King Arthur's Ring: Saxons and Siegfried

Xmas Eve Eve 1997: Been reading a lot of books in this area lately, and feel that this subject does not really belong on a King Arthur page: I am very fond of both cockaleekie soup and sauerkraut, but they don't go together, so this section is now a new web page, called The Kraut Connection (sorry!). This explores the subject of the ENEMY, and of the Matter of Germany in general. It is basically the story of the Volsungs (Nibelungs, whatever you want to call them), which is the common heritage of all the nationalities that can call themselves Germanic. This involved and complicated matter ranks right up with the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid as an epic, although no poet of the rank of Homer ever wrote it down. But there are many sources among the literature of the Goths, the Norse, and the Anglo-Saxons. I will apologize in advance if this page is rather daunting -- it is long-winded, even for me. --Grobius (Jan 1998)

WALKNOT ("Knot of the Slain") -- an ancient symbol of Odin as the God of Death in Battle
[this is either scary or will remind you of Mitsubishi or similar logos]

Germans, Huns, Northmen, and Other Barbarians -- Their Heroic Side

This grim but picturesque ruin of a Roman fort in northern Britain ("Mediobognum" or Hardknott Castle, in the Lake District, a remote frontier outpost at the best of times) is a reminder of how far the Roman Empire fell in the so-called Dark Ages. On the Continent, however, there was a larger infrastructure for the barbarian conquerors to take over and adapt to, changing their own life-style in the process as they adopted Christianity along with citified (or at least 'townified') ways and the abandonment of the nomadic steppe culture.

The Core Legend: Odin and the Walsings et al.

All the Germanic people (Germans, Goths, Austrians, Norsemen, Saxons, Franks, Burgundians, Danes, Swedes, etc. etc.) share this basic story, which is about fickle gods, fate, fear, folly, and greed. It is all set in motion by the devious long-term plans of Odin, who in effect is setting up a puppet show for his own reasons, although the puppets are not totally within his control. Odin was one of the most horrible gods ever conceived by humankind, but part of that horror incorporates a very human god with great intelligence, feelings, and a tragic fate of his own (which, as a god, he of course knew about already) -- you could in some ways compare him to Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll, Faust, Prometheus, and others of that sort. It was always Odin's nature to betray those he most loved, while filling the role of the wise old 'Allfather'. But beware the tall old man in the tattered blue cloak, who has one eye and wears a floppy hat to cover it, when you encounter him in a country inn!

The saga stems from an event that occurred while Odin was walking as a man, with his brother Hoenir (of whom we know little) and his kinsman Loki the mischief-maker. Loki throws a stone and slays Otter, King Hraithamar's son (who was in shape-changed form fishing for salmon in the Rhine -- which by the way has no salmon any more). Obliged because he is in human form, Odin has to pay weregild (compensation, a major thing among Germanic people that reduced hot tempers and needless warfare and led to our civil-tort, or law-suit, system of justice), so he has Loki steal the golden treasure of the Rhine from the elemental dwarf Andwari who owned it -- OK to take from those with no recourse to the law courts. This treasure is cursed, so when it is passed over into the hands of men a train of events was started that reverberated through many generations and ultimately shaped the entire culture of the German races, even when, as in the Niebelungenlied version from Austria, the Christians purged all the pagan references (removing a lot of the sense from the epic, but adding a lot more poetically in the Medieval Romance vein, compared with the dry Norse/Icelandic versions). The Volsungs or Walsings were the descendants of Wals, who was Odin's grandson by a woman called Swanhild. They wed eventually into the line of Hraithamar and produced Sigisfrith/Sigfried/Sigurd, the greatest of all German heros. (This was all part of Odin's original plan, of course). After the end of this great idiot and the death of practically everyone involved in his adventures, the rule of the Walsings passed to Hengist of the King Arthur cycle, who brought those Saxons into Britain under the invitation of Vortigern the High King of the Britons as foederates to protect the province from the Picts and other pirates -- and we know where that ended up.

