Wieland the blacksmith
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Wieland the blacksmith is a figure of the Germanic hero legend . Wieland ( ahd. Wiolant , ae. Veland, af. Wela (n) du , an. Völundr , Welent from an. Vél “Art, artifice, cunning”, hence “the artistically manufacturer, deceiver”; cf. the information under Wieland ) is the name of an artful blacksmith who originally appeared in Germanic mythology as a semi-divine being. He can be compared with Hephaestus (motif of the lame blacksmith), Erichthonios (motif of the lame and the invention of means of locomotion) as well as with Erechtheus and his descendants Daidalos (motif of the flying machine). According to legend, Wieland comes from Gossensaß ("Gotensitz") in what is now South Tyrol. In 1835 the poet Karl Simrock wrote an epic verse entitled Wieland the blacksmith . As a result, Richard Wagner also dealt with the subject in an uncomposed drama draft.
Legend lore
The Wielandsage appears in different versions, but one core plot is the same in all adaptations. The main sources for the two different versions of the saga are on the one hand the Thidrekssaga , on the other hand the Völundarkviða , the Völundlied of the Edda song . In both versions Wieland is king Nidung - in the Edda , paralyzed by this can cut through the mythical blacksmith the foot and hamstring - called Níðuð. Wieland avenges himself in both cases by killing Nnung – Níðuð's sons, processing their brain shells into gilded drinking bowls and fathering a child with the daughter of the envious king. Eventually Wieland flies away.
The sword Mimung, which Wieland forged in the Thidrek saga and which plays such an essential role in it, does not appear under this name in the Völundlied of the Edda . Nor is it mentioned in the Völundlied that the child from the connection with the king's daughter is called Wittich (an. Widga ). Wieland also appears in the handwriting fragment Waldere (around 1000), an old English version of the legend of Walther and Hildegund , from England . It tells that Theodric wanted to hand over a sword to Wieland's son Widia (Wittich) after Widia had freed him from the violence of giants.
Wieland in the Thidreks saga
Wieland, who appears as Velent in the Thidrek saga , was the son of the sea giant Vadi (in German translations "Wate") and was only apprenticed to the famous blacksmith Mime . After a while, Siegfried-Sigurd started his apprenticeship with Mime. He was a wild fellow and there were often arguments among the apprentices, with Siegfried, as the stronger, always having the upper hand and beating both of his housemates vigorously. At some point Wieland couldn't take it any longer and looked for another apprenticeship with dwarfs , who made him the most skillful of all blacksmiths. These dwarfs lived in a rock called Ballova. The name of the rock coincides etymologically with the current name of the small Sauerland town of Balve with the well-known Balver cave .
Wieland managed to escape the dwarfs who wanted to keep him with them and to drive down the Weser in a dugout canoe. So he landed in Jutland, in the kingdom of King Nnung . With this he hired himself first as cupbearer . He once washed three knives by the sea and lost one in the process. As a good blacksmith, it was easy for him to make a new knife. When the king used this knife while eating, it cut not only through the food but also through the plate and deep into the table. Niden wanted to know who had forged such good steel and found out that it had been Wieland. The king's blacksmith, Aemilias , became jealous of Wieland and offered him a competition. Aemilias was supposed to forge armor and Wieland a sword, and whose art turned out to be weaker would die. Wieland then forged the sword Mimung, Ämilias forged a helmet. In the fight, Wieland killed Ämilias, through whose helmet the Mimung sword went "like through butter". After a falling out, Niden Wieland had his legs paralyzed because he did not want such a good blacksmith to be lost. Wieland retaliated by killing both of the king's sons and incorporating their skulls into golden goblets for the king's table. He also raped the king's daughter Badhilde , who then gave birth to Wittich , who then appears in the German heroic saga (including as a follower of Dietrich von Bern ). The lame Wieland freed himself by forging a plumage and fled with it.
Wieland in the Völundlied ( Völundarkviða ) of the Lieder Edda
In the Völundlied , the fate of Wieland, who is called Völund here, is treated in a similar way overall, but with clear differences in details. At first he lived with his two brothers Egil and Schlagfidr some time in Ulfdalir where she three swan maidens found. They lived with them until they flew away after seven years to follow the battles as Valkyries . Wieland is then kidnapped by the warriors Níðuðs, who is referred to as the ruler of the Njaren, and, after the sinews of the hollows of his knees were cut on the advice of King Níðuð's wife, held at Säwarstad to forge. Níðuð also took the sword that Wieland had forged earlier. Similar to the Thidrek saga , Wieland kills Níðuð's two little sons in revenge and makes gold-plated drinking bowls from their brain shells, which he gave to Níðuð. Here too, Wöland escapes through the air and calls to Níðuð that he has killed his sons and made his daughter Bödwild pregnant. In some versions of the legend Wieland is supported by his brother Egil. This one is a famous archer and hunter . To test it, it can Nidung an apple off his son's head shoot - this part of the forecast shows clear motive parallels to the myth of Daedalus and the marksmen Toko at Saxo Grammaticus that as a model for the origin of the legend of the Swiss national hero Wilhelm Tell in 15 Century served.
