Nibelungenhort
The Nibelungenhort or treasure of the Nibelungs is a fabulous , in some versions say curse-laden treasure .
The legend
In the different versions of the Nibelungen saga , the hoard has different histories, functions and meanings. We did not receive related written poems in which he played a role until the 13th century, but we know sources that allude to this treasure from around the 10th century. Even these old references cannot be reduced to a common denominator. It was probably quite late that very different sagas of treasures that originally had nothing to do with each other were originally interwoven. The most detailed medieval history of the treasure can be found in the Edda by the Icelandic Snorri Sturluson, which was probably written around 1220 ; a rock carving on Ramsundsberg in the Swedish community of Eskilstuna from the early 11th century (around 1030?) corresponds to it almost exactly. Also the so-called Jung-Sigurd-Lieder of the Liederedda - a collection of songs that has survived to us in a manuscript from around 1270, but which were already known to Snorri in a similar form, so probably already (even if changed again and again by editors) are a lot older - bring a similar version. The Volsunga saga , probably created in Iceland around 1250, tells the story of the hoard based on a version of the collection of songs that comes very close to the version in the above-mentioned manuscript written around 1270. This version is so well known today because Richard Wagner used the Volsunga saga as the main source for his Ring des Nibelungen .
The story based on Snorri Sturluson's Edda: Snorri tells the whole Nibelungen saga in the section of his textbook for aspiring poets, in which he explains the paraphrases for gold in the songs of older poets; this shows that the hoard of the Nibelungen saga was regarded as the great treasure par excellence in older poetry. Characteristic of Snorri's portrayal is that songs about the mythical and fairytale prehistoric times, in which the gods walked the earth and had to look for food and shelter, and prophecies about the end of the world, which also come from ancient pagan mythical tales, with the heroic age merged into one, with the heroic songs serving as the basis (admittedly largely changed beyond recognition) figures of early medieval history. Now the story of the hoard in detail:
The three Aesir (gods) Odin , Loki and Hönir once explored the world. For her dinner, Loki killed an otter that caught food by a waterfall. The gods carried him to a farmer named Hreidmar , where they wanted to camp for the night. Hreidmar recognized in the otter his son named Otter (Old Norse: Otr), who had the ability to transform into an otter (hence the name). Hreidmar demanded manslaughter from the gods for his son: they should completely fill the otter hide with gold and cover the outside with gold. Now the gods had to get gold. Odin sent Loki out to do this. Gold was owned by dwarfs in the interior of mountains in mythical times. The dwarf Andwari (Old Norse spelling: Andvari) had a large hoard that Loki stole from him, and a magic ring with which the hoard could multiply. Loki caught the Andvari, who lived as a pike in the water, in order to catch his food, and forced him to give up the treasure and the ring Andwaranaut ('Gift of the Andvari'). Andvari cursed the ring for bringing death to anyone who possessed it. The gods imposed the hoard as an otter penance; Odin wanted to keep the ring with which one could increase one's wealth to himself. However, Hreidmar found that one of the otter's whiskers was still sticking out of the pile of gold, and to cover it, Odin had to reluctantly give up the ring. Andwari's curse was fulfilled immediately: Hreidmar did not want to share the treasure with his sons, Fafner (Old Norse spelling: Fáfnir) and Regin ; the two therefore killed their father. Fafner did not want to give Regin any of it, but turned into a lindworm and settled on the Gnitaheide with this dragon hoard.
