Vǫlsunga Saga. The Saga Of The Volsungs

V olsunga Saga NE LS ON IC E L A N D IC GENERAL TEXTS EDITORS Sigurdur N ordal and G. Turville-Petre VOLSUNGA SAGA * t h e saga of the volsungs T he Saga of the Volsungs Edited and Translated with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by R. G. Finch S e n io r Lecturer in German T he Q ueen’s University, B elfa st NELSON T H O M A S N E LSO N A N D SONS L T D 36 Park Street London W i Parkside W orks Edinburgh g 10 Warehouse R oad A papa Lagos P .O . Box 25012 Nairobi T h om as N elso n ( A u s t r a l ia ) L t d ii 7 Latrobe Street M elbourne C i T hom as N elso n a n d S ons (A f r ic a ) (Pty) L t d P .O . Box 9881 Johannesburg T hom as N elso n a n d S ons ( C a n a d a ) L t d 81 C urlew Drive Don M ills O ntario T hom as N elso n a n d S ons Copewood and Davis Streets Cam den 3, N.J. F irst Published 1965 © R . G . Finch 1965 Printed in Great Britain by Thom as Nelson (Printers) L td, London and Edinburgh CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Volsungs and Wagner 2 Fornaldarsggur and Vçlsungasaga 3 Vçlsunga saga and its analogues 4 The basic themes, the major variations and their significance 5 History, myth and fairytale 6 T h e immediate literary sources of V S and the date and place of its compilation 7 The manuscripts Editions of Vçlsunga saga vii viii ix xiii xxxii xxxvi xxxviii xxxix Bibliography and Abbreviations xl Icelandic T ext Icelandic T ext verso i English Translation recto i Appendices A T o visit Odin B Aslaug and Heimir verso and recto C The general correspondence between Vçlsunga saga and its extant literary sources 8i 82 85 Glossary of Technical Term s 91 Index 95 AC KNOWLEDGEMEN TS I should like to express m y thanks to D r P . Salm on, D r D . S lay and Professor W . W alker Cham bers for their assistance w ith some biblio­ graphical and other details, and to Professor H . E. H inderks for his help and constant encouragem ent. I ow e a particular debt o f gratitude to Pro­ fessor G . T u rville-P etre for all his helpful advice, and to Professor P. G . F oote whose valuable suggestions have done m uch to im prove this book. Rem aining deficiencies must, o f course, be set solely to m y ow n account. F inally I wish to thank m y w ife fo r all her help, direct and indirect, at every stage o f the work. R .G .F . VI INTRODUCTION i The Volsungs and Wagner Although a knowledge of Iceland’s mediaeval saga literature is now becoming more widespread, it is still far from having come into its own, and Njall, Egill and Hrafnkell scarcely enjoy the fame of Beowulf, Roland or the Cid. Whereas the latter belong, if only as names, to the common literary stock of the average educated reader, the former, as yet, do not. T h e main characters of Vçlsunga saga, however, are a notable exception to the rule, and the saga-writer’s statement in ch. 23, that his hero’s name ‘ is current in all the languages spoken north of the Greek Ocean and so it will be for as long as the world endures ’, contains a germ of truth. There can be but few who have not heard of Sigurd (or Siegfried), his deeds of bravery, his love for Brynhild (or Brünnhilde) and his murder at the hands of those he trusted best, for Richard Wagner drew largely on the lays of the Icelandic Poetic Edda for the basic material of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and on Vçlsunga saga which, although containing additional material and differing in certain matters of detail, is essentially a prose retelling of the rele