The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

APPENDIX A

A short account of the

ORIGINS OF THE LEGEND

§ I Attila and

Gundahari

In both Lays my father used the expression ‘Borgund lord(s)’, chiefly in reference to Gunnar, or Gunnar and Högni (who are also called ‘Gjúkings’ and ‘Niflungs’). In the commentary on the Lay of the Völsungs, VII.15, I have explained that he derived the name ‘Borgund’ from a single occurrence in Atlakviða of the title vin Borgunda ‘lord of the Burgundians’, applied to Gunnar, and that nowhere else in Norse literature was Gunnar remembered as a Burgundian. In this title appears one of the chief elements in the legend.

The Burgundians were in origin an East Germanic people who came out of Scandinavia; they left their name in Bornholm (Norse Borgunda holm), the island that rises from the Baltic south-east of the southern tip of Sweden. In the Old English poem Widsith they are named together with the eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) and the Huns: ‘Attila ruled the Huns, Ermanaric the Goths, Gifica the Burgundians’, which may be taken to be a memory of a time when the Burgundians still dwelt in ‘East Germania’; but they moved westwards toward the Rhineland, and it was there that disaster overtook them.

Early in the fifth century they were settled in Gaul, in a kingdom on the west bank of the Rhine centred on Worms (south of Frankfurt). In the year 435, led by their king Gundahari, the Burgundians, impelled as it seems by the need for land, embarked on an expansion westwards; but they were crushed by the Roman general Aetius and forced to sue for peace. Two years later, in 437, they were overwhelmed by a massive onslaught of the Huns, in which Gundahari and a very large number of his people perished. It has been commonly supposed that the Roman Aetius, whose primary purpose was to defend Gaul from the encroachments of the barbarians, called in the Huns to destroy the Burgundian kingdom of Worms. There is no reason to suppose that Attila was the leader of the Huns in this battle.

But the Burgundians of the Rhineland were not wholly destroyed in 437, for it is recorded that in 443 the survivors were allowed to settle as colonists in the region of Savoy. A curious glimpse of them is found among the writings of Sidonius Apollinaris, a cultivated Gallo-Roman aristocrat, Imperial politician, and poet, born in Lyons about 430, and in his later years the bishop of Clermont, the chief city of the Auvergne. He left in his letters a portrait of the manners and mode of life in the strange society of southern Gaul in the fifth century.

But to the fastidious Sidonius the gross Burgundians were repellent and their culture wholly without interest. In a satirical poem he complained humorously of having to sit among the long-haired barbarians (who were excessively fond of him) and be forced to endure Germanic speech: to praise with a wry face the songs sung by the gluttonous, seven foot tall Burgundians, who greased their hair with rancid butter and reeked of onions. Thus we learn nothing from him of the songs which were sung by the contemporaries of Gundahari and Attila, but only that his own muse fled away from the noise.

That they preserved their traditions, however great the disaster of 437, is suggested by a Burgundian code of laws drawn up King Gundobad not later than the early sixth century, in which the names of ancestral kings are cited: Gibica, Gundomar, Gislahari, Gundahari. These names all appear in later legend, though it cannot be known what were the historical relationships between them. Gundahari is Gunnarr (vin Borgunda) in Norse. He appears in Old English in the very dissimilar but ultimately identical form Guðhere: in the poem Widsith the minstrel says that when he was ‘among the Burgundians’

me þær Guðhere forgeaf glædlicne maððum

songes to leane; næs þæt sæne cyning.

(‘there Guðhere gave me a glorious jewel in reward for my song: he was no sluggish king.’) In the German tradition he is Gunther.

Gibica, in the form Gifica, appears in the Old English Widsith as the ruler of the Burgundians together with the rulers of the Goths and the Huns, as I have mentioned above. In Norse the name became by regular phonetic change Gjúki, who is the father of Gunnar; in forms of the German tradition Gibeche is likewise the father of Gunther; but (especially in view of the placing of Gifica in Widsith) it may be that he was in history an illustrious ancestor of an older time.

‘It is easy to understand,’ wrote R.W. Chambers in his edition of Widsith (1912) ‘why the story of the fall of Gundahari and his men in battle against the Huns was of interest not merely to the Burgundian, but to all his neigh-bours, till, as the centuries passed, it became known from end to end of Germania. Eight centuries after his fight Gundahari was still remembered from Iceland to Austria.’