Hengist and the Saxons preferred to worship the simple war god Thor rather than Odin, but I don't want to get into theology -- the fact that half of the German tribes were Christian (most of them of the heretical Arian sect) adds complications I don't want to get into, and don't care about. Their base religion, carried on mainly by the women and the tribal shamans, went back to far more primitive gods than Odin. Although he was behind all the nasty situations he got his recruits for Valhalla into, there were other, more elemental, powers acting behind the scenes. Even Odin didn't have power over the curse of Andwari the Dwarf (an earth spirit) on the Rhinegold, which Odin delivered to his heros for his own devious reasons, knowing they would be destroyed by it.

When most of these events occurred is presumably during the Dark Ages, judging by the inclusion of real historic personages such as Attila and Gundahari and Hengist. Odin and the Aesir are from an earlier time of myth going back to the old time origins on the steppes and before that the far north. The Romans had established the policy of granting settlements (along the Rhine, etc.) to various German tribes to protect the Empire's borders against the Huns and others. This was somewhat similar to what the Rhodesians and South Africans got away with for a while with their mercenaries. This was called the Foederates arrangement, and worked for a while as often as it failed at times (as with the slaughter of the Burgundians by Attila for the sake of the Rhinegold, or with the treachery of Hengist against Vortigern), until in the long run the Roman Empire fell to its own allies.

A note on names: Since the story is common to several nationalities, one can get very confused about the names of the characters and tribes (Sigigairar=Siggeir, Sigismund=Sigmund, Sigifrith=Siegfried=Sigurd, Wals=Volsung, Sigilind=Signy, Wodin=Odin=Wotans, etc. but the unpronouncable Sinfjlotli for some reason remains the same). I am not going to discriminate, but use whatever comes into my head at the time. Anyone familiar with this stuff shouldn't get confused too much.

[This section has arbitrarily been set up in the form of a dinner menu.]

Aperitifs

Anna Russell Sings? (Music?) The funniest thing I ever heard about Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. You will know everything you want to know about the Ring of the Nibelungs after listening to this. (However, Wagner didn't do justice to this great story, unless you are into heavy, tedious opera, with a few, I must admit, magnificent musical moments. You really should just read the books.) Don't know where you can find this now, but if you do, you're into the realm of very funny music in the Spike Jones/Victor Borge manner.

Michael Crichton: Eaters of the Dead. Yes, the Jurassic Park person. Amazingly good -- the adventures of Ibn Fadlan, from Bagdad, north of the Baltic. Trolls (Neanderthals) and other great stuff. It is a recasting of the Beowulf legend. This book takes place in the year 922, but is really a timeless story. It's one of his few books that was never made into a movie, but deserves more than any to be one -- but without any major Hollywood stars. (Note: It was finally done as The 13th Warrior in 1999, and was actually quite good.)

Salad

Some source books:

The real ones: Four main sources -- Elder Edda (Poetic), The Younger Edda (Prose), Volsunga Saga [all Icelandic, because that's where most of it survived intact after early Christian suppression on the Continent], and The Nibelungenlied. They are all available in translation -- Penguin editions being your best bet -- but unless you are an antiquarian, you're better off with the modern interpretations. The genealogies (similar to the Bible's "begats"), which were important then, are extremely tedious, and the cross-references from the Bardic tradition are very confusing (every new hero is compared to some other one, and the BOASTING, which was characteristic of these people, is toned down somewhat in later retellings as that tends to be repugnant to our sensibilities).

William Morris translation of the Volsunga Saga: The Icelandic version. Terse and crisp -- the whole story in less than 150 pages. You can't do better than this, unless you want embellishment.

Wagner's Explication of the Ring Cycle: Well, I haven't read it, and probably never will, but the scholars praise it. If you want to understand where he was coming from, you should read it. (And no, he wasn't a proto-Nazi, he was actually a very civilized, if arrogant, person. He would never have stomached a scumbag like Hitler as a devotee of the Valhalla cult, and I think Hitler missed the point of that too, except maybe in his last days in the bunker when he might finally have realized that Odin has always been the great betrayer. There are parallels to Hitler in the literature, and they all got their just deserts.)

Beowulf: There is a sideline in this Anglo-Saxon epic where the bard sings about Sigmund, who performed a deed or two similar to Beowulf's (he tore out the tongue of a werewolf just as Beowulf tore off the arm of a troll). This is the EARLIEST reference in surviving literature to the great legend. Click here for an extract.

