riding alone past a mountain, and he came upon many men gathered round a huge treasure which they had carried out of a cavern. For reasons that are not clearly explained Siegfried came into conflict with ‘the bold Nibelungs’, the two princes named Nibelung and Schilbung, and slew them, and their friends. He fought also with a dwarf named Alberich, and subdued him, but did not kill him: he had the hoard taken back into the cavern whence it had come, and made Alberich the guardian of the treasure. He was now the lord of ‘Nibelungeland’, the possessor of the great hoard, and for the rest of the first part of the Nibelungenlied he has the support of warriors from Nibelungeland, who are called Nibelungs. But in the second part of the German poem, which is held to rest on a quite different poetic source, the name ‘Nibelungs’ is applied, very strangely and on a first reading of the poem most disturbingly, in a totally different sense: it now means the Burgundians, just as it does in Norse.
Hagen also knew, and told this to Gunther, that Siegfried had slain a dragon and bathed in its blood, from which his skin grew so horny that no weapon would bite it. But this is in no way associated with the Nibelung hoard.
In the Nibelungenlied the hoard is associated with a dwarf, and a cavern in a mountain. What is the significance of the Dwarves?
In Norse mythology we are confronted, in the mythological poems of the Edda and also in Snorri Sturluson’s treatise, with a great many scattered hints and observations about the minor beings of the immensely rich and many-peopled heathen supernatural world. Taken all together it is baffling; and beyond question there was once a whole world of thought and belief concerning these beings which is now almost totally lost. However, bearing in mind that Snorri was writing in the thirteenth century and that behind him stretch century upon century of unrecorded, various and shifting beliefs, we may notice what he says: which is, that there are the Light Elves, Ljósálfar, and the Dark Elves, D?kkálfar. The Light Elves dwell in a glorious place called álfheimr (Elf-home, Elf-world), but the Dark Elves ‘live down in the earth, and they are unlike the Light Elves in appearance, but much more unlike in nature. The Light Elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, but the Dark Elves are blacker than pitch.’
So far as we can now tell, there seems little difference between the Scandinavian Dark Elves, black as pitch and living underground, and the Dvergar, Dwarves; in fact Snorri more than once refers to Dwarves as inhabitants of Svartálfaheimr, the Land of the Dark Elves. The Dwarf Andvari, original owner of Fáfnir’s treasure, dwelt, according to Snorri, in the Land of the Dark Elves (see the commentary on the Lay of the V?lsungs, p.189): there he kept his hoard within a rock, and there Loki caught him.
Characteristics of the Dwarves in Old Norse literature may be briefly mentioned. They are above all master-craftsmen, the makers of marvellous treasures and wonderful weapons. The most renowned objects in the Norse myths were made by Dwarves: ódin’s spear Gungnir, Thór’s hammer Mj?llnir, and Skíeblaenir, the ship of the God Freyr, which could carry all the Gods, yet was made so intricately that it could be folded up like a napkin and put in a pouch.
Dwarves lived always underground or inside rocks (an echo was called dverg-mál, ‘dwarf-talk’); and they possessed vast knowledge. If caught in the open after sunrise they were turned to stone. There is a poem in the Edda, the Alvíssmál, in which the God Thór asks many questions of a Dwarf named Allvíss (‘All-wise’); and Thór kept him answering his questions so long that the sun came up. The poem ends with Thór crying: ‘Dwarf, you are uppi dagaer’, you are ‘dayed up’, the sun has caught you.
The train of thought that emerges from all this will be clear, and the conclusion. Dark Elves, black as pitch, and Dwarves, closely related in Norse mythology if not identical, guardians of treasure in caverns and rocks; Alberich and Andvari; the origin of the Nibelung name in connection with ‘darkness’ words; Hagen’s ‘elvish’ birth, his dark and troll-like appearance in Thierekssaga. On this theory, this is what the Nibelungs originally were: they were beings of darkness, Dark Elves or Dwarves, and Siegfried/Sigurd stole their great treasure from them.
