Strabo’s account thus suggests that Arminius, like Sigurd, was betrayed by in-laws.
Other elements in the theory connecting Arminius with Sigurd (Siegfried) are even more hypothetical. Some scholars have suggested a linkage between Sigurd and Arminius on the basis of associated animal imagery, interpreting among other things Sigurd’s dragon as a symbolic representation of the dragon banners of the legions destroyed by Arminius. As fascinating as such conjectures may be, the basic fact remains that beyond the general motif of kin strife, the connection is just a supposition and a highly speculative one at that. Little actual correspondence exists between the life of Arminius, as described by Roman historians, and Sigurd’s legendary adventures.
A second possibility for the historical origin of Sigurd is the Frankish King Sigibert (A.D. 535–575). As the Merovingian king of Metz, Sigibert ruled a territory that included much of what is today northeastern France, Belgium, and the region on the upper Rhine where the Burgundians lived before their destruction by the Huns in 437. Among Sigibert’s subjects were many Burgundians. Sigibert’s wife Brunhilda (d. 613) may be loosely identified with Brynhild in the saga. The marriage of Sigibert to this Visigothic princess is reported by the sixth-century Gallo-Roman bishop Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks:
When King Sigibert saw that his brothers were taking wives who were unworthy of them, even debasing themselves to the point of marrying their female slaves, he dispatched an embassy to Spain with abundant gifts for Brunhilda, daughter of King Athanagild.… Her father, not refusing him, sent her to the king with a large dowry. Sigibert assembled the elders and prepared a feast, taking Brunhilda with great joy and delight as wife.
Somewhat like Sigurd, Sigibert was destroyed by strife within his family. The Frankish king was murdered by the mistress of his brother. Brunhilda’s subsequent attempts to take revenge within the royal family seriously weakened the Merovingian kingdom, just as Brynhild’s revenge in the saga contributes to the fall of the Burgundians. Sigibert’s story, as well as Arminius’s, bears some resemblance to Sigurd’s, but attempting to identify the dragon slayer with either of these two historical figures is not fully convincing. The similarities center mostly on common aspects of the Germanic naming practices and a social milieu where kin strife was frequent.
No one can say exactly when the process of combining the different historical, legendary, and mythic elements into a Volsung cycle began, but it was probably at an early date. By the ninth century the legends of the Gothic Jormunrek and those of the destruction of the Burgundians had already been linked in Scandinavia, where the ninth-century “Lay of Ragnar” by the poet Bragi the Old treats both subjects. Bragi’s poem describes a shield on which a picture of the maiming of Jormunrek was either painted or carved and refers to the brothers Hamdir and Sorli from the Gothic section of the saga as “kinsmen of Gjuki,” the Burgundian father of King Gunnar.
The “Lay of Ragnar” has other connections with the Volsung legend. The thirteenth-century Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson identifies the central figure of the lay, whose gift inspired the poem in his honor, with Ragnar Hairy Breeches, a supposed ancestor of the Ynglings, Norway’s royal family. Ragnar’s son-in-law relationship to Sigurd through his marriage to Sigurd’s daughter Aslaug (mentioned earlier in connection with stave church carvings) is reflected in the sequence of texts in the vellum manuscript: The Saga of the Volsungs immediately precedes The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok. Ragnar’s saga, in turn, is followed by Krákumál (Lay of the Raven), Ragnar’s death poem, in which Ragnar, thrown into the snake pit by the Anglo-Saxon King Ella, boasts that he will die laughing. The Volsung and Ragnar stories are further linked by internal textual references. It is likely that the The Saga of the Volsungs was purposely set first in the manuscript to serve as a prelude to the Ragnar material. The opening section of Ragnar’s saga may originally have been the ending of The Saga of the Volsungs. Just where the division between these two sagas occurs in the manuscript is unclear. Together these narratives chronicle the ancestry of the Ynglings—the legendary line (through Sigurd and Ragnar) and the divine one (through Odin). Such links to Odin, or Wotan, were common among northern dynasties; by tracing their ancestry through Sigurd, later Norwegian kings availed themselves of one of the greatest heroes in northern lore. In so doing, they probably helped to preserve the story for us.