With this view my father did not altogether concur. In notes for lectures primarily on the knowledge of the Völsung legend among Old English poets, he said: ‘Guðhere’s tale is one of downfall after glory – and sudden downfall, not slow decay – sudden and overwhelming disaster in a great battle. It is the downfall, too, of a people that had already had an adventurous career, and disturbed things in the west by their intrusion and by the rise of a considerable power at Worms. It is easy to see how their defeat by Aetius only two years previously would be telescoped in the dramatic manner of legend into the defeat by the Huns (if not actually connected in history, as it may have been).

‘Guðhere, already valiant and a generous goldgiver as patron in Widsith, must have been very renowned. Mere downfall, without previous glory, did not excite minstrels to admiration and pity. However, we are probably not far wrong in guessing that there must – quite early – have been some other element than mere misfortune in this tale to give it the fire and vitality it clearly had: living as it did down the centuries. What this was we can hardly guess. Gold? It may well have been that gold, or the acquisition of some treasure (that later still became connected with some renowned legendary gold) was introduced to explain Attila’s attack. Attila (when legend or history is not on his side) is represented as grasping and greedy. It may have been in this way that Guðhere ultimately got connected with the most renowned hoard, the dragon’s hoard of Sigemund [in Old English], of Sigurd [in Old Norse].’

My father did not mean to imply that, in history, Attila was the leader in the attack on the Burgundians in 437, for which there is no evidence. He saw that ‘Attila only appears in the story by an early legendary, or dramatic, simplification and heightening of the importance of the battle in which Guðhere perished. He became essential to it.’ In the eighth century the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon (monk of Monte Cassino) knew Attila as the foe; and from his account it is seen that by then the tradition was that Gundahari was not slain in his own town of Worms, but marched eastwards to meet Attila: and this was an invariable feature of the legend in all its forms.

Profound as was the impression made in Germanic legend by the colossal figure of Attila, there is no occasion in this book to outline the history of the most renowned of all the barbarian kings, which necessarily involves the political and military complexities, often obscure, of his relations with the disrupted Empire; and indeed, in the development of the legend in Norse, it could be said that it was the manner of his death that counted for more than his life. At the same time there is no need, I think, to pass over altogether the extraordinarily clear glimpse of that fearful tyrant and destroyer that survives from more than fifteen centuries ago (in such contrast to Gundahari, of whose personal characteristics we know nothing at all).

This is owing to an accomplished and well-informed historian named Priscus of Panium (that being a town of Thrace), whose large work in Greek Of Byzantium and the events connected with Attila survives, lamentably, only in fragments; but one of those fragments contains the story of his journey into Hungary as a member of a small diplomatic deputation to Attila sent out from Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Empire, in the summer of the year 449. Attila received the Roman embassy in the village of wooden buildings that was his headquarters, standing in the midst of a vast plain without stone or tree; and Priscus not only narrowly observed the banquet at which Attila presided, and much else, but described it in such sharp detail as to suggest that he took notes at the time of all that he saw. In this unique account of a barbarian banquet in the Heroic Age Priscus described the elaborate and interminable ceremony in which Attila drank to the health of each guest in turn, and the fine feast served on looted silver dishes with looted drinking-cups of silver and gold – in contrast to the unadorned simplicity of Attila, who drank from a wooden cup and ate only meat, on a wooden plate. He described the entertainment provided: there were singers who chanted songs in praise of the great deeds of Attila; there was a madman, and a buffooning dwarf, who aroused loud laughter, but not from Attila, who sat through all this in grim and rigid silence. But when his youngest son Ernac entered the hall Priscus saw that Attila looked at him ‘with softened gaze’ and stroked his face. He asked a Hun who sat beside him for an explanation of this, and he replied that the soothsayers had told Attila that the fortunes of his family would fail, but would be restored to greatness by this son. The carouse lasted far on into the night, but the Romans prudently withdrew long before it ended.

A description of the physical appearance of Attila is found in the work of a sixth-century historian of the Goths named Jordanes, and this description is directly derived from Priscus, though the original is lost. He was short in stature with a broad chest; his small beady eyes were set in a huge face; his nose was flat and his skin swarthy, his beard straggly and flecked with grey. His step was haughty, and he had a way of darting his glance hither and thither, ‘so that the power of his great spirit appeared in the movement of his body’.

