    An interesting and far more recent study is that by Richard L. Harris, “Odin's Old Age,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 33 (1969): 23-48. With the coming of Christianity, of course, Odin is gradually relegated to a minor figure even in Scandinavia: “The possibility of the Old Man is seen to be more likely when one considers … his degradation in the later Fornaldarsögur and … his mellowing in folklore to the point where he becomes a protector of the poor farmers of Iceland. He becomes a guardian of order as opposed to the spirit of disorder which he used to be.” This is all very well, but Harris then applies this idea to the concept of the Old Man in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. This old man has been interpreted in various ways—as Death himself, as Experience, even as the Wandering Jew (see my Legend of the Wandering Jew [Providence, R.I., 1965], pp. 31-32). The point I must emphasize is that this figure in Chaucer's work is of truly epic stature and dignity, and no faded deity rambling around the countryside helping poor farmers. I see him as representing Old Age or Experience or both.

29. The translation of the stanzas from the Gudrúnarhvöt is mine.