such crafts as weaving and metal-work, as well as in agriculture and road-making. Coco-nut oil is produced on Nias and also more especially on the Nako group. A Dutch commissioner is established at Gunong Sitoli on the east coast, a settlement of Malay and Chinese traders.
NIBELUNGENLIED, or Der Nibelunge Nôt, an heroic epic
written in a Middle High German dialect. The story on which
the poem is based belongs to the general stock of Teutonic saga
and was very widespread under various forms, some of which are
preserved. Thus it is touched upon in Beowulf, and fragments
of it form the most important part of the northern Edda, the
poets of which evidently assumed that the tale as a whole was
well known and that their hearers would be able to put each
piece in its proper place. In the prose Edda, or Volsungasaga,
which, though largely primitive in spirit, dates from the 13th
century, it is set forth in full. The substance of this Norse
version is as follows:—
The three Anses—Odin, Loki and Hörnir—saw an otter devouring a salmon beside a waterfall. They killed and skinned the otter and, taking the skin with them, sought shelter for the night with Rodmar the giant. But Rodmar recognized the skin as that of his son, and demanded as weregild gold enough to cover it completely. Loki thereupon went back to the stream, where Andvari in the form of a pike was guarding a great treasure, caught him in a net, and forced him to surrender his hoard. But the piled-up gold left one hair exposed; in order to cover it Loki returned to Andvari and forced him to surrender a magic ring which had the virtue of breeding gold. Thereupon Andvari, enraged, laid upon the hoard and all who should possess it a curse. This curse, the Leitmotif of the whole story, began to operate at once. Rodmar, for the sake of the treasure, was slain by his sons Fafnir and Regin; and Fafnir, seizing the whole, retired to a desolate heath and, in the form of a snake or dragon, brooded over the hoard. Regin, cheated of his share, plotted vengeance and the conquest of the treasure.
To Regin, a notable smith, was sent Sigurd—son of the slain hero Sigmundr the Volsung and his wife Hiortis, now wife of the Danish king Alf—to be trained in his craft. To him Regin told of Fafnir and the hoard, and the young hero offered to go out against the dragon if Regin would weld him a sword. But every brand forged by the smith broke under Sigurd’s stroke; till at last he fetched the fragments of the sword Gram, Odin’s gift to his father, which Hiortis had carefully treasured. These Sigurd forged into a new sword, so hard that with it he could cleave the anvil and so sharp that it would sever a flock of wool floating against it down stream; and, so armed, he sought and slew the dragon. But while roasting Fafnir’s heart, which Regin had cut out, Sigurd burned his finger with the boiling fat and, placing it to his lips, found that he could understand the language of birds, and so learned from the chattering of the woodpeckers that Regin was planning treachery. Thereupon he slew the smith and loading the treasure on the magic steed Grani, given to him by Odin, set out upon his travels.
On the summit of a fire-girt hill Sigurd found the Valkyrie Brunhild in an enchanted sleep, and ravished by her beauty awakened her; they plighted their troth to each other and, next morning, Sigurd left her to set out once more on his journey. Coming to the court of Giuki, a king in the Rhine country, Sigurd formed a friendship with his three sons, Gunnar, Hogni and Guthorm; and, in order to retain so valuable an ally, it was determined to arrange a match between him and their sister Gudrun. Queen Grimhild, skilled in magic, therefore gave him an enchanted drink, which caused him to forget Brunhild. Gunnar, on the other hand, wished to make Brunhild his wife, and asked Sigurd to ride with him on this quest, which he consented to do on condition of receiving Gudrun to wife. They set out; but Gunnar was unable to pass the circle of fire round Brunhild’s abode, the achievement that was the condition of winning her hand. So Sigurd, assuming Gunnar’s shape, rode through the flames on his magic horse, and in sign of troth exchanged rings with the Valkyrie, giving her the ring of Andvari. So Gunnar and Brunhild were wedded, and Sigurd, resuming his own form, rode back with them to Giuki’s court where the double marriage was celebrated. But Brunhild was moody and suspicious, remembering her troth with Sigurd and believing that he alone could have accomplished the quest.
