One such enemy was the Ostrogoths, a people represented in the saga by their king Jormunrek. In the fourth century the Ostrogoths ruled a vast empire north of the Black Sea, stretching across the grasslands of Russia from the Don River to the Dniester and extending from the Crimea to the Pripet marshes. The earliest history of the Goths is shrouded in obscurity, but they almost certainly originated in southern Scandinavia and migrated across the Baltic in the first century A.D., probably giving their name to the Baltic island of Gotland. By the third century the Goths were inhabiting a region near the Vistula, in present-day Poland, before migrating southeast.
By the fourth century the Goths had split into two major groups, the Visigoths, living in present-day Rumania, and the Ostrogoths. How the Ostrogoths acquired their empire and came to dominate the many peoples it included remains a mystery. The Huns fell upon and destroyed the Ostrogothic empire when, around 375, they suddenly invaded the steppes of present-day Russia. Continuing on the offensive, they advanced into central Europe and enslaved the tribes in their path. In 376 they overwhelmed the Visigoths, whose remnants then sought safety within the borders of the Roman Empire. After that victory the Huns settled down on the Hungarian plain, having in three short years wiped out a century-long Gothic expansion.
After destroying the Visigoths, the Huns remained quiet for half a century, but about 430 they were again on the move. It was at this time that the army of Hunnish mercenaries, acting under the orders of Aetius, crushed the Burgundians. At approximately the same time, the Huns, in a series of similar but unconnected raids on other Germanic tribesmen, Romans, and eastern peoples, expanded their own empire until it reached from Europe to the Persian and perhaps even to the Chinese frontier. Beginning in 434, Attila and his brother Bleda ruled the empire jointly. In 445, after murdering his brother, Attila became the sole ruler. His apparently weak control over the eastern part of the empire, however, diminished his ability to acquire sufficient reinforcements of Hunnish warriors and trained horses.
At the heart of the Hunnish empire was its capital, the “Ring,” a circular city of tents, wooden palaces, and wagons, at whose center stood Attila’s royal residence. Attila’s court was a meeting place for hostages, retainers, and warriors from the various subject tribes. Large contingents of the latter were incorporated into the Hunnish armies, whose military organization was modified in Attila’s time to reflect the growing importance of units of armored warriors often drawn from the conquered peoples. Poems such as the Anglo-Saxon “Waldere” and parts of the different Sigurd/Siegfried traditions show traces of what most certainly was a series of heroic cycles about Attila’s court and the champions of the period.
After Attila’s death in 453, his numerous quarreling sons divided the empire into separate dominions. In 454 an alliance of subjected tribes revolted and inflicted a crushing defeat upon their masters. The Goths remained for the most part neutral in this battle, but over the next decade they too fought a series of mostly successful engagements against the Huns. These reversals reduced the Huns to insignificance, and after the mid-sixth century they are no longer mentioned in the sources. Because of the temporary nature of their buildings and towns, no major archaeological trace of the Hunnish empire has been found. The modern Hungarians are not descended from this group but stem from a later migration of the distantly related Magyars.
What is the connection between the historical Huns, Burgundians, and Goths and the characters who play prominent roles in The Saga of the Volsungs? The answer is clouded by time. Obviously Atli, king of the Huns in the saga, is based on Attila, and Gunnar represents Gundaharius, the ill-fated Burgundian king. Without doubt the later Burgundians, even under the Franks, retained knowledge of their ancestors. A sixth-century law code names Gibica, Gundaharius, and Gislaharius as early Burgundian rulers. Gibica corresponds to Gjuki, the father of Gunnar; Gundaharius, to Gunnar; and Gislaharius, to Giselher, who appears in the Nibelungenlied as one of the kings jointly ruling Burgundy. Atli’s betrayal of Gunnar and Hogni in the saga reflects the historical destruction of Gundaharius’s kingdom by the Hunnish mercenary army.
