"The Nibelungenlied" translated by A T Hatto

A castle in the modern Rhine

The 'song of the Nibelungs' is one of the classic mediaeval prose romances; it is most well-known today for forming one of the key bases from Wagner's Ring Cycle, although much of his tale is actually derived from other mediaeval poems.

The story

Siegfried (arrives in Worms to woo Kriemhilde, the sister of King Gunther of the Burgundians (who rules with his two brothers Gernot and Giselher). Siegfried helps Gunther defeat an army of invading Saxons. He then travels (with Gunther and vassals Hagen and his brother Dancwart) to Iceland so that Gunther can woo Princess Brunhilde, a lady of formidable strength who demands that Gunther beats her in three trials (throwing a javelin, throwing a boulder, and long jump) or lose his life. Siegfried helps Gunther by using a cloak of invisibility, ensuring that Gunther seems to have won. Brunhilde acknowledges defeat but, on her wedding night, refuses access to Gunther, tying him up in her girdle and hanging him from a hook on the wall for the duration of the night. So he again enlists Siegfried’s help who, the next night, using his cloak, subdues Brunhilde (but doesn’t violate her, leaving that to Gunther, after which Brunhilde loses her strength) and steals her ring and the famous girdle which he gives to his bride Kriemhilde.

Brunhilde has the mistaken belief that Siegfried is one of Gunther’s vassals and therefore begrudges him marrying Gunther’s sister Kriemhilde. She doesn’t realises that Siegfried is King of the Netherlands, the Nibelungs, and Norway. So when, after a few years, Siegfried and his queen Kriemhilde return to Gunther and Brunhilde’s court, the two ladies have a fight about who has precedence. Angry  Kriemhilde reveals that she has the ring and the girdle, implying that Siegfried deflowered Brunhilde. 

Hagen, arguing that this scandal has dishonoured King Gunther, and (as a bonus) that this will be a good way to get hold of the fabulous treasure of the Nibelungs, won by Siegfried previous to this story, conspires with Gunther to murder Siegfried, after tricking Kriemhilde into revealing Siegfried’s vulnerability (a patch between his shoulder-blades where a linden leaf landed while he was bathing in the blood of a dragon he had killed, so becoming horny-skinned). Hagen's plot works and Siegfried, a guest, is betrayed and assassinated, and his gold is stolen and then hidden in the Rhine.

After a dozen years or so the still beautiful Kriemhilde (who stayed at Gunther’s court rather than returning to the Netherlands and her infant son) marries King Etzel of the Huns. Later, seeking vengeance for her first husband, she invites her brother, and Hagen, and their men, to her new husband’s court. They go, despite realising that it is probably a trick. Following a lot of fighting, and many dead, finally Gunther and Hagen, the only survivors of the thousands of Burgundians on the trip, are captured by Dietrich, and imprisoned and then murdered by Kriemhilde, though they refuse to say where the Nibelung's treasure is hidden.

The sources

There is an awful lot of fighting in the poem but A T Hatto points out that there is very little technical detail about the fights, suggesting that the anonymous author was not a knight. Nor, given the lack of a Christian message, was he likely to have been a monk. The most likely explanation, especially given the prominence of two minstrels employed as messengers, is that the poet was a literate minstrel.

Hatto dates the poem using things mentioned. The bleeding corpse is a motive in the poem Iwein by Hartmann von Aue which was probably written in about 1198. The fabric from 'Ninnive' probably comes from a version of the Alexander legend written about 1190. Rumold, a minor character, is described as ‘Lord of the Kitchen’ which is a real title dating from about 1201. Etzel’s wedding with Kriemhild in Vienna may be based on the wedding in Vienna of Duke Leopold VI and Theodora Comnena, grand-daughter of a Byzantine Emperor, which took place in 1203. All this suggests a date of composition of about 1203.

Sources for the poem include the Lex Burgundionum (pre 516) and Latin chronicles which mention a Burgundian King called Gundaharius who has a brother called Gislaharius; these are probably the originals of Gunther and Giselher. Etzel is almost certainly Attila the Hun, said to have been murdered in 453 by Germanic wife Ildico. 

Another source, the Waltharius, probably written about 920 by Ekkehard, a monk of St Gall, records the escape of Burgundian princess Hiltgirt, her lover Waltharius, and Hagano, from the court of Attila, after Guntharius, King of the Franks, reneged on a treaty; Hagano and Guntharius conspire to steal from Hiltgunt and Waltharius the treasure they have stolen from Attila. In this story the Franks are described as 'nebulones' (rascals?) which may be the origin of the word 'Nibelungs'.

