with the mythical story of Siegfried. This composite
Siegfried-Burgundian saga then became a common possession
of the Germanic peoples, was borne with many of them
to lands far distant from the place of its origin,
and was further moulded by each according to its peculiar
genius and surroundings. In the Icelandic Eddas,
the oldest of which we have as they were written down
in the latter part of the ninth century, are preserved
the earliest records of the form it had taken among
the northern Germanic peoples. Our Nibelungenlied,
which is the chief source of our knowledge of the
story as it developed in Germany, dates from about
the year 1200. These two versions, the Northern
and the German, though originating in this common source,
had diverged very widely in the centuries that elapsed
between their beginning and the time when the manuscripts
were written in which they are preserved. Each
curtailed, re-arranged, or enlarged the incidents of
the story in its own way. The character of the
chief actors and the motives underlying what we may
call the dramatic development assumed widely dissimilar
forms. The German Nibelungenlied may be read
and appreciated as one of the world’s great
epic poems without an acquaintance on the part of the
reader with the Northern version of the saga.
In order, however, to furnish the setting for a few
episodes that would in that case remain either obscure
or colorless, and with a view to placing the readers
of this translation in a position to judge better
the deeper significance of the epic as the eloquent
narrative of a thousand years of the life of the people
among whom it grew, the broad outlines of the saga
in its Northern form will be given here.
2. The Northern Form of the Saga
Starting at the middle of the fifth century from the
territory about Worms on the Rhine where the Burgundians
were overthrown, the saga soon spread from the Franks
to the other Germanic peoples. We have evidence
of its presence in northern Germany and Denmark.
Allusions to it in the Anglo-Saxon poem, the Wanderer,
of the seventh century and in the great Anglo-Saxon
epic Beowulf of a short time later, show us
that it had early become part of the national saga
stock in England. Among the people of Norway
and Iceland it took root and grew with particular vigor.
Here, farthest away from its original home and least
exposed to outward influences, it preserved on the
whole most fully its heathen Germanic character, especially
in its mythical part. By a fortunate turn of
events, too, the written record of it here is of considerably
earlier date than that which we have from Germany.
The Eddas, as the extensive collection of early Icelandic
poems is called, are the fullest record of Germanic
mythology and saga that has been handed down to us,
and in them the saga of Siegfried and the Nibelungen
looms up prominently. The earliest of these poems
date from about the year 850, and the most important
of them were probably written down within a couple
of centuries of that time. They are thus in part
some three centuries older than the German Nibelungenlied,
and on the whole, too, they preserve more of the original
outlines of the saga. By bringing together the
various episodes of the saga from the Eddas and the
Volsung saga, a prose account of the mythical race
of the Volsungs, we arrive at the following narrative.
