Dragonslayers Of Drachenfels

Journal of frontier studies No 1, 2017

Frequent economical, political and cultural exchanges between German and Scandinavian people during the Middle Ages led to the large scale changes that affected many parts of people’s lives and resulted in the appearance of German-Scandinavian frontier culture with its specific features. This article, using the example of Middle German heroic epic “Das Nibelungenlied” (“The Lay of the Nibelungs”) and the corpus of adjoining texts that comprise “the legend of Nibelungs / Nibelungenlegend” aims at describing how literature transgresses boundaries, how frontier literature and folklore function in their new space, how canon texts are restructured following the effects of migration and how the ancient and the new plots can be blended in new works of art. The article begins with a short review of the existing manuscripts of the medieval German heroic epos ""Das Nibelungenlied”. The most characteristic features of the manuscripts are briefly described. Special attention is paid to the so called m and n-versions dating back to the XIV-XV centuries (Darmstadt manuscripts) of the poem, as they can be regarded the marginal versions, containing a specific mixture of oral and written traditions of the Nibelungen legend. The article proceeds with description of how Nibelungen legend is reflected and transformed in the folklore of Faeroe Islands. Further the article discusses the contents of medieval Danish ballads of the Hven island "Grimhild’s Vengeance” (“Grimhildis Hæven”), the history of creation and the publication of these ballads is briefly described. The content-analysis of texts allows the author to draw a number of conclusions on the sources which formed the basis of these works of folklore, and more widely – about the ways of evolution of Nibelungen legend within the space of medieval German-Scandinavian frontier. Key words: heroic epic “The Nibelungenlied” (“The Lay of The Nibelungs”), Faroe islands, Nibelungen legend, Darmstadt manuscripts, ballads of the Hven island, "Grimhild’s Vengeance” (“Grimhildis Hæven”), “Thidreks saga”, “Edda”, German-Scandinavian frontier.

4th international multidisciplinary scientific conference on social sciences and arts, 2017

Frequent economical, political and cultural exchanges between German and Scandinavian people during the Middle Ages led to the large scale changes that affected many parts of people’s lives and resulted in the appearance of German-Scandinavian frontier culture with its specific features. This article, using the example of Middle German heroic epic “Das Nibelungenlied” and the corpus of adjoining texts that comprise “the legend of Nibelungs ” aims at describing how literature transgresses boundaries, how frontier literature and folklore function in their new space, how canon texts are restructured following the effects of migration and how the ancient and the new plots can be blended in new works of art. We begin with a short review of the existing manuscripts of the medieval German heroic epos ""Das Nibelungenlied” with special attention paid to Darmstadt manuscripts (XIV-XV A.D) that contain a specific mixture of oral and written traditions of the legend. The article proceeds with description of how Nibelungen legend was transformed in the folklore of Faeroe Islands. Further the article discusses the contents of medieval Danish ballads of the Hven island "Grimhild’s Vengeance” (“Grimhildis Hæven”). Our brief analysis shows the intricate process of re-archaization of a literary plot when it is introduced in an isolated, relatively archaic societies. The legend of Nibelungs was transmitted both in oral and written tradition beginning from the Dark Ages through High Middle Ages and on into the late Medieval period. During this time-span the once simple barbaric story of greed, fate and revenge gets more and more elaborate, rich in psychological insights and undertones, until it reaches its artistic climax in “Das Nibelungenlied”. But when brought to the North Europe, especially into its more encapsulated communities, it undergoes the backwards change and gives rise to a series of archaic retellings. The personages’ motifs become simple and one-faceted, the plots start following a limited number of formulae typical for the folklore pieces. In the likewise manner, Scandinavian ballads show two paradoxical features of archaic consciousness and archaic historical memory. Here the general dominates over the particulars; a literary formula – over the subject and psychological depths of fiction, an archetype – over a historical event. But at the same time we can observe how carefully national poetics treats names and details, especially those that amazed and impressed the listeners and the storytellers. Finally we make conclusion about creative and mental attitudes of the medieval folklore authors essentially different from those of modern writers. Composing new songs on the basis of old classical works, they didn't consider themselves innovators - on the contrary, they believed that they translate real facts about real people and their deeds. That is the reason of their aspiration to keep the names and details that have already lost their meaning or plot values in a new context. In other words, the anonymous folk poets of German-Scandinavian frontier created new works and new plots unbeknownst to themselves; involuntarily they submitted to the imperceptible pressure of culture and transformed initial plots according to the ancient, archetypical models.

2016

Frequent economical, political and cultural exchanges between German and Scandinavian people during the Middle Ages led to the large scale changes that affected many parts of people's lives and resulted in the appearance of German-Scandinavian frontier culture with its specific features. This article, using the example of Middle German heroic epic "Das Nibelungenlied" ("The Lay of the Nibelungs") and the corpus of adjoining texts that comprise "the legend of Nibelungs / Nibelungenlegend" aims at describing how literature transgresses boundaries, how frontier literature and folklore function in their new space, how canon texts are restructured following the effects of migration and how the ancient and the new plots can be blended in new works of art. The article begins with a short review of the existing manuscripts of the medieval German heroic epos ""Das Nibelungenlied". The most characteristic features of the manuscripts are briefly described. Special attention is paid to the so called m and n-versions dating back to the XIV-XV centuries (Darmstadt manuscripts) of the poem, as they can be regarded the marginal versions, containing a specific mixture of oral and written traditions of the Nibelungen legend. The article proceeds with description of how Nibelungen legend is reflected and transformed in the folklore of Faeroe Islands. Further the article discusses the contents of medieval Danish ballads of the Hven island "Grimhild's Vengeance" ("Grimhildis Haeven"), the history of creation and the publication of these ballads is briefly described. The contentanalysis of texts allows the author to draw a number of conclusions on the sources which formed the basis of these works of folklore, and more widelyabout the ways of evolution of Nibelungen legend within the space of medieval German-Scandinavian frontier.

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, 2020

Viator, 2015

This article attempts to provide a fresh perspective on the thorny issue of what exactly preceded the category of texts labeled "Germanic heroic poetry." The argument follows the character of the dragonslayer (Sigurd/Sigmund) through its manifold avatars in the Nibelung cycle of texts, from the earliest skaldic poets and the "Sigemund episode" in Beowulf to Völsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied. It argues that there are three separate narrative cores which collided into the grand narrative of the Nibelung cycle: a dragon-slayer Indo-European-type legend and two narrative traditions of two separate historical events (the fifth-century fall of the Burgundian kingdom and the seventh-century events at the Frankish court surrounding the death of the Merovingian king Sigibert, his wife Brunichildis, and her rival, Fredegunde). This argument is accompanied by a revaluation of past scholarship-both "Old" and "New Philological." The article aims to go beyond source-criticism to a deeper understanding of how the Germanic heroic tradition works. Ultimately, it advocates a third way-a rhizomatic understanding of Germanic heroic narrative ecologies as processes of narrative and cultural exchange and transformation, rather than clear-cut categorizations and genealogies of textual artifacts.