One day the two queens, while bathing in the river, fell to quarrelling as to which of their husbands was the greater. Brunhild taunted Gudrun with the fact that Sigurd was Gunnar’s vassal, whereupon Gudrun retorted by telling her that it was not Gunnar but Sigurd who rode through the flames, and in proof of this held up Brunhild’s ring, which Sigurd had given to her. Then Brunhild “waxed as wan as a dead woman, and spoke no word the day long.” Maddened by jealousy and wounded pride, she now incited the three kings to murder Sigurd by exciting their jealousy of his power. The two elder, as bound to him by blood-brotherhood, refused; but the youngest, Guthorm, who had sworn no oaths, consented to do the deed. Twice he crept into Sigurd’s chamber, but fled when he found the hero awake and gazing at him with flashing eyes. The third time, finding him asleep, he stabbed him; but Sigurd, before he died, had just strength enough to hurl his sword at the murderer, whom it cut in two. Brunhild, when she heard Gudrun wailing, laughed aloud. But her love for Sigurd was great as ever, and she determined not to survive him; distributing her wealth to her hand-maidens, she mounted Sigurd’s funeral pyre, slew herself with his sword, and was burnt with him.
In course of time Gudrun married Atli (Attila), king of the Huns, Brunhild’s brother. Atli, intent on getting hold of the hoard, which Gudrun’s brothers had seized, invited them to come to his court. In spite of their sister’s warnings they came, after sinking the treasure in the Rhine. On their refusal to surrender the hoard, or to say where it was concealed, a fierce fight broke out, in which all the followers of Gunnar and Hogni fell. Atli then once more offered to spare Gunnar’s life if he would reveal his secret; but Gunnar refused to do so till he should see the heart of Hogni. The heart of a slave was laid before him, but he declared that that could not be Hogni’s, since it quaked. Hogni’s heart was then cut out, the victim laughing the while; but when Gunnar saw it he cried out that now he alone knew where the hoard was and that he would never reveal the secret. His hands were then bound, and he was cast into a den of venomous serpents; but he played so sweetly on the harp with his toes that he charmed the reptiles, except one adder, by which he was stung to death. Gudrun, however, avenged the death of her brothers by slaying the sons she had borne to Atli and causing him unwittingly to drink their blood and eat their hearts. Finally, in the night, she killed Atli himself and burned his hall; then, leaping into the sea, she was carried by the waves to new scenes, where she had adventures not connected with those recorded in the Nibelungenlied.
This story, in spite of the late date of the Volsungasaga and of added elements due to the imagination of its author, evidently represents a very primitive version. In the Nibelungen story, on the other hand, though its extant versions are of much earlier date, and though it contains elements equally primitive not found in the other, the spirit and the motives of the earlier story have to a large extent been transmuted by later influences, the setting of the story being—though by no means consistently—medieval rather than primitive. Thus the mysterious hoard is all but lost sight of; no mention is made of the curse attached to it; and it is only as an afterthought that Siegfried (Sifrit) is described as its master. Everywhere the supernatural elements are eliminated or subordinated, and the story becomes a drama of human motives, depending for its development on the interplay of human passions and activities.
To us in ancient story wonders great are told
Of heroes rich in glory and of adventures bold,
Of feast and joyous living, of wailing and of woe,
Of gallant warriors striving may ye now many marvels
know.[1]
That is all he gives by way of preface. The gods have vanished from the scene; there is nothing of Loki and his theft of Andvari’s hoard, nothing of Odin and his gifts of the sword Gram and the magic horse Grani; and not till the third Aventiure, when Siegfried comes to Worms, are we given even a hint that such things as the sword and treasure exist. On the other hand, in the very next stanza we are introduced to what is to be the leading motive of the plot: Kriemhild, the Burgundian princess, on whose account “many a noble knight was doomed to perish.” For, as in the legend of Sigurd the Volsung, the plot had turned upon the love and vengeance of Brunhild, so in the song of the Nibelungs it is the love and vengeance of Kriemhild, the Gudrun of the northern saga, that forms the backbone of the story and gives it from first to last an artistic unity which the Volsungasaga lacks. Of the story itself it is impossible here to give anything but the barest outline, sufficient to show its contrast with the northern version. We may note at the outset the spirit of pessimism which, like the curse on the hoard, pervades the whole. It appears in the very first Aventiure, when Kriemhild, in answer to her mother’s interpretation of her dream, declares that she will never marry, since “it has been proved by the experience of many women that joy is in the end rewarded by sorrow”; it is repeated in the last stanza but one of the long poem: “As ever joy in sorrow ends and must end alway.” This tragic contrast is emphasized by the pomp and circumstance that surround the ill-fated hero of the story at the beginning.
- ↑
Uns ist in alten maeren wunders vil geseit
Von heleden lobebaeren von grôzer arebeit
Von freude unt hôchgeziten von weinen unde klagen
Von küener recken striten muget ir nun wunder hoeren sagen.
