The Edda, Volume 2 | Page 8

Sigurd's love to Brynhild, and the magic drink, and altogether lowers
Brynhild, but elevates Gudrun (under her mother's name); her slow but
terrible vengeance, and absolute forgetfulness of the ties of blood in
pursuit of it, are equal to anything in the original version. The later
heroic poems of the Edda make a less successful attempt to create
sympathy for Gudrun; some, such as the so-called First Gudrun Lay,
which is entirely romantic in character, try to make her pathetic by the
abundance of tears she sheds; others, to make her heroic, though the
result is only a spurious savagery.
The remaining poems of the cycle, all late in style and tone, deal with
the fates of Gudrun and her brothers, and owe their existence to a
narrator's unwillingness to let a favourite story end. The curse makes
continuation easy, since the Giukings inherit it with the hoard. Gudrun

was married at the wish of her kinsmen to Atli the Hun, said to be
Brynhild's brother. He invited Gunnar and Högni to his court and killed
them for the sake of the treasure, in vengeance for which Gudrun killed
her own two sons and Atli; this latter incident being possibly an
imitation of Signy. If we may believe that Gudrun, like Chriemhild in
the Nibelungen Lied, married Atli in order to gain vengeance for Sigurd,
we might suppose that there was confusion here: that she herself incited
the murder of her brothers, and killed Atli when he had served his
purpose. This would strengthen the part of Gudrun, who as the tale
stands is rather a futile character. But in all probability the episode is
due to a confusion of Signy's story with that of the German Chriemhild
and Etzel.
One point has still to be considered: the place of the Nibelungs in the
story. In the Edda, the Hniflungs are always the Giukings, Gunnar and
Högni, and Snorri gives it as the name of an heroic family. The title of
the first aventiure of the Nibelungen Lied also apparently uses the word
of the Burgundians. Yet the treasure is always the Nibelungs' hoard,
which clearly means that they were the original owners; and when
Hagen von Tronje tells the story later in the poem, he speaks of the
Nibelungs correctly as the dwarfs from whom Siegfried won it. On this
point, therefore, the German preserves the older tradition: the Norse
Andvari, the river-dwarf, is the German Alberich the Nibelung. In the
Nibelungen Lied the winning of the treasure forms no part of the action:
it is merely narrated by Hagen. This accounts for the shortening of the
episode and the omission of the intermediate steps: the robbing of the
dwarf, the curse, and the dragon-slaying.
* * * * *
_Ermanric.--_The two poems of _Gudrun's Lament_ and Hamthismal,
in the Edda attached to the Volsung cycle, belong correctly to that of
the Gothic hero Ermanric. According to these poems, Gudrun, Giuki's
daughter, married a third time, and had three sons, Sörli, Hamthi and
Erp. She married Svanhild, her own and Sigurd's daughter, to
Jörmunrek, king of the Goths; but Svanhild was slandered, and her
husband had her trodden to death by horses' hoofs. The description of

Svanhild is a good example of the style of the romantic poems:
"The bondmaids sat round Svanhild, dearest of my children; Svanhild
was like a glorious sunbeam in my hall. I dowered her with gold and
goodly fabrics when I married her into Gothland. That was the hardest
of my griefs, when they trod Svanhild's fair hair into the dust beneath
the horses' hoofs."
Gudrun sent her three sons to avenge their sister; two of them slew Erp
by the way, and were killed themselves in their attack on Jörmunrek for
want of his help. So died, as Snorri says, all who were of Giuking
descent; and only Aslaug, daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild, survived.
Heimskringla, a thirteenth century history of the royal races of
Scandinavia, traces the descent of the Norse kings from her.
This Ermanric story, which belongs to legendary history rather than
myth, is in reality quite independent of the Volsung or Nibelung cycle.
The connection is loose and inartistic, the legend being probably linked
to Gudrun's name because she had become a favourite character and
Icelandic narrators were unwilling to let her die. The historic Ermanric
was conquered by the Huns in 374; the sixth century historian
Jornandes is the earliest authority for the tradition that he was murdered
by Sarus and Ammius in revenge for their sister's death by wild horses.
Saxo also tells the story, with greater similarity of names. It seems
hardly necessary to assume, with many scholars, the existence of two
heroes of the name Ermanric, an historic and a mythical one. A simpler
explanation is that