The Poetic Eddas contain part of a poem in which Brynhild, Gunnar’s wife, accuses Sigurd of deflowering her, perhaps because she is jealous that Gudrun, Sigurd’s wife, is pregnant. Guthorm kills Sigurd, perhaps acting on behalf of a conspiracy involving Hogni. Another poem in the Eddas, the Atlakvida, dated to about 900, tells the story of Atli, King of the Huns, who invites Gunnarr, King of the Burgundians, to visit him. Gunnar consults his brother Hogni: why did their sister, Gudrun, Alti’s wife, send a ring twined with wolf’s hair? Despite this warning Gunnarr goes. The Burgundians are seized (after Hogni kills eight men). Gunnarr refuses to say where his treasure is hidden. The Huns bring him a human heart, saying it is Hogni’s, but he refuses to believe it, saying the heart is too trembly. The Huns cut out Hogni’s heart, who dies laughing. Gunnarr now says that, since Hogni was the only other person who knew there the treasure is, the Huns will never find it. They throw him in a snake pit where he dies, playing the harp. Gudrun then revenges herself on Atli by (a) feeding him with the flesh of their sons at a banquet (b) killing him in bed (c) burning down his house. Many of these items are found in the second part of the Nibelungenlied. 

Poetic form
I read a prose translation into English. The original versions are written in verse. There is variation of form but the fundamental basis is that each stanza has four lines with an AABB rhyme pattern (there are also internal rhymes, particularly for the words just before the caesuras. The first three lines of each stanza have three metrical beats, a caesura, and then three further beats. The final line of each stanza has an additional foot after the caesura. The last word before the caesura is usually an iamb (stress/unstress) whereas the final word of the line is usually stressed. 

Evaluation

Morally speaking, this is a squalid tale. The author is firmly on the side of valiant fighting men and very misogynistic. Thus, the treacherous and indeed thieving and murderous Hagen, is praised for his last ditch stand against impossible odds. Meanwhile Kriemhilde is a she-devil, principally because she outrages the laws of hospitality under which you shouldn’t seek to kill your guests (though that is exactly what Hagen did earlier, prompting this symmetrical revenge). Furthermore, Gunther more or less escapes censure for his part in tricking Brunhilde. But this, of course, is to judge the story in the light of modern-day morality.

Judging it by modern literary sensibility is similarly anachronistic. There is a great deal of action, fighting in particular, and plot, and very little concern for character. Hagen is a villain according to modern sensibilities but is presented by the poet as brave and a great fighter whose morally dubious actions are realpolitik; the bereaved Kriemhilde is derided as a she-devil. Time scales don't work: Giselher is described as young despite being at least fifty, Kriemhilde preserves her charms over a similar period, Dancwart claims to have been a child when he was manifestly an adult. 

Much of the narrative is along the lines of: this happened and then this and then this. 

Selected quotes:

• "Siegfried loved his sister, though Siegfried had never set eyes on her." (Ch 5)
• "Siegfried son of Siegmund stood there handsome as though limned on parchment." (Ch 5)
• "He tried to win her by force, and tumbled her shift for her, at which the haughty girl reached for the girdle of stout silk cord that she wore about her waist, and subjected him to great suffering and shame, for in return of being balked of her sleep, she bound him hand and foot, carried him to a nail, and hung him on the wall." (Ch 10)
• "That evening, while the King sat and dined, many fine robes were splashed with tine as the butlers plied the tables." (Ch 13) This sounds as if the butlers were very clumsy but I think it is meant to show that the courtiers can afford to buy new clothes.
• "One of the warriors then went over to a corpse and, removing his helmet and kneeling over a wound, began to drink the blood that oozed from it and, little used to it though he was, he thought it very good." (Ch 36) Not vampirism; the warrior is very thirsty. But this passage adduces evidence for the partiality of the author: anything the Burgundians do (tricking women, murdering guests, drinking blood) is good but their enemies are continually characterised as evil. 

There was a BBC Radio 4UK 'In Our Time' programme about the Nibelungenlied; click on the link for the podcast.

September 2023; 290 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Passau

The text says: Passau: A literary centre of the High Middle Ages. The Nibelungenlied, a major European epic, was written here around the year 1200, at the court of Bishop Wolfger von Erla (who was bishop between 1191 and 1204). It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009. The outstanding position of the Bishop's court in mediaeval literary life is also evidenced by the fact that Bishop Wolfger's travel accounts mention 'five long shillings' for a fur coat, which Walther von der Vogelweide received in 2003 as a singer in the episcopal court. This note is the only documentary evidence of this greatest poet of the German Middle Ages.

I'm writing this on a river cruise while the boat is docked at Passau, the town in modern Germany where the Danube meets the Inn and the Ilz. Being at the confluence of three rivers made Passau an important town in the Holy Roman Empire. In Chapter 21, which describes Kriemhild's journey to Hungary where she will marry Etzel (Atilla the Hun), we are told that she travels through a place where there is a cloister and where the Inn flow into the Danube, a place called Passau, where "Bishop Pilgrim" holds sway. Many scholars believe that this is a sort of product placement, or mention of the sponsor, who may have been renowned literary patron Wolfgang von Erla who was bishop in Passau between 1191 - 1204, dates coinciding with the expected dating of the poem.