Fish Course

Poul Anderson: Hrolf Kraki's Saga. (With an introduction by the late lamented Lin Carter, who did more for the readers of this sort of thing as an editor and discoverer than he ever did as a novelist in his own right -- God bless! We miss you.) Carter persuaded Anderson, a well-known science-fiction writer but also a fantasist, to write this book during the heydey of that great Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series in the early 1970s. Hrolf Kraki, who lived about a hundred years later than the Walsings, was the epic hero king of Denmark, but very little survives of his story except references in other sagas -- that is where the habit of bards of comparing the current subject to another famous one comes in very handy. For example, Hrolf's great-uncle King Hreor is the Hrothgar of Beowulf; Bjovulf becomes a trusted advisor, etc. -- small world. He wrote this novel at Carter's request, and very well researched it as far as possible, and it's a damn good one that captures the spirit of the northlands. There is a lot that is derivative, as would be expected given the sources, but this book makes for a tasty first course on the subject. Unfortunately, I hadn't read it since 1973 so I couldn't really tell you anything about it when starting this web page! (This has now been remedied, and it's as good as I remember -- it has all of Anderson's qualities as a fantasist, set in a nice framework around King Æthelstan's fireside several hundred years later to cover up the author's anachronisms in re-creating the original saga and to allow for some narrative explication to explain cultural and historical events that would have been taken for granted earlier.)

Here is a sample of the sort of life a god-plagued person could expect:

...But it happened that Starkadh was at the Saxon burg.

About him goes a long saga. He was of Jötun descent, they say, and born with six hands. Thor ripped off four of them, yet always hated him for his kindred. When Odin, who fostered him, said he should have three men's lifespans, Thor said he must do a nithing [gratuitously nasty] deed in each of them. Odin gave him the best of weapons; Thor ordered that never would he own any land. Odin said he would always have money; Thor said he would never have enough. Odin gave him victory in every fray, Thor that he should always be wounded. Odin made him the foremost of skalds [poets]; Thor made him forget his staves once he had spoken them. Huge, harsh, and unhappy, Starkadh walks like a storm through that hundred-year, and ever his coming means trouble.

At the wedding feast of Ingjald and Freyvar he stood forth... ['nuff said! As it was told 1500 years later, "There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm."]

Having defeated the villainous King of Sweden, who had killed his father treacherously, Hrolf became an atheist in a sense, cutting out the sacrifices of thralls to Odin, etc., and worse, providing peace and prosperity to his kingdom -- to the extent that it is still regarded as a Golden Age. Odin couldn't let that last, because peace would lead to a lack of recruits for Valhalla (only warriors who die in battle can qualify), so Hrolf comes to a heroic and pathetic end, outnumbered and defeated by the troll-hordes his half-sister of elven ancestry brings against him under the guise of a peaceful Yule visit.
This is a good book that pretty much includes examples of most of the style and content of everything else in the genre, including the taken-for-granted presence of magic, trolls, dwarfs, were-wolves/bears and all those other good things we associate with this mythology, plus the incredibly complicated treachery involved in inter-familial and dynastic relations.

Main Course

The Late-Roman Germans
Here are some books about the Continental Germans of this period that are especially interesting:

Pork Chop

Stephan Grundy: Attila's Treasure. The story of Hagan, Waltheri (Waldere), Attila and the Goths and Burgundians -- sidebar to the Sigifrith (Siegfried) saga -- along with Thioderik (Theodoric) who became Emperor of the Roman Empire (West) later in life. This is a ripping good yarn, and also has some very fine imaginative reconstruction of the pre-Christian religion of Wodans and the 'steppenwolves', with its out-of-body travelings and blood sacrifices and so on. There were a lot more cultural and tribal connections between these barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire than we normally pay attention to. This is our roots (well, in part for some of us) and deserves to be known better, even if their habits seem appalling in modern lights: Yes, they were headhunters and ritual cannibals, and treated their women like property, although they respected them a lot more than the Arabs do. This book is similar to The Hobbit in relation to Lord of the Rings in that it is an introduction to the main story, and kind of preps you for it (although this book was written later, probably because the author felt he had to explain Hagan better, a man who is by far the most interesting character psychologically in these legends).
The Burgundians bound their male-children's heads at birth to make them fit the conical war-helms they wore -- the original Coneheads. But just because that made them look peculiar, it didn't justify the slaughter of the most of the tribe by the Huns, who were after the Rhinegold treasure. That is not covered in this book, which is an interlude in Grundy's Rhinegold epic -- trying to explain that weird character Hagan (probably the most inexplicably strange person in this whole saga), the man who spoke like a frog, who looked like a corpse, who could not smile, or laugh until his heart was being cut out, who is as fascinating a character as Sigmund the Werewolf -- see the next entry. He is the most complex character of the lot, in a literary milieu that does not go into psychological delineations of character beyond the most basic motivations of greed, honor, revenge, lust, glory, and family ties. [Actually, what else is there?]
Bring on the Slaughtered Horse: The Meat of This Page (yes, those barbarians slew that magnificent horse Grani at Siegfried's funeral)
[Please read this once, but if you are returning to this page and want to skip this section, click here.]