This ‘mythological’ theory, or some form of it, is radically challenged by other scholars. From place-names and personal names in the region of Burgundian settlement there is evidence that is interpreted to mean that Nibelung was the name of a powerful Burgundian family or clan. Putting the matter in its simplest form, it is supposed on this basis that the (purely human) Nibelung clan of Burgundia either possessed very great wealth in historical fact, or else very early had it attributed to them; and ‘the hoard of the Nibelungs’ was the family treasure of the Burgundian kings.
That my father subscribed to the ‘mythological’ theory in some form is plain; but his view of the process by which the Burgundians became Nibelungs is nowhere clearly or fully expressed in his writings. He had suggested (see this Appendix p.341) that the connection of the ‘Dragon-hero’ with the Burgundian king Gundahari began with ‘gold’ as a motive to explain Attila’s attack (when Attila had become the leader of the Huns in the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom of Worms). As Gundahari faded back into the past (he wrote), old legends of fairy-hoards localized on the Rhine naturally became attached to the famous king in Worms: ‘this treasure probably had demon or dwarvish guardians already, but need not originally have been the same as Sigemund’s gold, though it may well have been.’
‘It would certainly seem’, he said, ‘that the gold-hero who intrudes into the Burgundians had already gathered round him enemy Niflungar, who robbed him of life, bride, and treasure. The historical Burgundians partly take their place, and though there is never complete fusion they are darkened.’ He also saw it as virtually certain that the Nibelungenlied is the more original ‘in making the demonic and cruel Hagen not a brother, but an associate vaguely connected with the Burgundians. Very likely Hagen/H?gni is a relic of some old mythical figure connected originally with the gold, or at any rate with the mythical pre-Burgundian part of the “Sigurd” story.’
From observations such as these in his notes one can perhaps surmise that my father saw the genesis of the central part of the legend after this fashion. The Dragon-hero was already the robber of the Hoard of the dark, demonic Nibelungs (whom my father expressly saw as ‘the original owners’), and he brought with him into the Burgundian legend the story of how the Nibelungs in revenge slew him, and took the treasure.
With the fusion of the two legends, the Burgundian princes necessarily became his enemies: he must be killed in order that they should become the possessors of the gold, and they drew into themselves, so to speak, something of the dark Nibelung nature. It was from the ‘Nibelung’ side of the composite legend that the ‘demonic and cruel’ Hagen ultimately came, with (in the Nibelungenlied) his lust for the gold and his guarding it to the death, his relentless hatred of Siegfried leading to his murder. Hagen became more or less assimilated to the Burgundians, and in the Norse (as H?gni) wholly so; but the Burgundians on their side became Nibelungs, or Niflungar.
My father also surmised that the demonic bride was part of the complex of legend that was brought in with the Dragon-hero into the Burgundian story; and that when he brought with him his enemies the Nibelungs, they came not only as the robbers of his life and the treasure, but also of his betrothed. ‘It seems probable,’ he said, ‘that the robbing of Sigurd of his bride by the Niflungar is part of the old legendary plot that was handed over to the Burgundians. And the Valkyrie-bride has all along retained too much that is fierce and inhuman about her for completely successful treatment.’
Thus, finally, the hoard of which Sigurd was robbed became (by a curious irony) the Hoard of the Nibelungs (as it had always been); for the Burgundians were now the Nibelungs. And Gunnar acquired the Valkyrie.
APPENDIX B
THE PROPHECY OF THE SIBYL
I include this poem by my father in rhyming couplets as a companion to the altogether distinct Upphaf to the Lay of the V?lsungs, since it also was inspired by the Eddaic poem V?luspá (see the commentary on the Lay, pp.183–84).
It is found in a single very fine decorated manuscript; of earlier work there is now no trace. There is no evidence of any kind for its date, but on general grounds I would be inclined to ascribe it to the 1930s.
The Prophecy of the Sibyl
From the East shall come the Giant of old
and shield of stone before him hold;
the Serpent that the world doth bind
in towering wrath shall him unwind
and move the Outer Sea profound,
till all is loosed that once was bound.
Unloosed at last shall then set forth
the ship of shadow from the North;
the host of Hel shall cross the sea
and Loki shall from chain be free,
and with the