Tolkien's Ring by David Day

Author:David Day [Day, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-909108-49-3
Publisher: Pavilion Books
Published: 2012-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Reliable historical accounts tell us that Attila died of a throat haemorrhage after drinking and feasting on the first night of his marriage to a German princess called Hildico. Immediately there sprang up a belief that Hildico had killed Attila in revenge for the Burgundian massacre.

The names of the two great queens of the Nibelungenlied arc in fact etymologically connected with this historical German princess. Hildico means ‘Little Warrior Maid’; which is fairly close to both Kriemhild, ‘Helmed Warrior Maid’, and Brunhild, ‘Armoured Warrior Maid’.

The characters of Brunhild and Kriemhild - and much of the plot for the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga - are also partly shaped by another historical character: the notorious Visigoth Queen Brunhilda. Born in about ad 540, Brunhilda was married to King Sigebert of the Eastern Franks. King Sigebert’s brother Chilperic was the King of the Western Franks and married Queen Brunhilda’s sister. In the ensuing war between brothers, King Sigebert was murdered through intrigue in 575, and Brunhilda was made a captive. Her life was saved and her freedom won, however, by her captor’s son, who took her as his wife. She soon became a powerful force among the Franks, and over the thirty years of her influence she brought about the murders of no less than ten royal noblemen. Finally, in 613, a group of Frank noblemen decided to put an end to her intrigues. They tortured Brunhilda for three days, had her torn apart by wild horses, and then burned her on a pyre - a spectacular and barbaric end to a remarkable historical character.

In The Lord of the Rings, the basic central plot of the Nibelungenlied can be found in an understated sub-plot involving the four-way romance of Aragorn-Arwen-Éowyn-Faramir. The shield maiden Princess Éowyn of Rohan falls in love with Aragorn in the same hopeless way as, it is implied, the Amazon warrior Queen Brunhild of Iceland falls for Siegfried. Siegfried is betrothed to the beautiful Kriemhild, in the same way that Aragorn is betrothed to beautiful Arwen of Rivendell. Tolkien’s resolution of the love triangle in The Lord of the Rings is far happier and more gentlemanly, with none of the low trickery or bloody retribution of the Nibelungenlied.

The Nibelungenlied displays many perspectives that sound strange to a modern reader. The Nibelungenlied epic is not primarily a vehicle for the hero Siegfried, as, say, the Iliad is for Achilles. It also appears that our sympathies with the valiant Siegfried in the first half are supposed to shift in the second half to the heroic deeds of his murderers, Hagen and Gunther. The epic is not even a history of a single dynasty or race. The Nibelungs are first one people, then another, then a third, depending on who controls the Nibelung treasure, which has become separated from the ring. As Richard Wagner concluded in his studies of the epic: ‘the Hoard of the Nibelungen, as the epitome of earthly power, and he who owns it, who governs by it, either is or becomes a Nibelung.

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