Stephan Grundy: Rhinegold. An absolutely wonderful novelization of the legend, well-written, well-researched.

Part One: A preface explaining Wodan's expedition as a man with his kin, and the disastrous results of it, for which the whole history of several generations of men are bound up in a devious plot just to recruit heros to defend Wodan in Valhalla at the end of time.

Followed by the first section of the book, dedicated to Tolkien and Wagner, which is basically about the revenge of Sigismund, son of Wals, against his brother-in-law Siggeir of the Danes (Gauts), who had decided to slaughter the line of the Walsings because Sigismund had been the only man who could pull the sacred sword of Wodan out of the hearth-tree at the betrothal ceremony (shades of Sword in the Stone) that was supposed to establish peace between these traditional enemies. When Wals, against all the advice of his wizards and witches, decides to visit his son-in-law, he is of course ambushed and slain, having lost most of his protective war host in a storm. The captured Sigismund and his nine brothers are put in stocks in the woods, where they are eaten one a night by a werewolf (Siggeir's mother, a witch) until only Sigismund is left. In the meantime, Siglinde his sister, who had begged her husband to put them in the stocks to begin with rather than slaughtering them outright, has persuaded a good-hearted thane to keep them in food and drink out where they are bound in the woods. At her urging, the thane smears honey all over Sigismund's mouth, so that when next the witch-wolf comes for the last brother, she licks out his mouth. Trapped hand and foot, Sigismund grabs her tongue in his teeth and bites it out, in her death struggles she breaks the stocks, and he flees to a cave Siglinde had told him about, where is buried one of the ancient ones whom he ensorcles into his cause (and learns the secret of Runes). Siglinde plots her revenge and sends her sons by Siggeir to her brother one after another to see if they have enough of the true Walsing blood to avenge her father and brothers, and they fail and are slain by 'accident' (found drowned or gored by a boar or whatever). She concludes that the only way to conceive a true Walsing is through Sigismund her brother, and changes body-form with the local witch woman, visits Sigismund in his cave, and ends up with their son Sinfjotli.

He passes the test nine years later (the pace of this revenge is very slow if inexorable), and he and his father become werewolves under the tutelege of the Herulian barrow-wight Sigismund has brought under his control, whose head is kept in a carefully locked box in Sigismund's cave dwelling. (I told you this story was great stuff!) They devastate the unfortunate kingdom of Siggeir (but he had commited a horrible crime, so you can't sympathize with him that much -- although Sinfjloti rips out the throat of the good thane in a blood frenzy, these Walsings have a bad habit of acting impulsively without thinking of possible consequences!) until Siggeir is defeated in his own Great Hall, and sits to await his doom while it is burned down around him. Siglinde, being honorable to her marriage oath (she'd borne him four sons, all killed by her brother), and after commiting incest to avenge her father and brothers, does the honorable thing, having to fulfill her obligations both to family and husband, and walks into the burning hall to join Siggeir. [Odin scoops her up to become the Walkurja/Valkyrie Sigrdrifa, then later reincarnates her as Brunichild (Brunhilde), to become Sigifrith's Bane -- this was his idea of a perfect woman!]

Strange people, strange customs. The theme of the wife immolating herself in her husband's funeral pyre, which in these cases was a burning house, out of marriage vows, even when she was responsible for bringing about his death, is a common theme in Teutonic mythology -- it also happens in Hrolf Kraki's Saga and Burnt Njal (the greatest of the home-grown Icelandic eddas).