Most important for the large evolution of the legend was the great event of the year 451, the most famous battle of that age. In that year Attila moved with a huge army westwards towards the Rhine, mounting an attack on Gaul for which his motives are obscure. The Huns had destroyed the Ostrogothic power in the east in the fourth century, and Attila ruled over a great mixed dominion, as the Goths had done under Ermanaric (see the commentary on the Lay of Gudrún, stanza 86, pp.322–3). In his empire, and so also in his armies, were many East Germanic peoples; and now in his host came the Ostrogoths under their king Valamer, the Gepids under Ardaric, Rugians, Thuringians, and warriors of other nations beside. Against them came in uneasy alliance the Visigoths (the western Goths) of Tolosa (Toulouse) under their aged king Theodoric, Aetius the Roman general, Burgundians from their new lands in Savoy, Franks, even a contingent of Saxons. The battle is known as the Catalaunian plains (the plain of Champagne) and the Mauriac plain; it was fought in the region of Troyes (a hundred miles south-east of Paris).

Of the course of the battle very little is known. Jordanes, writing a century later, said that it was bellum atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax (ferocious, confused, monstrous, unrelenting). Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was among the vast numbers of the slain. The fighting continued into the night, and Attila retreated into his camp, which he had fortified with waggons. According to Jordanes, he had a great funeral pyre heaped up out of horses’ saddles on which he intended to be burnt before final defeat should overtake him.

But the final assault was never made. The alliance against him broke up. Again according to Jordanes, the imminent prospect of the total destruction of the Huns filled Aetius with alarm. His deepest fear was the power of the Visigothic kingdom in the south of France, centred on Toulouse; and despite the eagerness of the young king of the Visigoths, Thurismund, to avenge on the Huns the death of his father in the battle, Aetius advised him to return to Toulouse, lest his brothers should seize the throne in his absence. This counsel Thurismund accepted (‘without perceiving its duplicity’); the Visigoths departed from the battlefield, and Attila was allowed to escape from Gaul.

In the year 452, following the great battle, Attila crossed the Alps, and came down into Italy from the north-east. The cities of the north Italian plain were not only ravaged by the Huns but in some cases actually razed to the ground. Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic, which both as fortress and great trading centre was one of the foremost cities of northern Italy, was so utterly destroyed that when Jordanes wrote, a century later, there was scarcely a trace of it to be seen. Patavium suffered the same fate, and though unlike Aquileia it rose again, it is a striking fact that Padua has no Roman remains.

But Attila never crossed the Apennines, making for Rome. Whatever the reason, he returned to Hungary; and in the following year, 453, he died. The story of his death is known from Jordanes; but Jordanes expressly stated that he was following the authority of Priscus, and it can be taken to be precise history.

Attila in this year added one more to his many wives (innumerabiles uxores in Jordanes’ words: the Huns were highly polygamous). His wife was a very beautiful girl named Ildico (it has been commonly thought probable that her name shows her to have been of Germanic origin – a diminutive form of Hild, or any name ending in -hild; perhaps a Burgundian). At the wedding feast Attila became hugely drunk and took to his bed, ‘heavy with wine and sleep’; and there as he lay on his back he suffered a violent nose-bleeding, and was choked to death by the blood passing down his throat. Late on the following day his servants broke down the doors and found him lying dead and covered with blood ‘without a wound’, his bride weeping, covered by her veil.

Jordanes described the funeral of Attila, clearly still following the lost narrative of Priscus. His body was laid in a silken tent out on the plain, and the finest horsemen of the Huns rode round in circles, ‘after the manner of the circus-games’; and they told of his deeds in a funeral song. After wild extremes of grief and joy his body was buried at night, covered in gold, and silver, and iron, with weapons taken from his enemies and many treasures; and then, ‘in order that human curiosity should be kept away from such riches’, those who performed the work of burial were killed. In the same way, after the death of Alaric king of the Visigoths in 410, the captives were made to divert the mountain-river Busento in Calabria from its bed, and then after the burial of the king and the returning of the river to its ordinary course they were all put to death.

