[...]... anti-hero), the ‘hope of the Nibelungs The name Nibelungs is transferred to the Burgundians, as they make their fatal journey to Hungary Kriemhilt undergoes a character change, transformed from the innocent maiden of the early adventures to a ‘she-devil’ The supernatural elements found in the first half of the lay are for the most part lacking in the second half, with the exception of the water-sprites, the. .. friends from these epics They were, like the Nibelungenlied itself, anonymous, a constituent element of the genre The Nibelungenlied stands head and shoulders above the Dietrich epics in terms of literary quality We possess evidence of the popularity both of the lay, and of other heroic epics, before the date of the earliest manuscripts, in Wolfram’s Parzival, where, in the eighth book, the cowardly... occurs in the heroic epic The prophecy of the water-sprites, for example, which leads to Hagen’s brutal attempt on the life of the chaplain, is integral to the sense of wyrd, of inexorable fate, familiar to the reader of Beowulf, of the Hildebrandslied, and of Icelandic sagas such as the great tale of revenge, the Saga of Burnt Njal Sivrit’s childhood and upbringing epitomize the dichotomy between the heroic... newcomers, the heroic epic Oral in origin, these epics found their way into writing in the thirteenth century, many of them in the same manuscripts as the courtly romances A number of epics had at their core Dietrich of Bern (historically Theodoric the Ostrogoth, of Verona),1 who plays a 1 See Appendix I: History and Legend Introduction xiii central role in the final stages of the Nibelungenlied The Thirty-eighth... parallel, to the two central protagonists of the first half of the lay, Kriemhilt and Sivrit The First Adventure tells us of Kriemhilt, Princess of Burgundy, a kingdom which has as its capital Worms on the Rhine.4 Kriemhilt, daughter of Queen Uote, is under the guardianship of her brothers, the three kings of Burgundy, Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher A prominent figure at the Burgundian court is Hagen of Tronege,... the epic as we know it, and acknowledging the debt that the lay owes to oral poetry The possibility of reconstructing the archetype of the Introduction xii text has been more or less abandoned Thus, when this introduction refers to the poet’, it is no more than a matter of convenience The language of the manuscripts points to the south-eastern Germanspeaking area The poet’s intimate knowledge of the. .. figure Other characters on the Hunnish side make brief appearances in the battles: these include Blœdelin, Etzel’s brother, and Irinc, Margrave of Denmark Ultimately, though, it is the central characters, Kriemhilt, Hagen, and Gunther, who determine the outcome and the doom of the Nibelungs An Heroic Poem in Courtly Times Near the beginning of Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein or The Knight with the Lion there... here, though in the Seventh Adventure they have the ring of parody The warfare practised in the Nibelungenlied is in some respects also state -of -the- art The couched lance, the lance held underarm, was developed from the late eleventh century onwards.7 The oneon-one joust and the massed charge known as the bohort are other features that develop in the twelfth century, primarily in tournaments The battle... the priceless hoard of the Nibelungs, a race of dwarves resident somewhere to the north of the Netherlands Like Sivrit, Gunther is soon intent on wooing He seeks for his bride Prünhilt, Queen of Iceland, an Amazonian figure of supernatural strength She and Sivrit are parallel, equally dominant personalities, who have an aura of myth about them, and the lay does indeed hint at their prior knowledge of. .. See The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, trans Jesse L Byock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 27 28 On the Icelandic analogues, see Appendix II: The Nordic Sources and the Problem of Genesis Introduction xxv three parts’ planned in 1855 The first performance of the complete trilogy was in Weimar in 1861, with Hebbel’s wife Christine playing the parts of . recitation. The Reception of the Nibelungenlied The latest of the complete manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied (MS d) was written between 1504 and 1516 by Hans Ried, the meticulous scribe of the ‘Ambraser. innocent maiden of the early adventures to a ‘she-devil’. The supernatural elements found in the first half of the lay are for the most part lacking in the second half, with the exception of the water-sprites,. possess evidence of the popularity both of the lay, and of other heroic epics, before the date of the earliest manuscripts, in Wolfram’s Parzival, where, in the eighth book, the cowardly Sir