This is one of the most grim and interesting stories in the literature of ancient times. It is also a very sad story, like Tristan and Iseult. Steven King couldn't do better than this tale of revenge, sorcery, and werewolves.

This story is possibly an interpolation from an earlier legend, since it doesn't really fit into the later sections (and doesn't have much to do with the treasure theme), which are more civilized though just as appalling in a more human way. [I'm only revealing my tastes when I say this is the best part of the whole Saga.]

Sinfjloti, by the way, comes to a bad end, arrogant young Walsing bastard as he is. He goes off a-viking to win a wife and fights and kills a young man, who turns out to be Sigismund's Danish wife's brother who was wooing the same girl, the daughter of the King of the Frisians. She poisons Sinfjloti at his wedding feast (like all the women of this saga, who put their blood families above their husbands) and gets divorced for that (also among the Teutonic people, few woman are ever executed, no matter what they do, unless they are witches). So Sigismund then marries Herwodis, for dynastic reasons, a descendant of Hraithamar --who else? He impregnates her with Sigifrith before he is slain in ambush by his rival in the courting. She escapes the ambush and ends up captured by, and then married to, Alapercht, King of the Allamans, who with his family, are practically the only really NICE people in this whole story. Alapercht accepts Sigifrith as his adopted son and brings him up in a very peaceful and pleasant environment, which is Part 2 of this book.

Part Two: A placid interlude with some nasty events at the end
Sigifrith is being fostered (i.e., apprenticed) to his umpty-great uncle Ragin, who is the brother of the Loki-slain Otter and also of Fadhmir (Fafnir), who has stolen the Rhine treasure from the weregild given to Hraithamar and become a dragon in his obsession with retaining it -- obviously Odin has granted them long lives for some devious reason of his own. Ragin went into exile over the theft of the gold and murder of their father and toiled under the mountains under the tutelage of dwarves until he became one himself, and also the best living blacksmith and sword-manufacturer in the world. Ragin has also filled him in with his background, Sigismund, etc. and done his best to teach this wayward child his runes and other knowledge. King Gebica of the Burgundians (also a descendant of Hraithamar) brings his children to the Allaman court to settle long hostilities by a betrothal, that of his daughter Gundrun to the heir Sigifirth. The kids get along fine (although this is rather boring and what you'd expect about this part of the tale -- wrestling as to who is the strongest, who's better riding a horse, and so on). But here you meet the great king Gebica who established the Burgundians on the Rhine, and Gundahari, the amiable future king of that ex-steppes tribe, and his weird brother Hagan, who worries not only about the future and present but what is in the past, time frames mean nothing (and he's also a potential shaman, of course, and can travel outside his body), whose ONLY concern is the honor of his family, even though he is probably illegitimate, begotten on his witch mother Grimhild (one of the Hraithamar women) by who knows whom? maybe Loki. Hagan is given his own novel in the book cited above, and was the father of Nibel of the Burgundians. Nibel and Gundrun were the only survivors of the royal families in the disasters to come.... But first, Sigifrith has to slay the dragon, also his mentor Ragin, whose eternal motive to obtain the Rhinegold for himself leads to treachery and betrayal, 'bad rede' and poisoned potions, and win the treasure....

I have to say the dragon-slaying section of this book is rather disappointing. Tolkien, and the movie Dragonslayer had more interesting dragons -- this one is just an evil personification of greed. There is also a lot of pagan 'theology' and other stuff, which doesn't appeal to me much. The machinations of Odin to achieve the reincarnation of the Valkyrie as the human Brunichild within the ring of fire and the seduction of Sigifrith therein are a bit hard to fathom (so that he can have sex with his own aunt, but not wed her, thus bringing about the downfall of the whole Burgundian kingdom and the end of the Walsings?). The infamous gold ring of Andwari, the original owner of the Rhinegold, changes hands in a complicated way I won't go into. Anyway, Sigifrith achieved the height of his fame as the avenger of his father and the slayer of the dragon and the dwarf, the polluted sons of Hraithamar. No mightier warrior than he (and he and his future in-laws of course bury the treasure again -- this stuff doesn't belong in the light of day -- even the hearsay about it is enough to attract ruinous attacks from all quarters, especially when it comes to the attention of Attila the Hun).