But the figure of Attila rose from his tomb and took different shapes in the centuries that followed. Among Latin-speaking peoples he was taken up into what has been called ‘ecclesiastical mythology’, and became Flagellum Dei, the Scourge of God, divinely appointed to the devastation of a wicked world. In the lands of Germania there were two radically distinct traditions concerning him: he appears in a double light, generous patron and monstrous foe, and it is not difficult to see how this should have come about. On the Catalaunian plains there was a colossal conflict between men of many Germanic nations. As I have said, in the hosts of Attila went men of many East Germanic peoples subject to the Huns, most notably the Ostrogoths, and for them Attila was the great King and overlord, to whom their own kings paid allegiance: indeed his very name Attila looks like a diminutive form of the Gothic word atta, ‘father’. In South German (High German) tradition Attila, his name changed in the course of time through phonetic movement to Etzel, is a benevolent monarch, hospitable and ineffectual, far removed from the Attila of history.

But in more northerly lands his legendary image was derived from his enemies, and thence, by whatever route it came, the Scandinavians derived their grim and covetous king Atli, murderer of the Burgundians for the sake of the Nibelung hoard.

The story that Jordanes, following Priscus, told of the manner of Attila’s death is beyond question the historical fact; and the knowledge that that was how he died was known to Chaucer more than nine hundred years later. His scoundrelly Pardoner finds in the death of Attila an anecdote to illustrate the evil of drunkenness:

Looke, Attila, the gretë conqueróur,

Deyde in his sleepe, with shame and dishonóur,

Bledynge ay at his nose in dronkenesse;

A capitayn sholde lyve in sobrenesse.

But a chronicler named Marcellinus Comes, writing in Constantinople at about the same time as Jordanes, knew a different story: Attila was stabbed in the night by a woman. It may well be that this story originated almost as soon as the true report – it was lying ready to hand.

In very brief remarks on this matter, my father sketched out his view of the further evolution of the Burgundian legend when the story that Attila was murdered by his bride had taken root. Such a deed must have a motive, and no motive is more likely than that it was vengeance for the murder of the bride’s father, or kinsmen. Attila had come to be seen as the leader of the Huns in the massacre of the Burgundians in 437 (see p.341); now, the murder was done in vengeance for the destruction of Gundahari and his people. Whether or not Ildico was a Burgundian, her rôle in the evolving drama must make her so. And she avenges her brother, Gundahari.

The essential features of the Burgundian story are then present. Gundahari-Gunnar, vin Borgunda, was killed by Attila-Atli, and for this he was murdered, in his bed, by a woman. And the woman was Gudrún. But where the gold came from is of course a different question.

§ II Sigmund, Sigurd and the Nibelungs

As the story of the Burgundians evolved it became intertwined with a legend (or legends) distinct in nature and origin: the dragon-slayer and his golden hoard, and the mysterious Nibelungs (German Nibelungen, Norse Niflungar). When that conjunction and combination took place cannot be said, but it seems plain that it was made in Germany, and not in Scandinavia.

This is a matter that raises many questions that cannot be certainly resolved, and its study has been marked by severe disagreements. My father took a deep interest in it; but in his lectures at Oxford he approached it primarily from his desire to convey an idea of the largely vanished heroic poetry of ancient England. Since in this book my object is to present his poems expressly in terms of his own beliefs and opinions, it seems best to introduce this sketch of the subject in the same way, with the same question: what can be learned of it from the scraps and fragmentary references of Old English poetry?

In fact, there is only one text from which to look for an answer to that question, namely, a passage in Beowulf. I give this passage here in my father’s translation of the poem, which he made, I incline to think, at some time not far distant from that in which he wrote the Lay of the Völsungs and the Lay of Gudrún.

Returning from their riding from the hall of Heorot to see the mere into which Grendel had plunged dying, the knights were entertained by a minstrel of the king.

At whiles a servant of the king, a man laden with proud memories who had lays in mind and recalled a host and multitude of tales of old – word followed word, each truly linked to each – this man in his turn began with skill to treat in poetry the quest of Beowulf and in flowing verse to utter his ready tale, interweaving words.

He recounted all that he had heard tell concerning Sigemund’s works of prowess, many a strange tale, the arduous deeds of the Wælsing and his adventures far and wide, deeds of vengeance and of enmity, things that the children of men knew not fully, save only Fitela who was with him. In those days he was wont to tell something of such matters to his sister’s child, even as they ever were comrades in need in every desperate strait – many and many of the giant race had they laid low with swords. For Sigemund was noised afar after his dying day no little fame, since he, staunch in battle, had slain the serpent, the guardian of the Hoard. Yea he, the son of noble house, beneath the hoar rock alone did dare the perilous deed. Fitela was not with him; nonetheless it was his fortune that the sword pierced through the serpent of strange shape and stood fixed in the wall, goodly blade of iron; the dragon died a cruel death. The fierce slayer had achieved by his valour that he might at his own will enjoy that hoard of rings; the boat upon the sea he laded and bore to the bosom of his ship the bright treasures, the offspring of Wæls was he. The serpent melted in its heat.

