All about the Nibelungen (part 1)
The Nibelungen saga was widespread and well-known in Germany and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. In the course of the centuries, different motifs of this heroic epic were combined in a considerable number of versions. The most famous of them is the Mediaeval Nibelungenlied (around AD1200, probably written in the Passau region).
; "Image: Hagen slaying Siegfried")
Hagen slaying Siegfried
; "Image: The Nibelungen and the Huns battling")
The Nibelungen and the Huns battling.
; "image: Painting of Schmoll von Eisenwehrt")
Origin of the Nibelungen Saga
The saga is dealt with not only in the Nibelungenlied, but also in Mediaeval sources such as Thidrek’s saga (Old Norse based on Low German sources from around AD1250), and several cantos of the Poetic Edda, among which several Sigurd poems and the Elder Lay of Atli (Old Norse, recorded in th 13th century, based on partly much older sources or previous versions), as well as a prose re-narration of Edda poems in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda (Old Norse, from around 1220) and the Völsunga saga (Old Norse, from around 1250).
The origins of the saga date back to the heroic age of Germanic Migrations. The historic core of the saga is believed to be the destruction of the Burgundian empire around Worms in late antiquity (around 436) by the Roman magister militum Aetius and his Hunnish auxiliary forces. Further possible patterns are the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields of 451, the death of Attila as well as the events in the second Burgundian empire on the Rhone river and the events in Merovingian history until the death of Brunhilda in 613.
The private scholar Heinz Ritter-Schaumburg held the opinion that the Nibelungenlied, marked by Christian concepts and the old myths, was based on an early version of the heathen Thidrek’s saga, relating the historic events of the 5th and 6th centuries in the northern part of Germany. However, this concept of a historic Thidrek’s saga is declined by most Germanists. They rather claim that both the Nibelungenlied and Thidrek’s saga are written epic adaptations of written and oral saga versions, having circulated in the linguistic areas of Upper and Lower German in the 12th century. It will remain impossible to precisely determine the contents, poetic forms and mutual relations of these versions, scholars believe. But a majority assumes that Thidrek’s saga draws from Lower German, mainly written sources that are in turn for the most part adaptations of written Upper German (Bavarian) patterns. Especially the shift of the fall of the Nibelungen to Westphalia seems to be secondary.
(sources of pictures and text, if not stated otherwise: German Wikipedia)