The saga’s account, however, is far from historically accurate. Among the many discrepancies is the absence of Aetius, the Roman general who commanded the Hunnish mercenaries. Furthermore, the political reasons for the war are lost; events are portrayed as springing from intrafamily feuds, motivated by greed and jealousy among blood relations and in-laws. A major chronological difference is that the historical Attila did not participate in the war against the Burgundians in 436; at that time he was on the middle Danube negotiating with the Romans. It is not difficult to understand, however, that a storyteller would want to embellish his tale with a character as intriguing as Attila.
The Hunnish king’s association with the Burgundians was perhaps an early step in the development of the legend. Certainly the connection of Attila with wealth is well founded. Vast quantities of gold and valuables flowed into his coffers, and large numbers of slaves became his property. As his treasure grew, so did his greed. In 443 the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius bought peace from Attila at the price of 432,000 solidi, about two tons of gold. Payments of this magnitude brought wealth to the subject tribes serving Attila, enabling large quantities of precious metals to circulate through the northern lands, including Scandinavia. Such exorbitant tributes, along with booty and payments acquired by other tribesmen, provided material for flamboyant jewelry and ornaments.
The saga’s account of King Atli’s death at a woman’s hand also has a foundation in history. The earliest and most reliable report of Attila’s death was written by the Greek historian Priscus, who had visited the Huns as a member of a diplomatic mission a few years before Attila died. Priscus’s work survives only in fragments, but he is cited at length by the sixth-century Gothic historian Jordanes in his History of the Goths:
He [Attila] near the time of his death, as the historian Priscus tells, married a very beautiful girl named Ildico, after countless other wives, as was the custom of his people. At his wedding he overindulged in gaiety and lay down on his back, heavy with wine and sleep. A gush of blood, which normally would have run down out of his nose, was hindered from its usual channels; it flowed on a fatal course into his throat and killed him. Thus drunkenness brought a scandalous end to a king famed in battle. On the next day, when a good portion of the day had passed, the king’s servants suspected something tragic and, after a great clamor, smashed down the doors. They discovered Attila dead without any wounds. His death was caused by an effusive nosebleed, and the girl, her head hanging low, cried under her veil.
Jordanes, who makes an effort to establish the accidental nature of Attila’s death, may have been aware of other versions of the story in which Ildico kills Attila, since a contemporary chronicle says that Attila died at the hands of a woman. The woman involved was evidently Germanic; Ildico seems to be a diminutive of the female proper name Hild, which in the form of the suffix -hild is a common element in other Germanic female names. For example, the woman in the Nibelungenlied who plays the role similar to Gudrun’s in The Saga of the Volsungs is named Kriemhild.
The saga’s Gothic King Jormunrek, like Gunnar and Atli, is based on a historical figure known to the Romans as Ermenrichus, who in the fourth century ruled the vast Ostrogothic empire on the steppes. The contemporary Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, in his History, claims that Ermenrichus killed himself rather than contend with attacks by the Huns:
Accompanied by their allies, the Huns burst with a sudden attack into the wide districts of Ermenrichus. Ermenrichus, a very warlike king who terrified nearby peoples because of his many boldly executed deeds, was hit hard by the force of this sudden attack. For a long time, however, he tried to remain strong and resolute. Nevertheless, rumor spread, exaggerating the looming disasters, and he settled his fear of these major crises by his voluntary death.
By the sixth century the legend of Ermenrichus had developed beyond these sparse
facts into a recognizable version of the story told in The Saga of the Volsungs. Among other new details Jordanes, in his History of the Goths, tells of a woman named Sunilda, wife of a leader of a people subject to the Goths. Jordanes mentions the vengeance of her brothers Sarus and Ammius and Hermanaric’s death in old age:
Hermanaric, king of the Goths, as we have reported above, was conqueror of many tribes. Nevertheless, while he was apprehending the approach of the Huns, the treacherous tribe of the Rosomoni, who among others then owed him allegiance, seized the opportunity to turn on him. The king, shaken with rage, ordered a certain chieftain’s wife of the above-mentioned tribe named Sunhilda to be bound to wild horses on account of her husband’s treachery. She was then torn asunder by the horses running at full gallop in opposite directions. After this killing, her brothers Sarus and Ammius avenged her death by thrusting a sword into Hermanaric’s side. Stricken by his wound, Hermanaric lived out a sickly existence with an enfeebled body. Balamber, king of the Huns, made use of this illness and moved his battle-ready men into the territory of the Ostrogoths, from whom the Visigoths had already separated because of some disagreement between them. Meanwhile Hermanaric, unable to bear the pain of his wound and the distress of the Hunnish invasion, died full of days at the age of 110. Because of his death the Huns prevailed over those Goths who, as we have said, settled in the eastern region and are called Ostrogoths.
