The Saga of the Volsungs

by Jackson Crawford

  The debt that both sagas owe to older poetry is a reminder that the saga authors, not unlike scholars and readers in the twenty-first century, {xvi} were already fairly late in the chain of transmission—they were receiving, and then working within, what was already a centuries-old tradition concerning the heroes they wrote about. And they were removed not just in time but also in place from the origin of these stories. While the two sagas in this volume were written down in Iceland and have a prominent place in the legacy of Icelandic literature, the stories considerably predate the settlement of that country, and no part of their action takes place in Iceland.

  Iceland was settled by Norwegians and Norwegian colonists from the British Isles beginning during the Viking Age in the AD 870s, and the first generation of settlers brought with them a wealth of tales about gods and heroes from their homes in Scandinavia. Ragnar Loðbrók and his sons were famous throughout the Viking world, and the heroes of the Volsung clan were famous throughout Scandinavia and beyond, in all the other countries where Germanic languages were spoken in the Middle Ages, including England and Germany.

  The distant origins of many of the scenes and characters of the Saga of the Volsungs are traceable to historical events and people in the centuries of the decline and end of the Roman Empire (ca. AD 300–500), when members of different Germanic tribes at times joined Roman forces as the Empire’s defenders and at times destroyed, ransacked, and plundered its borders and cities. In the same period, the Huns, a nomadic people of the Asian steppes, swept into Europe from the east and waged war on the Roman Empire. Other Germanic war bands allied themselves with the invading Hunnish forces, and in fact it is the Gothic nickname Attila (literally "little daddy"; Atli in Old Norse) for the great Hunnish leader that has survived to become famous today, rather than his unknown native Hunnish name. Attila, who died in AD 451 or 453, is incorporated into the legends of the Volsung family not as the leader of bands of nomadic Hunnish warriors but as the king of a stable realm and, in the main Norse tradition at least, as the brother of Brynhild.

  Similarly, Gjúki and his son Gunnar appear to reflect a historical Gibica and Gundaharius, who are named as kings of the Burgundians in what is now eastern France and western Switzerland; Gundaharius was killed in a battle with Huns in AD 437. The Old Norse name Jormunrekk would be *Airmanareiks (i.e., *Ermanarîks) in Gothic, and in fact history mentions an Ermanaricus who was king of the East Goths {xvii} living near the Black Sea who died in AD 375. Writing in the AD 500s, the Gothic historian Jordanes says that two brothers, Sarus and Ammius (= Old Norse Sorli and Hamðir), killed Ermanaricus to avenge the murder of their sister Sunilda (= Old Norse Svanhild), a story not at all dissimilar to the last chapters of the Saga of the Volsungs. The Old English form of the name is Eormanric, and a king of this name is briefly alluded to in the Old English poem Deor, showing that some version of this story must also have been told in early medieval England.

  Some have seen the distant origin of Brynhild and Sigurð in the early medieval Frankish queen named Brunhilda and her first husband, King Sigebert I of Austrasia (an early Germanic kingdom in northeastern France and west-central Germany). Sigebert was murdered around AD 575 in the course of a long war against his half brother, but he was survived for many decades by Brunhilda, who led a long life in and out of royal power, marked by numerous violent acts of vengeance, and was finally killed by being torn apart by wild horses, according to the Liber historiae Francorum (Book of the History of the Franks, AD 700s). While Brunhilda’s name is cognate with Old Norse Brynhild, and her life was very dramatic, there are not many convincing parallels between her story and Brynhild’s, nor between Sigebert’s and Sigurð’s. The name Sigebert shares a first element (Sig(e)-, "victory") with Sigurð, but the second elements are unrelated; Old Norse Sigurð (earlier Sigvarð) means "victory-guardian."

  Casting even deeper into history, an old hypothesis connects Sigurð with the Germanic leader who defeated three Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburger Wald in AD 9. This warrior’s name is remembered in Roman sources as Arminius, which may be a Latinization of the Proto-Germanic word *harjamannaz, which would simply mean "soldier" and might have been a title rather than the man’s name. Since many of Arminius’ family members are recorded with names that begin with Sig-, it has been posited that his true name was something similar to Sigurð, and that the great historical warrior’s triumph over an overwhelming military force became the legendary hero’s triumph over a dragon. The presence of an area called Knetterheide (resembling the place called Gnitaheið where Sigurð kills Fáfnir) in the vicinity of the battle site helped fuel this notion, which became popular in the nineteenth century. But this is a great deal of speculation to base on the {xviii} imperfectly recorded names of Arminius’ relatives in Roman histories, and few modern scholars accept the Arminius connection.