The Mimung sword: Wieland's art of metallurgy
He named the sword that Wieland made in the Thidrek saga after his teacher Mimir . He forged the blade three times, after each completion he dipped it into the water of a brook and let the current drift against it an ever larger tuft of wool to show the king its sharpness. After the first and second remakes, he cut up the sword, mixed the shavings with wheat flour and gave the mixture to goose who had starved for three days. Then he melted the iron from the goose droppings and forged a smaller but sharper sword from it. The iron had absorbed the nitrogen contained in the goose droppings and had become harder. This process is called nitriding . After the third re-manufacture, the sword was so sharp that it cut a three-foot-thick tuft of wool that drifted against the sword in the stream. King Nidung the sword wanted to own of course, but Wieland took it on the pretext that he wanted to make a precious sheath, in his forge and hid it under the Esse . For the king he forged another sword that looked the same but was less sharp. He later gave the Mimung sword to his son Wittich when he wanted to move to the court of King Dietrich of Bern .
Later adaptations of the saga
The legend of Wieland is presented by Karl Simrock in the Amelungenlied as the poem “Wieland the blacksmith” and in the fourth part of the “ Heroes' Book ”. In the Amelungenlied the saga of Wieland is continued in the saga about Wittich, his and Bathilde's son, which has numerous parallels with the Siegfried saga of the Nibelungenlied and numerous allusions to Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, English and German traditions, but also to old French sagas in which Wieland Gallant is called.
Richard Wagner also dealt with the legend in 1849/50 in the run-up to the poetry for his musical drama The Ring of the Nibelung . Wagner summarized the legend in his essay The Artwork of the Future as a draft for an artist drama that he had conceived for the Paris Opera . The draft reads:
- Wieland the blacksmith created the most elaborate jewelery, wonderful weapons, sharp and beautiful out of lust and joy in his work. While he was bathing on the beach, he saw a swan maiden who came flying through the air with her sisters, took off her swan robe and also dived into the waves of the sea. Wieland burned with ardent love. He threw himself into the flood, fought and won the wonderful woman. Love also broke their pride and so they lived happily united in blissful care for one another. She gave him a ring: he may never let her regain it, because how much she loves him, she longs for the old freedom, for the flight through the air to the happy island of her home, and for this flight he would give Ring her power. Wieland forged a large number of rings, like the swan woman's, and hung them on a branch in his house, because among them she should not recognize hers. He once came home from a trip. Sore! His house was smashed, his wife fled from him into the far distance!
Wagner combined the Wieland saga here with the Siegfried saga. In his version, the king (here called Neiding) captures Wieland and treats him as described in Simrock's epic. In the end, Wagner combines the craftsmanship of the blacksmith with his own "free art" and with the liberal aspirations of the people and finally lets Wieland escape:
- Out of necessity, out of terrible omnipotence, the enslaved artist learned to invent what no human spirit has yet grasped. Wieland loved how he forged wings! Wings to rise boldly in vengeance on his tormentor. Wings to swing far to the blessed island of his wife! He did it, he accomplished what the greatest need had given him. Carried by the work of his art, he flew up to the heights, from where he struck Neiding's heart with a deadly projectile, he swung in blissfully bold flight through the air to where he found the beloved of his youth. O one glorious people! You wrote that, and you yourself are this Wieland! Forge your wings and get up!
Wagner did not process the Wieland material further and instead dealt with the Siegfried saga.
Trivia
When a new "Landeskrüppelheim" was planned and built in Baden in 1928 , it was named "Wielandheim" after Wieland the blacksmith - today (in 2014) it is Building J of the Orthopedic University Clinic in Heidelberg - Schlierbach .
Wieland is also a theme in the adventure course , the access to the elevator to Altena Castle .
See also
- Runic box from Auzon
- Völund Smed , play by Holger Drachmann (1894)
- Wayland's Smithy (English for "Wieland's forge"), modern name of a barrow near Swindon , Oxfordshire
literature
- Alfred Becker: Frank's Casket. Regensburg 1973, Appendix VI on the Wielandsage , pp. 154–186.
- Robert Nedoma : The written and pictorial monuments of the Wieland legend. Kümmerle Verlag, Göppingen 1988.
- Emil Ploß: Wieland's sword Mimung and the old steel hardening. In: Contributions to the history of German language and literature 79, 1957, pp. 110–128.
- Arnulf Krause : The hero songs of the older Edda. Reclam-Verlag, Ditzingen 2001, ISBN 3-15-018142-9 .
- Rudolf Simek : The Edda. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-56084-2 , pp. 85-88.
Web links
- Alfred Becker, Franks Casket (see literature )
- Austin Simmons, The Cipherment of the Franks Casket (PDF)
- Frisia Coast Trail, Weladu the flying blacksmith
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jacob Grimm : German Mythology . Volume I. Fourier, Wiesbaden 2003 (= unchanged reprint of the fourth edition, 1875–78), p. 313.
- ↑ NBI - verklaring voornaam Wieland
- ↑ Foundation Orthopädische Universitätsklinik Heidelberg - Gabriele Heller (Ed.), Between history and stories: Our orthopedics , 2011, pp. 55–57
- ↑ http://www.erlebnisaufzug.de/index.php/de/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/8-wieland-der-schmied