Nibelungenlied



"No warrior will ever do a darker deed."

- Anonymous

The Nibelungenlied, translated literally as "The Song of the Nibelungs", is an epic poem in two parts, telling the story of Siegfried, his murder by the Burgundians, and the revenge taken by his widow Kriemhild. Dating back to the early 13th century, its authorship is unknown, but it is thought to have been written by an Austrian author from between Passau and Vienna for recitation in the Austrian court. The Nibelungenlied is the earliest complete telling of the legend, though versions of the story exist, including the Norse Volsunga Saga and passages in the Eddas, which, though written down later, are thought to preserve earlier elements of the story that had become obscured in the mediævalized German poem. Brief allusions to the Siegfried story also exist in much earlier works, such as Waltharius and Beowulf.

Technically, the poem is written in four line roughly hexameter stanzas, with strong pauses in the middle of each line, rhyming AABB, and with the final line of each stanza usually lengthened by an extra foot. The language of the poem is Middle High German, i.e., the language spoken in what is now southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, from about the 11th to the 14th centuries. Thus:

"''Ez wuohs in Burgonden"

- ein vil edel magedîn.''

''Daz in allen landen

"''Ir pflâgen drîe künege,"

- edel unde rîch:''

''Gunther unde Gêrnôt,

"In Burgundy grew up a maiden called Kriemhild, so noble that none fairer might exist in any lands. She was a lovely woman -- and for that many warriors had to lose their lives. Three kings, noble and rich, were her guardians: Gunther and Gernot, the praiseworthy fighters, and the young Giselher, an exceptional warrior. This lady was their sister, whom the princes had in their care."

The first section details the life, exploits, and death of the hero Siegfried (MHG “Sîfrit”), son of King Siegmund and Queen Sieglinde of Xanten, who achieves near invincibility by bathing in the blood of a freshly slain dragon, but retains a point of weakness in a place which the blood fails to cover, in this case the shoulder, part of which remains covered by a linden leaf during his gory baptism.

Siegfried marries Kriemhild (Chriemhilt), the sister of the Burgundian king Gunther of Worms, whom he assists in his ritual courting of the Icelandic queen Brunhild (Prunhilt). Siegfried's assistance is to use his supernatural strength (also gained through his earlier proximity to dragon blood) to complete the challenges in an Invisibility Cloak while Gunther mimes the same actions to give the illusion that he is accomplishing these tasks.

The political relationship of the two men, though fortified by Siegfried's services and his marriage to Kriemhild, is soured when an argument between Brunhild and Kriemhild reveals the truth about the secret arrangement and the security of the state is threatened. Gunther's solution to this comes about through his scheming vassal Hagen who, with Gunther, plots the assassination of the hero.

The second part of the poem tells of how Kriemhild, now bereft not only of her husband but also her status and fortune (Hagen steals the hoard Siegfried had won from Schilbung and Nibelung, the sons of King Nibelung) and deposits it in the Rhine to prevent her from raising an avenging army), she sets about to avenge her husband's death. Her first action to this end is the political marriage to King Etzel (Attila the Hun), a move which helps to rebuild her status but is regarded as an ideological dishonour, her new husband being a pagan. Later, her brother and his followers are invited to Etzel's kingdom in order to compete in the various courtly traditions of feasting and jousting, yet it is revealed to be a guise for an assassination for Gunther and Hagen. Nevertheless, they manage to abuse Etzel's hospitality with impunity until they go too far by slaying his child, and there ensues an enormous battle inside the hall, which is set alight by Kriemhild in the process. Gunther, Hagen, and their followers manage to defend themselves against insurmountable odds, until they are at last overcome by the Ostrogothic King Dietrich (Theodoric the Goth), who happens to be present at the festivities. He brings Hagen bound to Kriemhild, who personally strikes him dead -- to the disgust of Dietrich's old companion-in-arms, Hildebrand, who slays her for striking down an unarmed man. Thus her bloody revenge is achieved at the cost of her own destruction.

Judging by the number of manuscripts, the poem was hugely popular in mediæval Germany. After The Renaissance, however, it lost favour and sank from view -- to the point that, when the poem was rediscovered and published in a critical edition by Christoph Heinrich Müller, Frederick the Great, to whom Müller had dedicated it, famously remarked that the poem was "not worth a shot of powder" and that he wouldn't have such trash in his library. Nevertheless, the poem regained its stature in the Romantic era, and it is still regarded by many as Germany's national epic. Mention of its publication takes place as an aside in the Mediæval section of the Total War series.

The Nibelungenlied is one of the sources for Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, though Wagner's work draws much more from Scandinavian sources; for instance, Wagner practically abandons the entire second half of the poem, and substantially ignores Kriemhild.