  Ragnar may be distantly rooted in the memory of a real Viking of that name who raided deep into present-day France in AD 845, although both the Annales Xantenses (Chronicles of Xanten) and the Miracula Sancti Germani (Miracles of St. Germanus), which are nearly contemporary accounts, say that this Viking leader died of sickness later the same year. If the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson (AD 1179–1241) is to be believed, Bragi Boddason, regarded by legend as the founder of skaldic poetry, was a contemporary of Ragnar and composed his famous poem Ragnarsdrápa for the man himself. However, the Ragnar of the saga has clearly become a figure of legend and a near-contemporary of the much more ancient Volsungs, and it is doubtful that these legends preserve any real memory of his accomplishments. It is also possible that the name or nickname Loðbrók originally belonged to a different person entirely than the historical Ragnar, as the two names are not mentioned together as one man, Ragnar Loðbrók, earlier than in the work of Icelandic historian Ari Thorgilsson (AD 1067–1148).

  Historical sources mention some individuals who may correspond with Ragnar’s sons, but their names and relations are not easily reconciled with what the saga tells of them. In the Latin Gesta Normannorum Ducum (History of the Dukes of Normandy, ca. AD 1070),the Norman historian Guillaume de Jumièges mentions a Bjorn Ironside who was the son of a King Loðbrók, and at least two medieval French chronicles mention a Viking raider named Berno (=Old Norse Bjorn, Proto-Norse *Bernuz) in the 850s AD who might be the same man. Numerous sources from inside and outside Scandinavia name sons such as Ubbi and "Anstignus" (= Old Norse Hástein?), names that do not occur in the saga at all.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of a "Great Heathen Army" that raided in eastern England in AD 865 and killed a Northumbrian king named Ællain AD 867; among the leaders of this army, the Old English historian Æthelweard mentions an I(g)uuar, whose name corresponds to an early Danish form of Ívar. Later English sources elaborate on this story considerably but probably not with any historical basis. Irish annals also mention an Imhar (pronounced like Ívar) as king over the Norsemen in Ireland and Britain, who died in AD 873; he is probably the same man. Many scholars have seen this I(g)uuar/Imhar as the basis {xix} of the Ívar the Boneless of the saga, but there is no historical reason to think he was the son of Ragnar (the name of Imhar’s father is given in Irish annals as Gofraid), nor to assume that the saga records more than a greatly embellished account of his record as a war leader in the British Isles.

  Looking forward into history from the end of the Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók, in chapter 18 Ragnar’s son Sigurð Snake-Eye is credited as the grandfather of Harald Fairhair, the first king of the united kingdom of Norway and founder of the medieval Norwegian royal dynasty, who died ca. AD 930. By connecting the Norwegian royal family with this preeminent family of Norse heroes, the Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók was part of a tradition that glorified living rulers and helped justify their claims to power in a time when history and legend were even more easily conflated than they are today.

  Whatever their possible historical origins, these heroes were completely the province of legend by the time the Saga of the Volsungs was compo
sed in Iceland in the 1200s. But it was not only in Iceland that forms of their stories were being told.

  The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, in book 8 of his Latin Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes) from around AD 1200, relates a nearly identical story to that at the end of the Saga of the Volsungs about Jarmericus (= Old Norse Jormunrekk), and how he killed his bride Swanilde (= Old Norse Svanhild) at the instigation of his evil counselor Bicco (= Old Norse Bikki), who told him that Swanilde had slept with his son. Swanilde is avenged by unnamed kinsmen, and, just as in the Saga of the Volsungs, Jarmericus is killed by having his arms and legs chopped off before the god Óðin tells his men how to kill his attackers. Saxo mentions a Guthrune (= Old Norse Guðrún) as well, but only as a witch who assists Swanilde’s avengers.