He was far and wide of adventurers the most renowned throughout the people of mankind for his works of prowess, that prince of warriors – thereby did he aforetime prosper – after the valour and might of Heremod, his might and prowess, had failed...

The remainder of the passage concerns the Danish king Heremod and does not bear on the question at issue here. In a lecture on the subject my father set down what he called ‘preliminary points’ – considerations arising from the Old English evidences alone, without looking further afield. In what follows I give them in abbreviated form but almost entirely in his own words.

There cannot be any serious doubt that the reference in Beowulf is to a story related to the Völsung and Nibelung legends of other lands. The names Sigemund, Wælsing, Fitela (and his relation nefa to eam [nephew to uncle] of Sigemund), and the dragon with his hoard, must on grounds of philology and legend be ultimately the same as Old Norse Sigmundr son of Völsung, with his sister-son Sin-fjötli. This remains true in spite of the serious discrepancies: e.g. that Sigemund (not his son: no hint of whose existence is given) slew the dragon; or that a boat, not a horse, is the vehicle for the treasure.

The Burgundians are not referred to at all in Beowulf. Neither are many, certainly renowned, figures of Germanic story. The argument from silence is peculiarly perilous in dealing with remnants so haphazard and tattered as those we possess of Old English heroic traditions; and might seem absurd when applied to Beowulf, which is a poem, not a catalogue. Yet it actually has some point in this case. The Burgundian names were known to Old English, and the subjects of verse and tale. We cannot be certain that such a connexion was not present to the mind of the author of Beowulf. But it does not look like it.

The Burgundians are indeed known. But where we meet them in Old English, we find an exact reversal of the case in Beowulf. No reference, at any rate, is made to their connexion with Sigemund Wælsing. The very early poem Widsith reveals a wide-flung interest in a huge nexus of legend: admittedly, specially devoted to the Goths or the northern sea-peoples, but it is not silent on more southern Germanic topics. It refers to Guðhere and to Gifica. It does not refer at all to Sigemund, or Wælsing, or Fitela, or the dragon. (Widsith has indeed a specially historical tendency.)

Certain reference to the ‘Wælsingas’ is indeed in Old English literature confined to Beowulf. [My father added ‘literature’ on account of the place-name Walsingham in Norfolk.] If we add to this the absence in nomenclature of the special names peculiar to this story in its full-grown form (Guðrún, Grímhild, Brynhild) we shall be forced at the outset to conclude that it is probable:

that Sigemund Wælsing had no pre-eminent place in Old English traditions, in spite of the words wreccena mærost used of him in Beowulf [in the translation given above ‘of adventurers the most renowned’], which may be no more than poetic for ‘a famous adventurer’;

that his tale from the earliest times was of the more mythical-legendary kind – not one of the historical-legendary traditions;

that it was not concerned with Burgundians, who certainly were originally figures of history, but with the dark background of the story that in High German had practically faded out of memory: the part that in Old Norse (though remodelled and drastically altered) concerns the mysterious Odinic Völsungs before the advent of Sigurd. The names are Sigemund, Fitela, Wælsing: these we can find trace of (even outside Beowulf ). The names – women’s names especially – which mark the vital connexion with the Burgundians and their fall cannot be discovered in Old English times in Old English form.

These are only probable considerations. But they are important even so. For the tone, manner, and details of the Old English references are peculiarly important. In general we are likely to get in Old English allusions to an earlier state in legendary development, before the confusion or combinations of later days in other lands. It is therefore vital to note that the most reasonable interpretation of Old English material is that the Sigemund story was originally of an older more mythical type; that it co-existed with the Burgundian legend, but was not yet connected with it.