The epic has had a number of film adaptations, perhaps most notably Fritz Lang's two part, six hour epic, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (1924), starring Paul Richter as Siegfried; its suprisingly popular if slightly cheesy 1966 remake directed by Harald Reinl and starring Olympic hammer-thrower Uwe Beyer as Siegfried; and the 2004 TV film Curse of the Ring ( AKA Ring of the Nibelungs; Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King; The Nibelungs -- The Curse of the Dragon; and The Sword of Xanten), directed by Uli Edel and starring Benno Fürmann as Siegfried.

The last named takes considerable liberties with the plot in order to emphasise a more consciously pagan agenda, which some may consider a reversal of what the Nibelungenlied represented to its own original material. On the other hand, the Lied's (possibly clerical) author himself had imposed Christianity rather awkwardly on a decidedly paganish story -- as none other than Goethe once remarked, the Nibelung heroes seem to go to church largely in order to get into another fight.

Nibelungenlied provides examples of:

 * Achilles Heel: Siegfried's shoulder, the only part of him which wasn't made invulnerable by the dragon's blood.
 * Anachronism Stew: In a manner common to many works of mediæval art and literature, characters are depicted in garb of the date of the manuscript, like the late Burgundian (ca. 1480-1490) costumes of the page illustration, rather than the 5th century costume appropriated to the historical King Gunthahari. People in The Middle Ages had an entirely different sense of historical accuracy.
 * Best Her to Bed Her: Queen Brunhild will only marry a man you can defeat her in javelin-throwing, boulder-tossing and long jump.
 * Blood Bath: Siegfried becomes nearly invulnerable after bathing in the blood of the dragon -- except for a spot on his shoulder that was covered by a leaf. Siegfried's blood bath predates the legends of Elizabeth Bathory (the Trope Maker) by over 500 years.
 * Bound and Gagged: Gunther's initial, failed, sexual advances on the night of his marriage to Brunhild end with him being overpowered, bound and suspended from a nail in the ceiling (famously depicted in Henry Fuseli's drawing of the scene). Subsequent critics have done little to downplay the various erotic implications of this scene, making it possible Fetish Fuel.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Brunhild completely disappears from the second part of the epic without getting so much of a mention. Of course, in the Norse version, she commits suicide, but the German poet knew that would have been too shocking for his audience.
 * Conflicting Loyalty: One of the main motifs of the epic. A quick overview of the major instances:
 * Kriemhild: Loyalty to her brothers vs. vengeance for her husband Siegfried.
 * Gunther: Blood Brotherhood & general indebtedness to his brother-in-law Siegfried vs. his beloved wife Brunhild's demand to have Siegfried killed to restore her honor. Then, Kriemhild's and Etzel's demand to turn in the killer Hagen vs. Gunther's loyalty to his vassal Hagen.
 * Etzel: Loyalty to his wife Kriemhild vs. the loyalty of a host to his invited guests, the Burgundians.
 * Rüdiger: Loyalty to his liege Etzel & his vow of allegiance to Kriemhild vs. loyalty to his recent guests and friends the Burgundians, and his daughter's fiancée Giselher.
 * Giselher: Loyalty to his sister Kriemhild & his intended father-in-law Rüdiger vs. loyalty to his brothers and Hagen.
 * Diagonal Cut: Hildebrand does this to Kriemhild in certain late MSS. of the poem.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance: Whoever the author of Nibelungenlied was, he (or she) must have enjoyed shocking the audience with streams of blood.
 * Double Standard: Hildebrand kills Kriemhild because she killed Hagen, and neither Dietrich nor Etzel (Kriemhild's husband!) object or rebuke Hildebrand. No one cares about all the people Hagen killed, even though most of them were innocent. And while it's not okay for a woman to kill a man even if he deserved it, it is obviously okay for a man to kill a woman. In fact, Kriemhild's sudden death by Hildebrand is so ill-motivated that it can be regarded as a last-minute contrivance just to kill her off. The need to kill her off probably arose from the expectations of the audiences, who by the end of the poem would have seen her as a pure villainess who could not go unpunished.
 * Death by Adaptation: Kriemhild's Norse counterpart Gudrun from the Volsunga Saga survived the ordeal to get broken even more, thus resulting in two more rampages before she finally dies.
 * Despair Event Horizon: Kriemhild is sent on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Siegfried's death drives her to this.
 * Eyepatch of Power: Hagen is one-eyed since his youth when he fought with the hero Walter of Aquitaine, an event related in the heroic epic Waltharius.
 * Give Me a Sword: An interesting variant: Hagen faces the heroic Rüdiger von Bechlarn, to whom he had previously sworn friendship . Hagen requests a shield, as his is broken, and Rüdiger offers his.