  In book 9 of Gesta Danorum, Saxo also tells his own version of the story of Regnerus (= Old Norse Ragnar) and his sons, which in some ways is strikingly similar to the Norse saga printed in this volume, even down to Ragnar’s last words as he dies in the snake-pit. However, other details are remarkably different. For instance, according to Saxo, Sigurð Snake-Eye received his namesake feature because the god Óðin sprinkled a magic dust into his eyes after he was wounded in battle. Saxo also makes Thóra the mother of Sigurð and Ivar, and gives Ragnar more wives, including {xx} a warrior woman named Lagertha (= Old Norse Hlaðgerð), who is not mentioned in the Old Norse saga at all. No equivalent of Áslaug, who is Ragnar’s second wife in the saga and his connection to the Volsung legend, is mentioned by Saxo, though Saxo’s book 5 mentions a certain Craca (who is incidentally married to an unrelated Regnerus) who gives magical aid to her stepson Ericus. It is difficult to think that this legend is not connected in some way to the story that became Áslaug’s, as she is named Kráka when Ragnar meets her in the saga, and she later shows great concern for avenging her stepson Eirek.

  South of Scandinavia, the epic poem called the Nibelungenlied was written, probably in Austria, in Middle High German around AD 1200. The Nibelungenlied is perhaps the best-known version of the Volsung legend today, and it shares many details in common with the parts of the Saga of the Volsungs that it overlaps with (roughly, chapters 26–38). The Nibelungenlied centers on the dragon-slaying hero Sivrit, whose name (often rendered as Siegfried) shares a first but not a second element related to the name Sigurð. He is renowned for slaying a dragon and for seizing a great treasure, but these are separate events in his life in the Nibelungenlied, and they are told of only at second-hand. Sivrit wishes to marry the sister of Gunther (= Old Norse Gunnar), who is named Kriemhilt (the name is related to Old Norse Grimhild, but the character is equivalent to Guðrún). In order to do so, he helps Gunther win the hand of Prünhilt (= Old Norse Brynhild), who will only marry a man who can defeat her in three tests of strength and skill. Sivrit uses his magical cloak of invisibility to help Gunther win. Later, Sivrit must also invisibly subdue the supernaturally strong Prünhilt for Gunther on their wedding night, and in the process he takes a distinctive ring and a belt from her. Ten years afterwards, Kriemhilt shows these stolen items to Prünhilt during a dispute about their relative ranks and gloats that Prünhilt has been Sivrit’s lover. To defend Gunther’s honor, his advisor Hagen (= Old Norse Hogni) murders Sivrit during a hunting trip. Kriemhilt later marries Etzel (= Old Norse Atli) and invites Gunther and Hagen to a feast, where she has Gunther and then Hagen killed in a failed effort to learn where Hagen has hidden Sivrit’s treasure in the Rhine. Kriemhilt herself is then killed by the hero Hildebrant.

  Even from this brief summary of the story’s events, the reader can see important differences from the Saga of the Volsungs, in spite of {xxi} their broadly similar plots. The German Kriemhilt invites her brother Gunther into a trap in order to avenge her murdered husband on him, whereas it is her brothers that the Norse Guðrún avenges on her second husband after he treacherously invites them into an ambush. The Nibelungenlied also portrays many of the principal characters very differently, giving us, for instance, the scheming, treacherous Hagen, a half-elven advisor to Gunther, who has little in common with Gunnar’s level-headed, honorable brother Hogni in the Norse tradition. There are also striking differences in the details of the narrative; Sivrit does not drink the dragon’s blood but bathes in it instead, and doing so makes him impervious to weapons everywhere on his body except for a single spot where a leaf fell on him before his bath.

  Moreover, the Nibelungenlied was composed in a vastly different cultural milieu, that of the courtly society of high medieval European knights. The sagas composed in Iceland at this time did not entirely escape influence from the same culture (consider the almost knightly description of Sigurð and his second encounter with Brynhild in chapters 22–24 of the Saga of the Volsungs), but Iceland was never a land of feudal barons and chivalrous knights, and these make a fanciful and foreign impression when they appear in the sagas. Beyond its similarities and differences with the Saga of the Volsungs, the Nibelungenlied is fascinating in its own right as an example of an early medieval, "barbarian" heroic epic adapted into this chivalric idiom, just as a closely related story was adapted into the saga in Iceland.