Jordanes’s story appears, in part, historically accurate: it presents a reasonable chronology and with seeming correctness identifies the peoples involved. At the same time we can see the elements that are to be more fully developed in later legend. Sunilda is manifestly the prototype of Svanhild, Sigurd and Gudrun’s daughter, who in the saga is killed by Jormunrek. Likewise the correspondences with Svanhild’s brothers Sorli (Sarus) and Hamdir (Ammius) are reasonably clear. Although we will never know precisely what source Jordanes used for this story, it is tempting to postulate that he relied on a now lost heroic lay.
In the centuries that followed, the tale passed more thoroughly from history into legend. Spreading widely, it was known in some form in Anglo-Saxon England, where the tragedy of Ermenrichus (Eormanric) is one of the many referred to in the moving Anglo-Saxon lament Deor:
We’ve heard of the she-wolf’s heart of Eormanric; he ruled the folk of the Goths’ kingdom. That was a cruel king!
Many men sat bound in sorrow, expecting woe; often they wished that the kingdom be overcome.
One can only guess when and how Sigurd became connected with the other legendary elements of the story. Earlier sources yield some evidence that Sigurd may not originally have been the Volsung who slew the dragon. In the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, the dragon slaying is attributed not to Sigurd, who goes unmentioned, but to Sigemund Waelsing (Volsung), the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Sigurd’s father Sigmund. The poem also mentions Sigemund’s nephew Fitela whose name corresponds to the Scandinavian Sinfjotli, who is Sigmund’s son by his sister and hence also his nephew:
He told all that he had heard of the deeds of valor, far voyages and unknown struggles of Sigemund Waelsing, feuds and foul deeds; Fitela alone, and no other men, knew of this, from when Sigemund chose to speak of the deeds uncle to nephew, as they ever in battle were comrades in arms, each to the other—they killed great numbers of the giant race, slew them with swords. No scant glory developed for Sigemund after his death because the brave warrior killed the serpent guardian of the hoard.
Under the gray stone
the prince’s [Waels’s] son alone performed a fierce deed—Fitela was not with him. Even so, it happened that his sword hewed the ornate serpent; the noble weapon drove into the wall as the dragon died. With valor the warrior won the ring hoard, so that he might enjoy it at his own desire; The son of Waels loaded his watercraft, bore bright treasures to the ship’s bosom. The serpent’s own fires melted its flesh.
In this Anglo-Saxon version of the story Fitela is described only as Sigemund’s nephew, whereas in the Icelandic saga Sinfjotli is both son and nephew to Sigmund. The motif of incest in The Saga of the Volsungs, so important to the understanding of the relationship between Sigmund and Sinfjotli as father and son, may be a late addition to the legend. Beowulf refers to the progenitor of the race of heroes as Waels. In Scandinavia the name of Sigmund’s father was the unusual compound, Volsung, possibly formed when the patronymic suffix -ung (present in the Anglo-Saxon form Waelsing, “Son of Waels”) was interpreted as an integral part of the name.
