fiend

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Fiends are taken up and developed as literary figures primarily in conventional fairy tales and legends as well as in contemporary fantasy literature . They represent all kinds of evil, demonic creatures, ghosts or monsters .

Etymology and concept formation

The monster and the monster as concepts are in the word formation by the preposition Un - the reversal of everything that is "hold" or is summarized under the term. The element - hold also appears in the typologically related term of the goblin . As an adjective hold , it has been used in the German language since the 8th century in Old High German and Old Saxon , it is derived from the Germanic root form * hulþa- for "(too) inclined, affectionate " (also in Gothic hulþs = "gracious") ). A "fiend" is therefore a hostile person who is "averse" to an individual. For example, in the parallel texts of the Gospels of the Gothic Bible translation ( Wulfilabibel ) an unhulþa has the meaning of demon , devil : the antithesis of a holdo , a “friend, relative, disciple”.

The term “monster” found its way into a number of vernacular Christian-clerical texts, the model of which was originally mostly Greek-Latin theological literature. It was often taken from lower mythology, the popular beliefs and superstitions of the early medieval Germanic cultures. It developed further in the narrative tradition of the European Middle Ages up to modern times .

Fiends in literature

Depiction of Beowulf's Grendel after Henrietta Elizabeth Marschall from 1908

The older Edda often speaks of giants and fiends against which the heroes of the sagas had to defend themselves. These also include female beings, such as in the song by Helgi Hjörvarðsson , where Atli and Helgi have a dispute with Sváfa (daughter of the giant Hati ) at night, which the heroes drag out until the first ray of sun falls on the fiend and turned them to stone.

In the heroic poem Beowulf , which is written in Anglo-Saxon all - round rhymes , Beowulf, the hero of the story, fights a monster named Grendel . Grendel, who raids the Heorot Hall , which King Hroðga had built for his people and his family because he was plagued by the loud chants and celebrations, is so badly wounded by Beowulf, who leaves his home with the permission of King Hygelac of Gautland , that he returns to his swamps and dies there.

According to some folk tales, fiends were builders who could do things that were far beyond the capabilities of a normal builder. However, if they were completed on time, they could be rewarded princely. For example, in some legends they demanded the sun or the moon as a reward. Sometimes it happened that, similar to the dragon tales, they claimed young girls. The clients did not know what the craft skills of the fiends were like and believed that they could safely place the order, since they assumed that they would not have to pay the fiends. It is very unlikely that such a structure would be completed on time within the deadline. However, when they saw how fast the construction work was progressing, they tried to get rid of the monsters. According to folklore, monsters, like trolls, turned to stone when they saw sunlight, or died when called by their real name.

In the story The Lord of the Rings by the author JRR Tolkien , fiends occur in the form of grave monsters, which are also referred to as grave weights ( barrow-wights ) or burial gums and who live in the graves of the barrow heights. Here they try to lure the living into the caves to sacrifice them. Tolkien adopted a concept from the Norse saga literature, according to which the dead warriors defended themselves against grave robbers in the burial mounds of the deceased from the Bronze or Viking Age. These graves were therefore inhabited by violent monsters who were viewed as revenants or the living dead. These grave monsters are also mentioned in the poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil .

The term fiend was not only applied to supernatural beings, but in a figurative sense to people who were other fiends (malicious, dark, harmful). A folk tale with the title Wolf the Fiend tells of a boy who is impetuous and malicious even in his younger years, so that he is despised and avoided in his village. His parents see no way out and decide to send him to Mainz to work there as the bishop's stable boy . Years later, he returns in the convoy returned to his home village Merth the bishop. There he meets the Koehler's daughter again , who was the only one who had a positive influence on Wolf when he was little. He meets with her every day and they decide to get married. When he has to return to Mainz with the bishop, Wolf promises the Koehler daughter to return to marry her. When he arrives back in Merth, he learns that both his parents and his lover have died of the plague . Years later he dies in a scuffle at a fair in Merth. His last words are: “Curse Merth and all its inhabitants! Everyone should know: I am rejected, and for me there is no rest in the grave - I have to wander restlessly for all eternity! ”He is buried three days later, during the night the sky darkens, the residents of Merth hear loud noises, and they see a gigantic figure above the keep of the nearby castle , stretching its fist towards Merth. In the next few nights these events are repeated and the burgrave sends a messenger to inform the bishop of the eerie occurrences. It is only when a vault is erected over the dead wolf's bones that the strange events end.

There are a number of studies that have looked at fiends. For example, in 1982 Christa Habiger-Tuczay wrote a study entitled The Unhold ohne Seele , which deals with the history of the motif of the monster . Previously, Friedrich von der Leyen had published a treatise in 1908 with the title The Fettered Fiend: a mythological study that deals with the role of the monster in mythology .

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Unhold  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language . Ed .: Elmar Seebold . 24., through and exp. Edition. de Gruyter, Berlin [a. a.] 2002, ISBN 3-11-017472-3 , pp. 418, 507, 942 ( degruyter.com - chargeable).
  2. ^ Frank Heidermanns: Etymological dictionary of Germanic primary adjectives. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1993, ISBN 3-11-013666-X , p. 311 f. ( degruyter.com chargeable)
  3. ↑ Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume 1. 3rd unchanged edition of the edition 1956/57, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1970 [Reprint 2010], p. 240 f.
  4. ^ Brynjolfur Sveinsson, Karl Simrock (ed.): Edda. The Germanic songs of gods and heroes. Anaconda, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-86647-102-3 , pp. 161-164. ( Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar. - Part III. )
  5. ↑ Philipp Helminger: Beowulf - Drachensagen - Drachen Lindwurm Fafnir - Sagen. maerchen-sammlung.de, accessed on May 13, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Sophus Bugge, Oskar Brenner: Studies on the emergence of the Nordic gods and heroic sagas. C. Kaiser, Berlin 1881-1889 OCLC 689642 , p. 270 ( books.google.de ).
  7. ↑ Rudolf Simek: Middle Earth. Tolkien and Germanic Mythology. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52837-6 , p. 176 f.
  8. ↑ Bornhagen community: Wolf the monster. burgruine-hanstein.de, accessed on May 13, 2015 .