  Much earlier, the Old English poem Beowulf, probably composed at some time between AD 800 and 1000, mentions two Volsung heroes by name, Sigemund Waelsing (= Old Norse Sigmund, the Volsung) and his nephew Fitela (corresponding to the last part of the compound Norse name Sin-fjotli). In fact, the story told about Sigemund in Beowulf portrays him, rather than his unmentioned son, as the dragon-slayer; whether this is a more "original" version of the story or simply another variant is unknown. The digression about Sigemund is in Beowulf, verses 1748–1801 (see the translation by Ringler under Further Reading, below).

  Other versions of the stories told in these two sagas were preserved in Old Norse as well. Some early skaldic poems (including Bragi Boddason’s Ragnarsdrápa) make important allusions to events in the Volsung mythos, and Snorri Sturluson’s Edda (usually called the Prose {xxii} Edda to distinguish it from the Poetic Edda) tells a condensed version of the Sigurð legend that is similar to the Saga of the Volsungs. The Norwegian Thiðreks saga af Bern (Saga of Thiðrek of Bern) is a thirteenth-century compendium of numerous heroes and their legends, and it contains a highly divergent version of the story of Sigurð that is more closely related to the German tradition of the Nibelungenlied than it is to the later Saga of the Volsungs, which it nevertheless influenced. A short Icelandic saga (tháttr) called Ragnarssona tháttr (Story of Ragnar’s Sons) survives that is roughly contemporary with the Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók and preserves a related story of his late life and some of the accomplishments of his sons, and a skaldic poem composed in the 1100s in the Hebrides called Krákumál is put in the mouth of Ragnar as he dies in the snake-pit. Traditional oral ballads about the Volsung heroes and Ragnar Loðbrók survived late enough in Scandinavia to be recorded in the sixteenth through twentieth centuries; several of the most notable come from the Faroe Islands (where examples include Sjúrðar kvæði, "Sigurð’s Song"; Brynhildar táttur, "Brynhild’s Story"; and Ragnars kvæði, "Ragnar’s Poem"), Norway (including numerous variants of the ballad of Sigurd Svein, "Boy Sigurð"), and Denmark (including ballads about Kragelil, a character related to Áslaug/Kráka).

  The heroes of the Saga of the Volsungs were remembered in more than just narrative tales and poems. Many artifacts survive that illustrate part of the legend, including runestones such as Sö 101 from Ramsund, Sweden, known as the Ramsund Carving, carved probably between AD 1000 and 1050. The Ramsund Carving depicts several incidents from Sigurð’s slaying of the dragon Fáfnir, including small details such as the burning of his finger on the roasting dragon’s heart. Such a close correspondence in small details with the story related in the Saga of the Volsungs shows that parts of the Sigurð narrative had already achieved something very like the form they have in the surviving saga when this stone was carved two hundred years earlier. Various other Viking Age runestones and picture stones from Sweden depict parts of the
Volsung legend; Gunnar’s death in the snake-pit was a particularly popular motif. In Norway, the doors of the Hylestad Stave Church (built ca. AD 1200) are carved with scenes from the life of Sigurð and his slaying of Fáfnir, as well as Gunnar’s death in the snake-pit. And in England, some have interpreted the carvings on the very early Franks Casket (probably AD 700s) {xxiii} as containing scenes from the Volsung story, including the mourning of Guðrún and Grani over the grave of Sigurð.

  Indirectly, the same stories and their heroes continue to be famous today. The Saga of the Volsungs strongly influenced Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle and J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, and through them numerous other works. Motifs and scenes borrowed from the Saga of the Volsungs appear throughout Tolkien’s work, such as in the broken sword reforged for Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and the slaying of the dragon by Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion. Tolkien also dealt directly with the Norse source material in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, his creative attempt to reconstruct an incomplete poem of the Poetic Edda that contributed much to the surviving Saga of the Volsungs. Meanwhile, it is not too much to say that Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a reimagining of the Saga of the Volsungs, although with numerous elements adapted from the German tradition of the Nibelungenlied, together with many elements that are Wagner’s own imagination (such as the power to rule the world that is granted by the ring, which does not resemble the simple cursed ring of the saga). Ragnar Loðbrók has also gained new fame in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is the chief protagonist in a blockbuster film (The Vikings [1958], starring Kirk Douglas) and in the enormously popular television series Vikings that began airing in 2013. His story has also inspired novels, including science fiction writer Harry Harrison’s The Hammer and the Cross (1993), which incorporates a great deal of material from the Saga of Ragnar Loðbrók.