The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs (Oxford World's Classics) (48 page)

A map of the
Nibelungenlied

¹
See Appendix I: History and Legend.

²
Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Parzival and Titurel
, trans. Cyril Edwards, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 177–8.

³
See Wolfram von Eschenbach,
Parzival with Titurel and the Love Lyrics
, trans. Cyril Edwards, Arthurian Studies (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. xiii–xvi.

⁴
On the historical background see Appendix I: History and Legend.

⁵
In some Old Icelandic sources Prünhilt has a child by Sivrit, called Aslaug. See Appendix II: The Nordic Sources and the Problem of Genesis.

⁶
Hartmann von Aue,
Iwein
or
The Knight with the Lion
, ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards, Arthurian Archives, German Romance, 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), ll. 62–73.

⁷
See Jim Bradbury,
The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare
(London: Routledge, 2004), 244–5.

⁸
Albert B. Lord,
The Singer of Tales
, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 65.

⁹
Karl H. Bertau and Rudolf Stephan, ‘Zum sanglichen Vortrag mhd. strophischer Epen’,
Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum
, 87 (1956/7), 253–70.

¹⁰
Winder McConnell,
The Nibelungenlied
, Twayne’s World Author Series (Boston: Twayne, 1984), p. xi.

¹¹
The account that follows owes much to Ursula Schulze,
Das Nibelungenlied, Literaturstudium
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1997), 278–98, and Neil Thomas, ‘The
Nibelungenlied
and the Third Reich’, in id. (ed.),
Celtic and Germanic Themes in European Literature
(Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1994), 121–31.

¹²
Under the title
Chriemhilden Rache und die Klage. Zwei Heldengedichte aus dem Schwaebischen Zeitpuncte
. It was common, when medieval German literature was first rediscovered, to locate it in Swabia, no doubt because the Swabian dialect retained, and still retains, many of the vowel sounds of MHG.

¹³
McConnell,
Nibelungenlied
, p. xii.

¹⁴
Ludwing Reiners,
Frederick the Great. An Informal Biography
, translated and adapted from the German by Lawrence P. Wilson (London: Oswald Wolff, 1960), 277.

¹⁵
Reiners, 137.

¹⁶
W. Walker Chambers & John R. Wilkie,
A Short History of the German Language
(London: Methuen, 1970), 47.

¹⁷
Reiners, 277.

¹⁸
McConnell,
Nibelungenlied
, p. xiii.

¹⁹
Schulze,
Das Nibelungenlied
, 281–2.

²⁰
Thomas, ‘The
Nibelungenlied
and the Third Reich’, 123–4.

²¹
See Joachim Petzold,
Die Dolchstoßlegende. Eine Geschichtsfälschung im Dienst des deutschen Imperialismus und Militärismus
. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Schriften des Instituts für Geschichte. Reihe I: Allgemeine und deutsche Geschichte, 18 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963), 41.

²²
See Cyril Edwards, ‘Censoring Siegfried’s Love-Life: The
Nibelungenlied
in the Third Reich’, in
Mythos-Sage-Erzählung. Gedenkschrift für Alfred Ebenbauer
, ed. Johannes Keller and Florian Kragl (Vienna: University Press, 2009).

²³
Christabel Bielenberg,
The Past is Myself
(1968: rpt Reading: Pan, 1988), 44.

²⁴
Ian Kershaw,
Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to War
(London: Penguin, 2005), 145.

²⁵
Joachim Fest,
Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches. Profile einer totalitären Gesellschaft
(Munich, 1963; 8th edn.; Munich: R. Piper, 1980), 259.

²⁶
This account is based largely on an essay kindly submitted by Stewart Spencer (London).

²⁷
See
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
, trans. Jesse L. Byock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 27.

²⁸
On the Icelandic analogues, see Appendix II: The Nordic Sources and the Problem of Genesis.

²⁹
Frank Lamport (Worcester College, Oxford) kindly volunteered these details.

³⁰
Lotte Eisner,
Fritz Lang
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1976; repr. 1986), 76.

³¹
Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel,
The German Cinema
(London: J. M. Dent, 1971), 24.

¹
On the problems of rank and terminology see W. H. Jackson,
Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany. The Works of Hartmann von Aue
, Arthurian Studies, 34 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), esp. 37–43.

¹
Leges Burgundionum
, ed. Ludwig Rudolf von Salis, MGH LL, Sectio I, vol. 2,1 (Hanover, 1892).

²
George Gillespie,
A Catalogue of Persons Named in German Heroic Literature
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 31.

³
Richard Burgess, ‘The Gallic Chronicle of 452: A New Critical Edition with a Brief Introduction’, in Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Schanzer (eds.),
Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 52–84 (p. 79).

⁴
A. C. Murray (ed. and trans.),
From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader
(Ontario, 2003), 69.

⁵
Richard Burgess (ed. and trans.),
The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 92.

⁶
See Gillespie,
Catalogue
, 42.

⁷
See ibid. 13.

⁸
Thorpe (trans.),
The History of the Franks
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 221.

⁹
Gillespie,
Catalogue
, 21.

¹⁰
The Chronicle of Fredegar
, 35. Ian Wood attempts to draw a continuous narrative from the disparate sources in
The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751
(Singapore: Longman, 1994), 126–36.

¹
This list is indebted to Theodore M. Andersson,
The Legend of Brynhild
, Islandica, 43 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 20–2 and Carolyne Larrington,
The Poetic Edda
, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), xviii–xxi.

²
See Larrington,
Poetic Edda
, 210.

³
Andreas Heusler,
Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied. Die Stoffgeschichte des deutschen Heldenepos
(Dortmund, 1920; 6th edn. 1965). See Neil Thomas, ‘The Testimony of Saxo Grammaticus and the Interpretation of the
Nibelungenlied
’,
Oxford German Studies
, 20/21 (1991–2), 7–17.

⁴
Karl Lachmann, ‘Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth’ (Berlin, 1816); repr. in
Kleinere Schriften
(Berlin, 1876), 1–64.

⁵
Heusler,
Nibelungensage und Nibelungenlied
, 49.

⁶
Andersson,
The Legend of Brynhild
, 24. Andersson offers detailed summaries of the poems. Complete translations can be found in Larrington,
Poetic Edda
.

⁷
Margaret Schlauch,
The Saga of the Volsungs; The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok together with the Lay of Kraka
, Scandinavian Classics, 35 (New York, 1930; repr. New York: AMS Press), 185.

⁸
Ibid. 213–14.

¹
Burton Raffel,
Das Nibelungenlied—Song of the Nibelungs
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006).

²
Ibid. 333.

³
Helmut de Boor,
Das Nibelungenlied
. Zweisprachig. Herausgegeben u. übertragen. Sammlung Dieterich, vol. 250 (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1959).

⁴
F. J. Child,
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
, 5 vols. (1882–98; repr. New York: Dover, 1965).

⁵
See Cecil J. Sharp,
English Folk Song: Some Conclusions
, 4th edn. rev. by Maud Karpeles (repr. 1965; Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1972), 29–30. Listen to:
Scottish Tradition 5: The Muckle Sangs. Classic Scots Ballads
(Edinburgh: School of Scottish Studies, 1975), band 3.