This prehistory of the hoard comes from myths that show that the search for food by killing other living beings goes back to deeds of the gods in prehistoric times, and that the greed for gold is inherent in the world from beginning to end through the fault of the gods. The next section of Snorri's portrayal combines these myths with heroic sagas: Regin hires out as a blacksmith at Chilperich (a historical Merovingian king; Old Norse spelling: Hjalprekr). Sigurd grew up at Hjalprek's court ; Hjalprek assigns Regin the Sigurd as foster father. Regin wants to own the treasure; however, he does not want to kill Fafnir himself because otherwise he would be guilty of blood for killing his brother. Regin therefore wants to incite Sigurd to kill Fafnir and then take the hoard for himself. Regin forges a sword for Sigurd, with which Sigurd ambushes Fafnir and stabs him from below (from a pit on the dragon's path to the source). Then Sigurd is supposed to roast the heart of Fafnir for Regin: it was believed that the strength resided in the heart and one could absorb the strength of the slain through the enjoyment of the heart. Regin is now going to sleep. Sigurd tries to see if the heart is already done, burns his finger and puts it in his mouth. By enjoying dragon blood one understands the bird language. Two woodpecker tits (nuthatches) tell Sigurd that Regin wants to kill him, advise him to kill Regin and take the gold. Sigurd does this, loads his steed Grani with the treasure and rides away. The section from the killing of the dragon and the blacksmith to the prophecy of the bird and the loading of the horse with the treasure corresponds exactly to Old Norse picture carvings, the oldest and most beautiful of which is that of Ramsundsberg. Snorri also tells the legend of Sigurd, in which an element of the hoard appears again: Sigurd arrives at the Niflungs (that's the name of Gunnar and his brother Högni; Old Norse Niflungen = German Nibelungen), marries her sister Gudrun and recruits Brynhild for his brother-in-law Gunnar . Since Gunnar's horse does not jump through the wall of flames that surrounds Brynhild's hall, Sigurd magically changes shape with Gunnar to help him: Sigurd now looks like Gunnar and calls himself Gunnar when he appears in front of Brynhild, woos her and celebrates Wedding, but puts his sword between them on their wedding night (so that the real Gunnar can find a virgin the next evening), and gives her a gold ring the morning after the wedding night - Snorri says it was the ring that Loki had taken from Andvari and who had come to Sigurd through Fáfnir's lair. When Sigurd's wife Gudrun (Gunnar's sister) and Brynhild later get into an argument about priority, Gudrun reveals to Brynhild that the ring on Brynhild's finger is Andvaranaut and that Sigurd had spent the wedding night with her, not Gunnar. Brynhild then incites Gunnar and his brother Högni to kill Sigurd and then commits suicide. After Sigurd and Brynhild's death, the Nibelungs Gunnar and Högni take the whole treasure for themselves. Sigurd's widow, Gudrun, later marries the King of the Huns , Atli (who corresponds to the historical Attila). He is greedy for treasure and wants the hoard. He invited the Nibelungen, Gunnar and Högni, to his court and had them slain there. Before Gunnar and Högni accepted the invitation, however, they hid the hoard in the Rhine and it was never found again. Some manuscripts of the Snorra Edda add that Gudrun avenges the death of her brothers on Atli and cruelly murdered him.
Other works tell the story of the hoard very differently. In Germany, the version offered by the Nibelungenlied is best known : here Siegfried does not win the hoard from a dragon, but through a ruse: the Nibelungs, the two sons of the late King Nibelunc, who owned an immeasurable hoard, join them the division of the estate in dispute and ask Siegfried, who happens to be passing by, for help with the division. As a reward, give him the sword of Nibelunc in advance. Since the two do not agree with Siegfried's proposal for partition and attack him, he kills her and the giants they have to help and defeats the dwarf Alberich , although he can make himself invisible with a camouflage coat. Siegfried uses Alberich as a guard over the hoard and moves on. Later Siegfried comes to the court of the Burgundian kings Gunther, Gernot and Giselher in Worms on the Rhine. The first advisor to the kings, Hagen von Tronje, arranges for Siegfried to be well received, and after Siegfried wants to marry the sister of the kings, Kriemhild, he advertises as a counter-deal for Gunther to get Brünhild, who has to be defeated in fighting games, which Gunther does could never afford. Siegfried defeats Brünhild with the help of the invisible camouflage coat won by Alberich at the fighting games and wrestles her, just as invisibly, in the marriage bed before Gunther can take her virginity, and forcibly takes a ring from her finger and her belt with which she wanted to tie him, or the supposed Gunther, (more in the article Nibelungenlied). Siegfried's wealth enables him to persuade Kriemhild after the wedding to renounce her inheritance in favor of her brothers when he leaves for his country with her. This immeasurable wealth of Siegfried, which is also reflected in the gifts to messengers from Worms, arouses the envy of Hagens in particular. Brünhild's invitation to Siegfried and Kriemhild to Worms is therefore not a lucky star. When, through the dispute between the sisters-in-law Kriemhild and Brünhild about priority, Kriemhild carelessly reveals the secret and shows the two pieces of evidence, ring and belt, Brünhild demands Siegfried's death. Hagen murders Siegfried with Gunther's consent, not to avenge Brünhild, who only serves them as an excuse, but to get to the hoard. Kriemhild as a widow is entitled to the hoard; They first persuade her, with wrong words, to have the hoard brought from Norway, where the Nibelungenland is located, to Worms, and when she lets him come, after they killed her husband, they also rob her of her inheritance, the hoard.
Hagen sank it in the Rhine at a place known only to the kings and to him, so that no one else can steal it from them. When Kriemhild later marries Etzel (the Middle High German name for Attila, the king of the Huns ), she persuades him to invite her brothers in order to get revenge on them for Siegfried's death. The three Burgundian kings and the 1,000 Burgundian knights whom Gunther had taken with him on Hagen's advice, as well as their 9,000 servants and bagmen, fell in a terrible slaughter. Gunther and Hagen were the last to be overcome by Dietrich von Bern , who was staying at Etzel's court; When Hagen, although defeated and tied, mocks Kriemhild and shows that he fought with Siegfried's sword, which he had stolen from the corpse, and, despite Gunther's death, is not ready to reveal the hiding place of the hoard, she draws Siegfried's sword out of the scabbard and chop off Hagen's head with it. Horrified by this cruelty, Dietrich's old master-at-arms, Hildebrand Kriemhild, kills. Now nobody knows where the hoard is.