Part Three: The nasty end of it all
Grimhild, the witch queen of the Burgundians, needs the Walsing and his treasure married into the family for the sake of her tribe and her son, so she gives Sigifrith a love potion that makes him fall for Gundrun and forget Brunichild (Grimhild sort of knows about these things ahead of time -- she is a sort of Livia character in this book, well-versed in potions and poisoning, plotting for the future of her family against odds only she can foresee, she supposedly poisoned her husband Gebica to clear the way for Gundahari, as Livia did in Augustus for the benefit of Tiberius). Brunichild, descendant of Alaric the conqueror of Rome, is a first-class bitch, arrogant and headstrong -- only the greatest hero in the world is worthy of her. She refuses any suitors who cannot break into her fortress surrounded by fire to win her (Odin's playback of an earlier scene). Gundahari goes a-courting, but can't handle this, so has his best friend and future brother-in-law Sigifrith do it for him. Sigifrith does, using the Helm of Awe from Fadhmir's treasure, the object Fadhmir used to make himself a dragon in the first place, to change shapes with Gundahari (yes, Sigifrith, though an amiable knucklehead, picked up a few tricks along the way). Well, comes the double wedding, which is a wonderfully described barbaric but timeless ceremony. Another very pleasant interlude in this book set up as a contrast to the horrors that will come. Except for the fact that on their wedding night Sigifrith suddenly remembered what had happened to him with the walkurja Sigrdrifa/Sigilind on that day he killed the dragon -- so he rapes her (his wife, I mean) then reveals his secret about his new sister-in-law. Gundrun is one of those few strong and forgiving and loving women, like Sigifrith's mother Herwodis, who are not witches or bitches. So everything is cool for a while until....

[Is this sounding like a soap-opera parody, or Anna Russell's rendition of the Wagner operas? Probably. But, I swear, it really is a good story when it's told right, as in this book. King Lear would seem just as ridiculous if it were summed up the way I'm summing this up.]

Gundrun and Brunichild get into a nasty quarrel over Sigifrith and Gundahari on a Yule visit to Worms. The deception comes out. To avenge the honor of the Gebicungs (Gundahari can't do it himself, since he is a sworn blood brother), Hagan murders Sigifrith by spearing him in the back while they are out boar-hunting. Brunichild murders Sigifrith's little son to complete her revenge against Gundrun, then kills herself (after making some dire predictions about the future of the Gebicungs, whom she hates with a passion). We end up with a nice funeral pyre. (Hagan, whom everybody now shuns with awe, crossing or Thor-signing themselves whenever they see him, sacrifices Brunichild's servants, the Helm of Awe, Sigifrith's sword Gram made by Ragin, the stallion Grani, his Irish wolfhounds, and his falcons, along with the dining room table on which they were to have feasted on the morrow, in this pyre -- but not the Rhinegold.) Gundrun still has Andwari's Ring, which Sigifrith had given to Brunichild in their first encounter within the ring of fire and which he had stolen back from her in their second encounter when he was disguised as Gundahari. It is this Ring, more than anything else, that symbolizes the evil of the Rhinegold. But there were other gifts from the hoard that Sigifrith had handed out -- a boar's tooth set in gold to Gundahari, for example, which he was fondling when he came to the conclusion that Sigifrith must be slain. Anything from this hoard is bad news indeed to whoever has it.

Gundrun is pissed off as well as grief-stricken (as you can imagine, having lost her husband and son), even though Hagan says it was all her own fault having blabbed out what should have been kept secret. (In my opinion, she was justified, although foolish given the nature of these men.) In disgust, sorrow, and anger, Gundrun flees in the middle of the night to Denmark to stay with her aunt, and hangs out there for a few years (actually she's still only in her late twenties after all this, and quite attractive although she has sworn off men).