Sigmund appears to be the original dragon slayer, and Sigurd’s filial connection with the old hero is probably an expansion of the legend. This hypothesis gains additional credence through the absence of Sigurd’s name from “The Lay of Eirik,” one of the earliest Scandinavian poems referring to the Volsungs. The lay is a memorial poem for Eirik Bloodaxe, king of Norway and of Viking York. Composed after the death of this Norse prince in A.D. 954, the poem has Odin call Sigmund and Sinfjotli to greet Eirik on his arrival in Valhalla, Odin’s hall for slain warriors:
Sigmund and Sinfjotli: Rise up with speed
and go to greet the warrior:
Invite him in, if it be Eirik;
I await his arrival.
Who, then, was Sigurd originally? To this difficult question we will probably never have a definitive answer. Certainly Sigurd was already a character of myth and legend when he was joined to the Volsungs. He may even have some basis in history, and in this regard two figures in particular have received attention. One is Arminius, a leader in the first century A.D. of the Cherusci, a Germanictribe; the other is the sixth-century Frankish King Sigibert. In both instances the connection is highly conjectural.
In A.D. 9, in the Teutoburg Forest in northern Germany, Arminius lured the attacking Romans, led by Quintilius Varus, into a trap and wiped out three Roman legions. For years preceding this defeat the Roman Empire had been engaging in a costly but gradually successful conquest of Germania, and the three legions were the major part of Rome’s mobile forces in the West. The Roman historian Suetonius reports that everyone on the Roman side was massacred—the legionnaires and the officers, the commander, the complete staff, and the auxiliary forces. So unsettling was the defeat that when the news reached Rome, the emperor Augustus commanded that the city be patrolled at night to prevent an uprising. For months afterward Augustus suffered deep despair. He left his beard and hair uncut and, often striking his head against the door to his chamber, he would call out, “Varus, give me back my legions!”
The loss of his legions forced Augustus to abandon the hope of conquering Germania permanently. He fixed the border protecting Gaul and the already conquered south German provinces a short distance east of the Rhine. With small adjustments, the frontier between the Romans and the northern barbarians remained fixed for the next four centuries. The border posts finally fell before the migrating tribes in the early fifth century, or about the time of the clash between the Huns and the Burgundians.
For the Romans, the Varus episode, although grievous, was ultimately of less importance than the much larger conflict on the Danube border and the twin-frontier problem (Rhine-Danube) thereafter. Nevertheless, the Romans showed considerable interest in Arminius. Velleius Paterculus, a contemporary first-century writer, describes this barbarian leader (in his synopsis of Roman history) as “a young man of noble descent…, valorous and astute, with talents exceeding those of common barbarians. His name was Arminius, the son of Sigimerus, chief of the tribe, and he showed the fire in his soul, by his countenance, and in his eyes.” If somewhat of a passing curiosity to the Romans, the Cheruscan leader remained a hero among the barbarians on the northern frontier. The Roman historian Tacitus reports (in his Annals) that unwritten songs and lays of Arminius were sung by tribesmen a century after his death.
The arguments for connecting Sigurd with Arminius stress in particular the genealogy of the war leader, most of whose male relatives bore names with the initial element seg- or segi- (victory), equivalent to Old N
orse sig-. If Arminius was a Roman name or a Latinized Germanic title, this leader would probably also have had a native name beginning with seg-, as alliterating names were a common feature in Germanic families. Furthermore, the -elda element in the name of Arminius’s wife is similar to the -hild element in the names of women connected with Sigurd in later versions. However appealing this evidence, it should be remembered that these characteristics of nomenclature were common and may well be coincidental.
The Greek geographer Strabo gives more information about Arminius’s family. In his geography from the first century A.D. Strabo describes the triumphal procession in Rome in A.D. 17 accorded to Germanicus, a member of the imperial family, who avenged Varus’s defeat:
But they [the tribesmen] all paid the price and gave the young Germanicus a victory celebration, in which their most distinguished men and women were led captive—namely, Segimundus, son of Segestes and leader of the Cherusci, and his sister Thusnelda, wife of Arminius.… But Segestes, the father-in-law of Arminius, set himself against the purpose of Arminius from the very beginning and, seizing an opportune time, deserted him; and he was present, and honored, at the triumph over those dear to him.
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer (Penguin Classics) Page 3