The major problem raised by the passage in Beowulf in its relation to the Norse story as it appears in the Völsunga Saga is of course the fact that in Beowulf Sigemund is famed for his slaying of a dragon and the gaining of its treasure hoard, whereas in Norse Sigmund has nothing to do with any dragon, and it is Sigmund’s son Sigurd who is the famous dragon-slayer. Some scholars have held that Sigemund’s dragon in Beowulf originally belonged to Sigurd, but was transferred to Sigemund when the two came to be linked as father and son. Others have said that there is no reason to suppose that the author of the Old English poem had ever heard of Sigurd. Some have said that Sigemund and Sigurd were originally wholly independent heroes; others, that one hero became divided into two.

My father accepted that his view was necessarily speculative, but nonetheless favoured it strongly.

‘We cannot tell if Old English knew of a famous son of Sigemund. But in favour of the highly probable answer “it did not” are these considerations.

‘In the first place, great heroes (wreccena maerost), especially if untrammelled by history, are apt to generate sons who carry on or duplicate their father’s deeds, to satisfy the desire for more, or to introduce new elements, or to link with other tales.

‘In the second place, no such son is anywhere mentioned in Old English.

‘And in the third place, when such a son appears, his function is solely to connect with and become a chief character in the Burgundian story, to bring the gold into it – and where he exists he has his father’s dragon and gold exploits attached to him. But in Old English these are not yet detached from Sigemund.’

My father did not discuss in his lecture notes other and strongly divergent opinions on this subject, apart from some remarks on the view that Sigemund’s dragon in Beowulf is a dragon of a very different sort from Sigurd’s, and that in fact they were unconnected. ‘But it is a dragon,’ he wrote. ‘And dragons are not common as essential actors in Germanic stories – in spite of the impression given by their being prominent in the Völsung stories and Beowulf. It is highly unlikely – however different in detail – that there should be no connexion between Sigemund’s wyrm and Fáfnir.

‘This of course is immeasurably strengthened if we believe that in order to connect with the Guðhere (Gundahari, Gunnar) stories a son was given to Sigemund (naturally his name begins with Sige-), but that this stage, presumably reached in Low or High Germany first, was not reached in Old English (which probably drew from archaic sources, and did not reflect the state of the legend contemporarily in Scandinavia and Germany about the year 800 or later).’

He thought also that the origin of the re-forging of the great sword Gram (Gramr) – carried by both father and son – is to be found here. The fact that the second element in the son’s name is not constant seemed to be significant. In Old Norse he is Sigurðr, derived from a deduced earlier form Sigiwarð, in Old English Sigeweard, later Siward; whereas the German name is quite distinct: Siegfried (Sîfrit) corresponds to an Old English Sigefriþ. That the element mund in the father’s name is constant points, he thought, to its being the older form.

His belief that, as he said, we are in the presence of the duplication of a hero and his marvellous sword of strange origin – as opposed to the view that the father and the son were once entirely distinct and unconnected beings – leads to the conception, in his words, of a legendary hero of supreme valour and beauty, whose name began with the element Sige- ‘victory’. The gleaming eyes of Sigurd (the Lay of the Völsungs VIII.29, IX.26,59) are probably an original trait. In all probability his most renowned exploits concerned a dragon and a hoard, and – possibly – a mysterious, half-supernatural bride.

Questions fundamental to the genesis of the legend are how it came about that the ‘Dragon-hero’ intruded into the story of Attila and the Burgundians, why the treasure-hoard of this hero was called the Hoard of the Nibelungs, and why the Burgundians themselves came to be called the Nibelungs. In the only lecture-notes of my father’s on these matters, or at any rate in the only ones that survive, he indicated his own views very briefly (and not at all points in a way easy to interpret), no doubt because his primary concern was with the Sigemund passage in Beowulf. I shall not therefore enter into any close account of the numerous attempts to solve these baffling and tantalizing questions, but do no more than sketch out some essential aspects. I have also of necessity avoided reference to the German tradition, represented primarily by the Nibelungenlied, except where its evidence is essential even within these limits.

A widely held but by no means unchallenged theory rests upon the interpretation of the name Nibelung (Niflung) as etymologically related to a group of Germanic words meaning ‘darkness’ or ‘mist’ (modern German retains the word Nebel ‘mist’). This is brought into connection with certain things said about the Nibelungs. Snorri Sturluson said of the grandsons of King Gjúki that they were ‘black as a raven in the colour of their hair, like Gunnar and Högni and the other Niflungar’; and in a much earlier (ninth century) poem they are called hrafnbláir ‘raven-black’: in the Lay of the Völsungs (VII.10) it is said: ‘As ravens dark were those raven-friends’.

