NIBELUNGENLIED, or
, an heroic epic
written in a Middle High German dialect. The story on which
the poem is based belongs to the general stock of Teutonic saga
and was very widespread under various forms, some of which are
preserved. Thus it is touched upon in Beowulf, and fragments
of it form the most important part of the northern Edda, the
poets of which evidently assumed that the tale as a whole was
well known and that their hearers would be able to put each
piece in its proper place. In the prose Edda, or Volsungasaga, which, though largely primitive in spirit, dates from the 13th century, it is set forth in full. The substance of this Norse version is as follows: —
This story, in spite of the late date of the Volsungasaga and
of added elements due to the imagination of its author, evidently
represents a very primitive version. In the Nibelungen story, on the other hand, though its extant versions are of much earlier date, and though it contains elements equally primitive not found in the other, the spirit and the motives of the earlier story have to a large extent been transmuted by later influences, the setting of the story being — though by no means consistently — medieval rather than primitive. Thus the mysterious hoard is all but lost sight of; no mention is made of the curse attached to it; and it is only as an afterthought that Siegfried (Sifrit) is described as its master. Everywhere the supernatural elements are eliminated or subordinated, and the story becomes a drama of human motives, depending for its development on the interplay of human passions and activities.
That is all he gives by way of preface. The gods have vanished
from the scene; there is nothing of Loki and his theft of Andvari's
hoard, nothing of Odin and his gifts of the sword Gram and
the magic horse Grani; and not till the third Aventiure, when
Siegfried comes to Worms, are we given even a hint that such
things as the sword and treasure exist. On the other hand, in
the very next stanza we are introduced to what is to be the
leading motive of the plot: Kriemhild, the Burgundian princess, on whose account “many a noble knight was doomed to perish.” For, as in the legend of Sigurd the Volsung, the plot had turned upon the love and vengeance of Brunhild, so in the song of the Nibelungs it is the love and vengeance of Kriemhild, the Gudrun of the northern saga, that forms the backbone of the story and gives it from first to last an artistic unity which the Volsungasaga lacks. Of the story itself it is impossible here to give anything but the barest outline, sufficient to show its contrast with the northern version. We may note at the outset the spirit of pessimism which, like the curse on the hoard, pervades the whole. It appears in the very first Aventiure, when Kriemhild, in answer to her mother's interpretation of her dream, declares that she will never marry, since “it has been proved by the experience of many women that joy is in the end rewarded by sorrow”; it is repeated in the last stanza but one of the long poem: “As ever joy in sorrow ends and must end alway.” This tragic contrast is emphasized by the pomp and circumstance that surround the ill-fated hero of the story at the beginning.
The primitive setting of the northern version has vanished utterly. Sigmund is king of the Netherlands; the boy Siegfried is brought up by “wise men that are his tutors” (Avent. ii.) ; and when, attracted by the fame of Kriemhild's beauty, he rides to Worms to woo her, it is as the typical handsome, accomplished and chivalrous king's son of medieval romance.