In addition to the two best-known versions of Snorri and the Nibelungenlied, there were several others. The differences between the versions are very large. Songs of the lieder Edda recorded around 1270 tell the story similar to Snorri, but differ in details from this and also from each other, and the Icelandic Volsunga saga (around 1250) again somewhat differently. There are also completely different versions: According to a German source, the Norwegian Thidreks saga reports that the hoard was in the "Siegfriedskeller" and that Hagen had a son who avenged him on Attila by luring the greedy Attila into the Siegfriedskeller outside locked the door and let the greedy king starve to death at the gold.
The names of the treasure
Snorri tells the story of this treasure in order to explain the paraphrases ( Kenningar ) for gold used in the saga poetry: Fafnir's bed, Fafnir's legacy, Fafnir's bed, shrill gold, Gnitaheides dust, glowing red treasure, gold of the Niflunge, Grani's burden, Grani's back burdens Niflungenerbe, hoard of the Giukungen ('Gjukungen' = 'Sons of Gjuki'; Gjuki means the father of Gunnar and Hognis in the Edda songs), Rheines gold, red gold.
Named motif of the Nibelungenlied
In the Nibelungenlied , the hoard is named after its original owners, the kings of the Nibelungenland, remembered in Norway. When the Burgundians stole him after Siegfried's death, they also took over the name and are sometimes called "Nibelungs" in addition to "Burgundy". In the Nibelungenlied, verse 85ff., Hagen von Tronje explains to King Gunther how Siegfried had obtained the "Hort of the Nibelung", which made him infinitely rich:
The hoard was taken from a cave in a mountain to be divided between Schilbung and Nibelung, the two sons of the late King Nibelung. This treasure of precious stones and red gold was so big that 100 trucks couldn't carry it.
According to the Nibelungenlied, Hagen von Tronje is also the one who is said to have sunk the treasure in the Rhine, for which the song even gives more details: Lôche . Despite an intensive private search, several places have been found to this day that fit the description, but the treasure - if it really exists - has not yet been found. Lochheim , 20 km down the Rhine from Worms, is one of the places in question.
literature
Liederedda
- Klaus von See, Beatrice la Farge and others: Commentary on the songs of the Edda. Vol. 5, Hero Songs. Frá dortða Sinfiotla, Grípisspá, Reginsmál, Fáfnismál, Sigrdrífumál. Heidelberg 2006. ( Contains the texts with very precise translations, linguistic explanations, scientific commentaries and very extensive literature references. Standard work. )
Snorra Edda
expenditure
- Finnur Jónsson (Ed.): Snorra Edda. København 1900.
Commentaries, glossaries and translations of the Snorra Edda
- Anthony Faulkes, Oxford 1982ff.
- Ernst Wilken: The Prosaische Edda in excerpt, together with Völsunga-saga and Nornagests-þáttr. Part 1: Text, Part 2: Glossary. 2nd edition Paderborn 1913
Translations
- The younger Edda with the so-called first grammatical treatise. Transferred by Gustav Neckel and Felix Niedner. Thule Collection 20. Jena 1925. ( Complete, but free translation. Since then published in unchanged new editions. )
Völsunga Saga and Related Sagas
expenditure
- Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda, ed. by Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavík 1943, Vol. 1–3.
Translations
- Icelandic heroic novels. Transferred from Paul Herrmann. Thule Collection , Vol. 21, Jena 1923. Since then published in unchanged new editions. ( Interesting in terms of reception history: Paul Herrmann has referred to passages that were used by Richard Wagner or Henrik Ibsen. )
Nibelungenlied
- The Nibelungenlied. Edited from the St. Gallen manuscript. u. with an inlet v. Hermann Reichert. de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-018423-0 .
Secondary literature
- Hermann Reichert: The Nibelungen saga in medieval Scandinavia. In: Joachim Heinzle, Klaus Klein, Ute Obhof: The Nibelungs. Saga - epic - myth. Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-89500-347-6 , pp. 29-88 ( overview of the research literature )
- The Nibelungenlied. Edited from the St. Gallen manuscript. u. with an inlet v. Hermann Reichert (as above), especially p. 451ff. ( For the function of the hoard in the Nibelungenlied: )
- Hermann Reichert: Nibelungenlied textbook . Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7069-0445-2 , pp. 137f. to verse 1119ff.
- Klaus Rädle: The Nibelungen Treasure - a search for clues . 2nd edition Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86386-398-2 .
Web links
- Illustrata.com
- Film / Video: The Treasure of the Nibelungs , film by Jürgen Strumpfhaus and André Meier, ARD / Phoenix, two-parter, two times 45 minutes, Germany 2007