 * Since Hagen could easily have picked up a shield belonging to the many corpses lying around the hall, this has been interpreted as Hagen providing a way out of his Conflicting Loyalty dilemma. As Etzel's vassal, Rüdiger had to fight against the Burgundians, yet he had also sworn friendship to them when his daughter was betrothed to Gunther's brother Giselher, which entailed an obligation to aid them in a fight - which he now could fulfil by giving Hagen his shield.
 * Grey and Grey Morality: No single character is either truly good nor motivated by evil; the drama of the epic concerns the moral conflicts of each character attempting to fulfill their duties. Of course, plenty of their acts are unnecessarily malicious, motivated by vengeance, plain dishonest, or otherwise inviting violence.
 * Hat of Power: The Tarnkappe, which grants the wearer invisibility.
 * Heel Face Turn: An unusual example - literally everyone (except perhaps Siegfried) does either this or a Face Heel Turn, as the first half of the epic is strongly sympathetic to Siegfried and Kriemhild, while the finale lionizes the Burgundians to such an extent that they appear heroic. Similarly Kriemhild goes from sympathetic victim of her family to blood crazed villainess.
 * Hero of Another Story: Dietrich and Hildebrand, both of whom are the main figures of their own eponymous epics.
 * Historical Domain Character: Though barely recognisable under the accretions of legend, Gunther (originally Gunthahari, king of Burgundians, killed by the Huns in 437  A.D. ), his subordinate Hagen (real life Hogina) Etzel (the famous Attila, 406–453  A.D. ), Dietrich von Bern (Theodoric the Great, 454–526  A.D. ), and perhaps other characters as well, are all based on real historical figures -- though not necessarily contemporaneous ones.
 * As are Siegfried (the Merovingian Frankish king Sigebert I) and Brünhilde (his wife, queen Brünhilda, originally Visigoth princess)
 * Hunting Accident: What supposedly happened to Siegfried. Kriemhild is not fooled.
 * Invisibility Cloak: The Tarnkappe (aptly translatable as "camouflage cape") that Siegfried takes from the dwarf Alberich and uses to defeat Brunhild. Its whereabouts after the death of Siegfried are unknown.
 * Kick the Dog: Hagen kills a grumpy old ferryman merely to get his boat. Though Hagen personally may interpret it as Shoot the Dog.
 * Last Villain Stand: The last stand of the Nibelungs in Etzel's burning hall.
 * Manly Tears: Dietrich's vengeful rampage which terminates Gunther and Hagen's valiant perseverance is preceded by this trope. Previously reluctant to enter battle, he learns that several family members and also countless retainers of his have been slain and sheds a great many before setting about to avenge their deaths.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Hagen crosses this by killing Ortlieb, Kriemhilde's and Etzel's son.
 * Named Weapons: Balmung, Siegfried's sword (later appropriated by Hagen)
 * Nasty Party: What Etzel's shindig turns into, thanks to the inveterate hatred of Kriemhild and Hagen.
 * Nigh Invulnerability: Siegfried's skin became impenetrable when he bathed in the blood of the dragon -- except for the spot on his shoulder.
 * Obviously Evil: In illustrations and movies, Hagen will almost invariably be dressed in an all-black outfit, including black armor, a black cape and (very often) a ridiculous winged helmet, all of which he will hardly ever take off. This appearance, worthy of a cartoon villain, seems to have originated with illustrators of the 19th century and has little basis in the original text.
 * Perspective Flip: Basically the Völsunga saga told from Krimhild's point of view.
 * Prophecy Twist: Some Nixes tell Hagen that only the chaplain accompanying the Nibelungs will return home, so when he ferries them over, he throws the chaplain into the Danube in an attempt to drown him. However, the chaplain safely makes it back to the northern shore and returns to Worms.
 * Rape Is Love: By modern standards the aforementioned courtship of Gunther and Brunhild would equate to this. Nevertheless, in the context of the text it is implicitly justified as a means of preserving the more noble goal of social propriety, Siegfried is said to have thought, "If I lose my life to a girl, the whole sex will grow uppish with their husbands for ever after, though they would otherwise never behave so."
 * Super Strength: Most of the leading characters, though none more so than Siegfried and Brunhild.
 * Tears of Blood: Kriemhild weeps them after Siegfried's murder.
 * Undying Loyalty: Hagen to Günther.
 * Untranslated Title: The poem has no title in the manuscripts. The modern title is drawn from the last line of the poem, which in the earliest surviving manuscripts reads, Daz ist der Nibelunge liet -- "That is the song of the Nibelungs." However, other manuscripts, though not so old themselves, are believed to preserve an older, more correct reading, Diz ist der Nibelunge not -- so the correct title should perhaps be, The Doom of the Nibelungs.
 * Virgin Power: Queen Brunhild has superhuman strength, but only so long as she stays a virgin.
 * Would Hurt a Child: Hagen has no qualms to decapitate Kriemhild's and Etzel's son, the six-year-old Ortlieb.