Nibelungen, Saga of the

NIBELUNGEN, Saga of the. - It is a complex of epic legends spread during the Middle Ages throughout the whole Germanic territory, from Scandinavia to Austria, and elaborated several times in popular songs and narratives, of which the most notable are the heroic songs of the Edda (v.), the Volsunga-saga and the Middle High German poem Der Nibelunge nôt. The word N., which etymologically means "children of the mist," that is, subterranean beings, originally indicated the elves from whom Sigfrid took the treasure, then Sigfrid himself and his companions and, after the treasure came into their possession, the Burgundians.

The saga is made up of mythical elements, such as the figures of Sigfrid and Brunhild, and historical ones, such as the narrative of the destruction of the Burgundian people by the Huns in 437 and the characters of Attila and Theodoric the Great. The union of these elements, to which other novellistic and fairy-tale motifs were later added, was perhaps accomplished in the course of the 5th and 6th centuries among the Franks of the Lower Rhine, heirs of the Burgundian traditions. In its definitive form, the saga presents a course of events linked in a relationship of offense and revenge; in the final development, however, the Nordic form of the saga differs somewhat from that consecrated in the German poem. According to the latter, Sigfrid, of the race of the Volsungs, son of Sigmund, king at Xanten in the Netherlands, after a youth full of fabulous adventures, among them his encounter with the valkyrie Brunhild, whom he awakened from a centuries-long sleep within a castle surrounded by high flames, is seized by a nostalgic love for the most beautiful Kriemhild, sister of Gunther, king of the Burgundians, at whose court he betakes himself, remaining there as a guest. By means of an innocent deception he obtains for Gunther the hand of Brunhild in exchange for the promise of having Kriemhild as his bride. The two marriages are concluded, but Brunhild, who comes to learn of the deception of which she has been the victim, and consumed by an ancient jealousy, takes her revenge, having Sigfrid treacherously killed by her faithful Hagen. Kriemhild is inconsolable and passes years and years in tears and mourning; only in the great treasure left to her by her husband does she find some comfort for her grief. But Hagen, fearing that the treasure might become in her hands a dangerous instrument of revenge, takes it from her and sinks it in the Rhine. Kriemhild swears revenge and hatches a frightful plan. She therefore accepts the proposal of Attila, who has been left a widower, and joins herself to the powerful king of the Huns in order to be able to accomplish her revenge more easily. She waits still many long years and finally, when the moment seems propitious to her, invites the Burgundians to her palace and has them treacherously attacked in order to destroy them. There then occurs a general slaughter, in which Gunther and Hagen also succumb at the hand of the enraged Kriemhild armed with the sword of Sigfrid; the woman herself falls killed by Hildebrand, squire of Theodoric, the only survivor, along with Attila, of the immense slaughter. In the Nordic sources Kriemhild, under the name of Gudrun, does not avenge the death of her husband upon her brothers, but the murder of the latter upon her husband. This form of the saga is certainly the original one because it is more faithful to the historical fact, Attila having indeed died, as is known, during the wedding night with the Germanic Hildico and, as was then believed, at her hand. The change is perhaps to be attributed to an evolution of the ethical concept among the Germans, that is, to the pre-eminence that the marriage bond gradually acquired over the bond of blood kinship.

As it has been preserved, the s. of the N. has lost every trace of paganism and assumed, especially in the German poem, a markedly Christian and chivalric coloring. Nevertheless the principles that inform the substance of the action, that is, that law of barbaric moral right according to which blood demands blood, that pessimistic sense of tragic fatality that governs the acts of the characters, that kind of gravitation toward ruin and death, and above all that concept of fidelity in relations of subjection, not abstract but practical, which not only excludes fidelity toward the enemy of one's lord, but imposes betrayal, are characteristically and unequivocally pagan. Therefore this saga may be called a typical and representative product of the ancient Germanic world and a mirror of its tragic fortunes in the centuries of the migrations of peoples.

Bruno Vignola