RICHARD WAGNER AND THE SAGA OF THE VOLSUNGS
Knowledge of The Saga of the Volsungs is of special value to Richard Wagner admirers, since the Norse material it contains was a primary source for the composer’s cycle of music dramas, the Ring of the Nibelung. This nineteenth-century version of the Volsung-Nibelung legend is probably the one best known to the modern reader. As he had earlier depicted the courtly world and its ethic in great detail in Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, Wagner, in composing the Ring cycle, made less use than is normally assumed of the version of the story found in the South German Nibelungenlied, which is essentially a courtly epic. Instead he turned to the more pagan material and attitudes that he found in the Scandinavian sources, especially in Eddic poetry and in The Saga of the Volsungs. He explored this mythic world in the Ring cycle as a way of expressing his reflections on his own period and countrymen, intending the Ring to be a commentary on the industrial and political revolutions of the nineteenth century. Wagner himself had revolutionary yearnings; he was exiled for his participation in the revolution of 1848.
Not only was Wagner directly inspired by his own reading of The Saga of the Volsungs in H. von der Hagen’s 1815 German translation, but the composer was also influenced by the treatment of the saga in Wilhelm Grimm’s Deutscher Heldensage. Wagner appears to have been especially struck by Grimm’s interpretation of the sibling marriage in the Norse material, and reading Grimm helped Wagner to form his views about the central importance of The Saga of the Volsungs and Eddic poetry. In adapting the Norse material to his own uses, as elsewhere in writing his librettos, Wagner took many liberties with his medieval sources, abridging, changing, condensing, and combining them freely and imaginatively. The dwarf Alberich, in the opening scene of the Rhinegold, the prelude to the cycle, is taken from the Nibelungenlied, where he is the treasurer of the Nibelung dynasty. The setting in watery depths comes from the Scandinavian tradition and is reflected in the account of the dragon Fafnir found in the saga and in Eddic poetry. The Rhine maidens are borrowed from German folklore. The company of gods and the story of the establishment of Walhalla (Valhalla) were freely adapted by Wagner from the Prose Edda of the thirteenth-century Icelander, Snorri Sturluson.
In the Valkyrie, the first of the music dramas that form the main body of the cycle, Wagner relied heavily on the version of the legends found in The Saga of the Volsungs. Unlike the music drama, the saga meanders through many generations of Volsungs before reaching Sigurd. In the saga, Sigurd’s half brother Sinfjotli is of incestuous birth; Wagner transfers this motif, and the dramatic story that surrounds it, to his principal hero, Siegfried (Sigurd). The wisdom imparted to the hero by the valkyrie Brünnhilde (the Norse Brynhild), whom Wagner makes a daughter of Wotan, is an important element in Siegfried’s maturation process and one that is most fully described in the Norse material. The fourth and final music drama, the Twilight of the Gods, reflects Wagner’s familiarity with the plot structure of the Nibelungenlied. In this section of the cycle, the role of the villain Hagen (Hogni in the saga) comes principally from the Nibelungenlied, as does the sequence in which Siegfried is killed.
The portrayal of the father of the gods illustrates better than anything else the difference between Wagner’s version and his sources. The intervention of Odin (Wotan) is more sporadic and less purposeful in the saga than in Wagner’s drama. In the Ring, the god’s actions are motivated by an overriding aim, to regain possession of the magical ring and thus to reassert control over the world. Wotan’s deliberate plotting to produce a hero who would regain for him the lost ring and the golden hoard can be seen as a critique of the ac
quisitiveness of the Industrial Age. Wagner added the dimension of political power to the qualities of the ring. In the Scandinavian sources magic rings possess the power to generate wealth and they carry curses, but Wagner’s ring also grants its bearer the power to rule the world. The source for this quality seems to have been a relatively insignificant line from the Nibelungenlied, which says that the Nibelung treasure included a tiny golden wand that could make its possessor the lord of all mankind.
