Table Of ContentTHE LEGEND
OF BRYNHILD
Theodore M. Andersson
“The book is unusually well written and clear
for a subject of this complexity, and it or
ganizes a vast amount of scholarly literature
in an immensely helpful way.”
—Arthur Groos, Director,
Medieval Studies, Cornell University
Brynhild is easily the most compelling fig
ure in early Germanic literature and is cen
tral to our understanding of the heroic men
tality. For a century and a half, scholars have
studied the story of her love for Sigurd, and
this book brings their findings together in
English for the first time. “The legend sings
principally of the woman, not the man,”
writes Theodore M. Andersson, and he ex
amines the medieval accounts of Brynhild
with a view toward reaching a fuller appreci
ation of her character.
Reopening a long-standing debate, An
dersson builds upon the work of earlier
scholars and develops a synthesis of old and
new. His analysis clarifies the relationships
among the most important Scandinavian
and German texts (Poetic Edda, Snorra Edda,
Þiðreks saga, Nibelungenlied), but he does not
attempt to deduce from them a single pro
totype of the story. Instead, he argues that
there are distinct Norse and German var
iants that interacted at various times, particu
larly in the late twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries, when the German version became
familiar in Norway and Iceland. He shows
that Norse and German treatments of
Brynhild as a figure of legend and poetry
are widely divergent. In Iceland she was the
object of sympathetic admiration, and her
character gained in depth and complexity as
the tale evolved. In Germany, on the other
( Continued on backflap)
ISBN 0-8014-1302-8
ISLANDICA
A SERIES RELATING TO ICELAND AND THE
FÏSKE ICELANDIC COLLECTION
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
EDITED BY VILHJALMUR BJARNAR
VOLUME XLIII
The Legend of Brynhild
By Theodore M. Andersson
By the same author
The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins: A Historical Survey
The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading
Co-editor with Larry D. Benson, The Literary Context of Chaucer* s
Fabliaux: Texts and Translations
Early Epic Scenery: Homer, Virgil, and the Medieval Legacy
The Legend of Brynhild
Theodore M. Andersson
ISLANDICA XLIII
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London, 1980
Copyright © 1980 by Cornell University Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts
Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1980 by Cornell University Press.
Published in the United Kingdom by Cornell University Press Ltd.,
2-4 Brook Street, London W1Y 1AA.
International Standard Book Number 0-8014-1302-8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-16008
Printed in the United States of America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears
on the last page of the book.
Preface
Brynhild is the paramount figure of Germanic legend, but she
has been subordinated more often than not to the male object of
her passion. Her story is thus normally referred to as the legend
of Sigurd or, in German circles, the legend of Siegfried. The title
of this book is intended to make the point that the legend sings
principally of the woman, not the man, a view that I argue specifi
cally at the beginning of Chapter 2. My task has been to examine
the sometimes fragmentary and always refractory medieval ac
counts of Brynhild with a view to extracting from them a better
appreciation of her personality. This task made it necessary to
reopen the long-standing debate on the textual relationships of the
major literary documents (Poetic Edda, Vçlsunga saga, Þiðreks
saga, and Nibelungenlied). As a consequence the book has be
come a general reassessment of the so-called Nibelung question,
a good part of which it attempts to summarize and elucidate.
My method will be readily recognizable to scholars in the field
as the property of Andreas Heusler, subject to a few limitations
noted in the Introduction. Nibelungenlied scholars in particular
will find this method antiquated because they are currently more
concerned with the literary or oral qualities of the poem than with
the sources. I ask them to bear in mind that the present study
focuses on the Brynhild tradition, not the status of Nibelungen
lied research, a topic to which I hope to return in the future.
Although I have not entered into the Nibelungenlied controversy
as such, my position will be clear enough. I follow Heusler in
believing that Part I is based on a single oral source and that Part
II is based on a written epic, the '‘Ältere Not.” The "Ältere Not”
5
6 Preface
in particular has encountered much skepticism in recent years,
but, with the exception of Friedrich Panzer, those scholars who
have studied the problem closely (Léon Polak, Andreas Heusler,
Roswitha Wisniewski) agree on the necessity of assuming an an
terior epic. I have not reviewed this aspect of the problem partly
because it is peripheral to the subject of Brynhild and partly
because I have argued my position fully in a separate paper (“The
Epic Source of Niflunga saga and the Nibelungenlied,“ Arkiv för
nordisk filologi, 88 [ 1973], 1-54). The reconstructions of the “Äl
tere Not” are in fairly good agreement with each other and I
believe the burden of disproof rests on the skeptics. They must
find an alternative explanation for the massive correspondences
in detail and wording between “Niflunga saga“ and Part II of the
Nibelungenlied. Until such an explanation is offered, it is safe to
assume that the correspondences derive from a common written
source. This assumption underlies Chapters 5 and 6.
The form of Norse proper names appropriate to an English
context is always a vexing problem. A frequent practice has been
to drop the nominative ending -r (hence Sigurd for Sigurðr, and so
forth), but this practice leads to inconsistencies because other
nominative endings are retained. Inconsistency no doubt is un
avoidable, but I prefer a variety that calls for the retention of all
nominative endings with a few exceptions. These exceptions are
dictated by my sense that the most important names in the
Brynhild legend are sufficiently familiar to the English reader in
Anglicized form that a reversion to the Norse form would seem
artificial. Hence I write Sigurd for Sigurðr, Sigmund for Sig-
mundr, Gudrun for Guðrún, Brynhild for Brynhildr, and Grimhild
for Grimhildr. In the case of Brynhild it is also useful to adopt a
neutral form midway between the Norse Brynhildr and the Ger
man Brünhilt. Thus “Brynhild“ in the following pages may refer
to our heroine as she figures in either the Norse or German legend
or in a common antecedent tradition.
This project was completed with the help of a grant from Stan
ford University and the Lilly Endowment. In a period of shrink
ing opportunities for humanistic research, I am greatly indebted
to Stanford for its generous support. The work was carried out
from September of 1978 to June of 1979 and facilitated by the
extraordinary resources of Widener Library. I am particularly
Preface 7
grateful to Dorothy Boerstler, Dorrit Cohn, and Eckehard Simon
for helping with the arrangements and otherwise conspiring to
make my year comfortable and convivial. My work was made
doubly pleasant by the genial company of such old friends as
Larry Benson, Henry Hatfield, and Einar Haugen.
T. M. A.
Berkeley y California