An essential element in this theory is the figure of Högni, as he appears in German tradition. In the Nibelungenlied his name is Hagen, and he is not the brother of the Burgundians but their kinsman and vassal. Ferocious and cruel, hating Siegfried and indeed his murderer, he is very unlike the Norse Högni. In the Thiðrekssaga, a large compilation made in Norway, in Bergen, about the middle of the 13th century, but based on stories then current in North Germany, Högni, as he is named in this work, is the half-brother of the Burgundians, for a fairy or incubus slept with his mother, and the offspring of the union was Högni. In the Thiðrekssaga his appearance is troll-like, and he is said to have been all over dark, with black hair and black beard. Especially notable is the fact that the name Hagen/ Högni does not alliterate on G, showing that he did not originally belong to the Burgundian clan at all.

An important evidence appears at the beginning of the Nibelungenlied. When Siegfried arrived at the Burgundian court at Worms Hagen looked down from a window at the magnificent knight who had ridden in with a fine company; and guessing who it was he told King Gunther a story concerning a great exploit of Sigurd. With the air of a casual insertion, Hagen’s story is briefly reported in the poem in a very obscure fashion, and I will refer here only to features essential for this purpose.

Siegfried was one day riding alone past a mountain, and he came upon many men gathered round a huge treasure which they had carried out of a cavern. For reasons that are not clearly explained Siegfried came into conflict with ‘the bold Nibelungs’, the two princes named Nibelung and Schilbung, and slew them, and their friends. He fought also with a dwarf named Alberich, and subdued him, but did not kill him: he had the hoard taken back into the cavern whence it had come, and made Alberich the guardian of the treasure. He was now the lord of ‘Nibelungeland’, the possessor of the great hoard, and for the rest of the first part of the Nibelungenlied he has the support of warriors from Nibelungeland, who are called Nibelungs. But in the second part of the German poem, which is held to rest on a quite different poetic source, the name ‘Nibelungs’ is applied, very strangely and on a first reading of the poem most disturbingly, in a totally different sense: it now means the Burgundians, just as it does in Norse.

Hagen also knew, and told this to Gunther, that Siegfried had slain a dragon and bathed in its blood, from which his skin grew so horny that no weapon would bite it. But this is in no way associated with the Nibelung hoard.

In the Nibelungenlied the hoard is associated with a dwarf, and a cavern in a mountain. What is the significance of the Dwarves?

In Norse mythology we are confronted, in the mythological poems of the Edda and also in Snorri Sturluson’s treatise, with a great many scattered hints and observations about the minor beings of the immensely rich and many-peopled heathen supernatural world. Taken all together it is baffling; and beyond question there was once a whole world of thought and belief concerning these beings which is now almost totally lost. However, bearing in mind that Snorri was writing in the thirteenth century and that behind him stretch century upon century of unrecorded, various and shifting beliefs, we may notice what he says: which is, that there are the Light Elves, Ljósálfar, and the Dark Elves, Dökkálfar. The Light Elves dwell in a glorious place called Álfheimr (Elf-home, Elf-world), but the Dark Elves ‘live down in the earth, and they are unlike the Light Elves in appearance, but much more unlike in nature. The Light Elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, but the Dark Elves are blacker than pitch.’

So far as we can now tell, there seems little difference between the Scandinavian Dark Elves, black as pitch and living underground, and the Dvergar, Dwarves; in fact Snorri more than once refers to Dwarves as inhabitants of Svartálfaheimr, the Land of the Dark Elves. The Dwarf Andvari, original owner of Fáfnir’s treasure, dwelt, according to Snorri, in the Land of the Dark Elves (see the commentary on the Lay of the Völsungs, p.189): there he kept his hoard within a rock, and there Loki caught him.

Characteristics of the Dwarves in Old Norse literature may be briefly mentioned. They are above all master-craftsmen, the makers of marvellous treasures and wonderful weapons. The most renowned objects in the Norse myths were made by Dwarves: Ódin’s spear Gungnir, Thór’s hammer Mjöllnir, and Skíðblaðnir, the ship of the God Freyr, which could carry all the Gods, yet was made so intricately that it could be folded up like a napkin and put in a pouch.