In Siegfried, Wagner followed the Norse tradition most closely. Wagnerites will quickly recognize the saga’s version of the hero’s youth, the dragon slaying, the roasting of the monster’s heart, and the singing birds that lead him to the sleeping heroine. The mythical pagan world of the saga comes vividly alive in this part of the cycle, although the romantic ideals of the nineteenth century repeatedly dominate Wagner’s presentation. At times we can perceive the dramatic reasons for Wagner’s changes. Whereas Sigurd in The Saga of the Volsungs is treacherously killed in bed, Wagner followed the German version which has the hero die in a splendid forest setting, providing the composer with an opportunity to have his music reflect forest and mountain scenes. Once the hero is dead, however, Wagner returns to the version found in the saga for Brünnhilde’s final immolation by fire, and he ends the entire cycle of music dramas in a burst of pagan glory.
Reshaping his Norse sources, Wagner united two stories, unconnected in their Norse forms: the tale of Sigurd and the account of Ragnarök, the downfall of the Norse gods. In Wagner’s version, the flames of Siegfried’s funeral pyre rise to ignite Valhalla, bringing about the twilight of the gods. Wagner’s outlook is strongly conditioned by Völuspá, cataclysmic dooam powerful Eddic poem that presents all of cosmic history as inevitably leading to the cataclysmic doom of Ragnarök. In Völuspá, Odin calls up from her grave a dead giantess to prophesy for him the fate of the gods; this scene was probably a model for Wotan’s confrontation with the earth goddess, Erda, in the Ring. Although now generally translated as “the fate of the gods,” the word Ragnarök was earlier interpreted by scholars to mean “the twilight of the gods.” Wagner translated this into German as Götterdämmerung.
The Saga of the Volsungs says that its hero’s “name is known in all tongues north of the Greek Ocean, and so it must remain while the world endures.” Wagner’s Ring cycle has helped to make this thirteenth-century statement true.
MAP 1. The world of the Vikings (ca. 1000)
MAP 2. Migrations of the tribes central to The Saga of the Volsungs up to the death of Attila the Hun
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
This translation is based on a single vellum manuscript, Ny kgl. Saml. 1824b 4to, which alone among medieval Icelandic writings preserves The Saga of the Volsungs (Völsunga saga). This same manuscript also contains The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok (Ragnars saga loðbrókar) and Ragnar’s death song, Krákumál. The manuscript dates to approximately A.D. 1400, although the texts it includes are copies of much older originals. The Saga of the Volsungs was first written down no later than 1260–1270, though perhaps as early as 1200. Sent from Iceland to Denmark in the sixteenth century, the manuscript is now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The Saga of the Volsungs is also found in twenty-one paper manuscripts, dating from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. All these paper copies derive directly or indirectly from the unique vellum manuscript, which is accessible in a series of photographs taken in Copenhagen by Anri Mann Nielsen and in Magnus Olsen’s excellent diplomatic edition, Völsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar (Copenhagen, 1906–1908). As the quality of the medieval manuscript has deteriorated since the early twentieth century, a number of passages, which were legible in Olsen’s day, can no longer be read.
The saga has been translated into English four times previously: William Morris and Eiríkur Magnússon (London, 1870); Margaret Schlauch (New York, 1930); R. G. Finch (London, 1965); and George K. Anderson (Newark, Del., 1982). Although frequently disagreeing with their interpretations of the text, I have found all four works useful in the preparation of this translation. I have also consulted Örnólfur Thorsson’s excellent modern Icelandic edition (Reykjavík, 1985).
The chapter headings found in the vellum manuscript are at times inaccurate or inappropriate to the content of the chapters. I have, nevertheless, reproduced them as they are found in the medieval text. Where chapter headings are lacking in the manuscript, I have supplied my own and marked them with asterisks.
The spelling of proper names and special terms in the text has been anglicized, usually by omitting the Old Norse inflectional endings and replacing non-English letters with their closest equivalents. I do not strive for complete consistency, especially when a name is familiar to English speakers in another form; thus, I use Valhalla rather than Valholl. My goal throughout has been to produce an accurate, readable translation of an important medieval text.
1 ODIN GUIDES SIGI FROM THE OTHERWORLD*
Here we begin by telling of a man who was named Sigi, and it was said that he was the son of Odin.1 Another man, called Skadi, is introduced into the saga; he was powerful and imposing. Sigi, however, was the more important of the two and was of better stock, according to what was said in those days. Skadi owned a thrall called Bredi who should be mentioned in the account of these events. Bredi was well informed in the things he had to do. He was equal in skills and accomplishments to those who were thought more worthy, and he was better than some.