Dwarves lived always underground or inside rocks (an echo was called dverg-mál, ‘dwarf-talk’); and they possessed vast knowledge. If caught in the open after sunrise they were turned to stone. There is a poem in the Edda, the Alvíssmál, in which the God Thór asks many questions of a Dwarf named Allvíss (‘All-wise’); and Thór kept him answering his questions so long that the sun came up. The poem ends with Thór crying: ‘Dwarf, you are uppi dagaðr’, you are ‘dayed up’, the sun has caught you.

The train of thought that emerges from all this will be clear, and the conclusion. Dark Elves, black as pitch, and Dwarves, closely related in Norse mythology if not identical, guardians of treasure in caverns and rocks; Alberich and Andvari; the origin of the Nibelung name in connection with ‘darkness’ words; Hagen’s ‘elvish’ birth, his dark and troll-like appearance in Thiðrekssaga. On this theory, this is what the Nibelungs originally were: they were beings of darkness, Dark Elves or Dwarves, and Siegfried/Sigurd stole their great treasure from them.

This ‘mythological’ theory, or some form of it, is radically challenged by other scholars. From place-names and personal names in the region of Burgundian settlement there is evidence that is interpreted to mean that Nibelung was the name of a powerful Burgundian family or clan. Putting the matter in its simplest form, it is supposed on this basis that the (purely human) Nibelung clan of Burgundia either possessed very great wealth in historical fact, or else very early had it attributed to them; and ‘the hoard of the Nibelungs’ was the family treasure of the Burgundian kings.

That my father subscribed to the ‘mythological’ theory in some form is plain; but his view of the process by which the Burgundians became Nibelungs is nowhere clearly or fully expressed in his writings. He had suggested (see this Appendix p.341) that the connection of the ‘Dragon-hero’ with the Burgundian king Gundahari began with ‘gold’ as a motive to explain Attila’s attack (when Attila had become the leader of the Huns in the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom of Worms). As Gundahari faded back into the past (he wrote), old legends of fairy-hoards localized on the Rhine naturally became attached to the famous king in Worms: ‘this treasure probably had demon or dwarvish guardians already, but need not originally have been the same as Sigemund’s gold, though it may well have been.’

‘It would certainly seem’, he said, ‘that the gold-hero who intrudes into the Burgundians had already gathered round him enemy Niflungar, who robbed him of life, bride, and treasure. The historical Burgundians partly take their place, and though there is never complete fusion they are darkened.’ He also saw it as virtually certain that the Nibelungenlied is the more original ‘in making the demonic and cruel Hagen not a brother, but an associate vaguely connected with the Burgundians. Very likely Hagen/Högni is a relic of some old mythical figure connected originally with the gold, or at any rate with the mythical pre-Burgundian part of the “Sigurd” story.’

From observations such as these in his notes one can perhaps surmise that my father saw the genesis of the central part of the legend after this fashion. The Dragon-hero was already the robber of the Hoard of the dark, demonic Nibelungs (whom my father expressly saw as ‘the original owners’), and he brought with him into the Burgundian legend the story of how the Nibelungs in revenge slew him, and took the treasure.

With the fusion of the two legends, the Burgundian princes necessarily became his enemies: he must be killed in order that they should become the possessors of the gold, and they drew into themselves, so to speak, something of the dark Nibelung nature. It was from the ‘Nibelung’ side of the composite legend that the ‘demonic and cruel’ Hagen ultimately came, with (in the Nibelungenlied) his lust for the gold and his guarding it to the death, his relentless hatred of Siegfried leading to his murder. Hagen became more or less assimilated to the Burgundians, and in the Norse (as Högni) wholly so; but the Burgundians on their side became Nibelungs, or Niflungar.

My father also surmised that the demonic bride was part of the complex of legend that was brought in with the Dragon-hero into the Burgundian story; and that when he brought with him his enemies the Nibelungs, they came not only as the robbers of his life and the treasure, but also of his betrothed. ‘It seems probable,’ he said, ‘that the robbing of Sigurd of his bride by the Niflungar is part of the old legendary plot that was handed over to the Burgundians. And the Valkyrie-bride has all along retained too much that is fierce and inhuman about her for completely successful treatment.’

Thus, finally, the hoard of which Sigurd was robbed became (by a curious irony) the Hoard of the Nibelungs (as it had always been); for the Burgundians were now the Nibelungs. And Gunnar acquired the Valkyrie.