Now there is this to be told: Sigi once went hunting with the thrall, and they hunted all day until evening. When they compared their kills in the evening, Bredi’s was larger and better than Sigi’s, which greatly displeased Sigi.2 He said he wondered that a thrall should outdo him in hunting. For this reason he attacked and killed Bredi and then disposed of the corpse by burying it in a snowdrift.
That evening Sigi went home and said that Bredi had ridden away from him into the forest: “He was soon out of my sight, and I do not know what became of him.” Skadi doubted Sigi’s story. He guessed that there was likely to be deception on Sigi’s part and that Sigi had killed the thrall. He gathered men to look for Bredi, and the search finally ended when they found him in the snowdrift. Skadi said that thenceforth the snowdrift should be called Bredi’s drift, and ever since people have done this, calling every large drift by that name.3 It was thus revealed that Sigi had killed the thrall, having committed murder.4 He was then declared an outlaw, a “wolf in hallowed places,”5 and now he could no longer remain at home with his father.
Then Odin guided Sigi out of the land on a journey so long that it was remarkable. They continued until Odin brought him to where some warships lay. Sigi next took to raiding with the troops his father had given him before they parted, and he was victorious in the raids. Matters progressed until in the end Sigi was able to seize a kingdom to rule. Next he obtained a noble match for himself and became a great and powerful6 king. He ruled over Hunland7 and was a renowned warrior. By his wife, Sigi had a son who was called Rerir. The boy grew up there with his father and soon became big, strong, and able.
Now Sigi advanced in years, and many were envious of him. Finally, his wife’s brothers, that is, they whom he most trusted, intrigued against him. They attacked and overwhelmed the king when he was least wary and had few men with him; in that encounter Sigi fell with all his men. His son Rerir was not present at the battle. Rerir gathered a large force of his friends and chieftains of the land, so that he was able to take over both the estates and the kingship that had belonged to his father Sigi.
When Rerir felt that he had established his footing in the kingdom he recalled his grievances against his maternal uncles, those who had killed his father. The king gathered a large force and marched against his kinsmen. He felt that they had already done him so much harm that he could place little value on their kinship. And so, with this reasoning he acted, not stopping until he had killed all his father’s slayers, although such action was appalling by all accounts.8 Then Rerir took ove
r land, wealth, and power. He became an even more influential man than his father had been.
Now Rerir took much booty for himself, as well as the woman he thought most suitable for him. Although they lived together with intimacy for a long time, they had neither heir nor child. That lack displeased them both, and they fervently implored the gods that they might have a child. It is said that Frigg9 heard their prayers and told Odin what they asked. Odin was not without resources. He called one of his wish maidens,10 the daughter of the giant Hrimnir, and placed in her hand an apple, telling her to present it to the king. She took the apple, assumed the shape of a crow,11 and flew until she reached the place where the king was sitting on a mound.12 She let the apple fall into the king’s lap. He took the apple, suspecting its purpose. Then he came back from the mound to his men. He visited with the queen and ate some of the apple.13
2 THE BIRTH OF VOLSUNG
Now there is this to tell: the queen soon discovered that she was carrying a child, and the pregnancy continued for a long time without her being able to give birth. Then there came a time when Rerir, as is the custom of kings, had to go on a campaign to pacify his land. On this journey it happened that Rerir took sick and soon died. He intended to go to Odin;14 in those days that seemed desirable to many.
The queen’s distress continued as before; she could not give birth to the child, and this affliction continued for six years. Then she recognized that she would not live long and asked that the child be cut from her. It was done as she requested. The child was a boy, and he was already well grown when born, as was to be expected. It is said that the boy kissed his mother before she died. He was given a name and called Volsung.15 He was king over Hunland after his father. He was soon big, strong, and daring in what were thought to be tests of manhood and prowess. He became the greatest of warriors and was victorious in the battles he fought on his expeditions.
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer (Penguin Classics) Page 4