Grimhild doesn't like this. She arranges through her sons to find a new husband for Gundrun, no other than Attila the Hun, because without Sigifrith to protect their eastern borders against the Huns, she sees nothing else to do. Gundrun is tracked down, given a potion (what else) by Grimhild to make her forget that she is really pissed off at her brothers, and then hauled off to marry Attila. Attila was no hidebound traditional Hun, sticking to the old ways of keeping the women confined to the wagon train, although he preferred it that way -- he practised tolerance for the religious and cultural traditions of the people he made alliances with, which is probably why he was so successful. So he accepts Gundrun's prenuptial contract that she can keep control of her own income, Rhine wine and Rhine gold, and she will stab him in the back with the dagger Sigifrith had given her when they were children (one he had made himself when he was apprenticed to Ragnir) if he ever forces her to ride in the wains with the other women and not ride her own horse. On the other hand, he keeps at her to retrieve the Rhinegold from its place in a hidden vault near the Rhine. 'After all, it is yours to do what you will with, my dear...' (Yeah, right.)

[Please be patient, I only have a couple of hundred pages to go...]

[Finished the book months ago but didn't get around to updating this web page. And I won't now -- please go read the book. If you really want to know, everybody died in horrible ways except for Gundrun and Nibel. Gundahari, who had prehensile toes, staved off death in Attila's snake pit for a while, when his hands were tied, by hypnotizing them playing a harp with his feet. Hagan had his heart cut out and laughed while it was happening -- first time anybody ever heard him laugh -- even Attila was impressed.]

Epilogue:
It was Gundrun, daughter of Gundahari and wife of Sigifrth, and her nephew Nibel (by Hagan), the last survivors of this whole epic, who moved their whole tribe from the Rhineland to France to escape the vengeance of the descendants of Atli, for whom she had cooked a victory feast that consisted of Atli's sons chopped up as stewmeat. That was the end of this appalling tale. (She threw the dwarf's golden hoard back into the Rhine, incuding the notorious Ring of Andwari, thus ending the curse.)
Giving it back to the Rhine saved Gundrun and her nephew Nibel, the last of the Burgundian nobles, from the curse and from the wrath of the Huns, and she moved the remnants of that tribe to what is now called Burgundy, which is I suppose a good thing if you are of Burgundian descent or like good wine.

[Grundy has material for a sequel, if he chooses, because the line of the Walsings and Gebicungs has not yet been totally eradicated. There is Sigifrith's daughter Swanhild, who marries the Gothic King Ermanarik, and then....]

Vegetables (for those of you who have had enough of Siegfried and the Ring of Andwari)

Gary Jennings: Raptor. This is an excellent historical novel about events on the Rhine and Danube during the late Roman Empire. It is basically the story of the Emperor Theodoric and the Gothic Kingdom, a nice fat 900-pager and a ripping-good read. (There, that's all I've got to say about this. Aren't you relieved?) [Gary Jennings has also written a couple of excellent books about the Aztecs.]

Desserts & Afters

From my original King Arthur page.

Later Dark Ages (Saxon period)
I want to devote a little space to the Anglo-Saxons, who were the villains in King Arthur's day, but were in turn victimized by the Vikings. The Celts do not have a monopoly on futile heroism. In fact, the Northumbrian Saxons assimilated so well into the old Brigantes tribal structure (that is where our term 'Brigands' comes from) that they can barely be distinguished from Celts -- hence your Geordie, Lowland Scots, and Border Country culture, which has hardly changed since Roman times. From that marvellous bitch-queen Cartimandua, through the reigns of Urien of Rheged and King Oswiu of Northumbria, there was an unbroken history of treachery on a grand scale -- great stuff!
- Beowulf: Pretty heavy going, especially if you have to translate it from Anglo-Saxon as I had to do in graduate school. On the other hand, there are some true poetic passages in it that haven't been done justice to in the many translations. If I can find it in the boxes in the cellar, I will post the passage on the Internet about the dark tarn where Grendel's mother hangs out. With a sufficiently bardic voice and a good phonetic memory, you could wow the world at a party or bar.
- John Gardner: Grendel. An autobiographical essay: a very quirky but moving story about the monster of Beowulf. From Grendel's point of view. Does not really belong on this web page, but it needs mentioning before it is forgotten -- a 20th-century classic of, I guess, existentialism.
- Dee Morrison Meaney: An Unkindness of Ravens / Death of the Raven. Good book, with Vikings and magic. Very romantic.
- Lolah Burford: The Vision of Stephen. A fantasy novel for teenagers that is really quite moving.
- Gordon Honeycombe: Dragon under the Hill. This was listed on one of my mystery pages, even though it's not a mystery; it is just one of the finest horror stories (in a subtle way) that I have ever read. The setting is contemporary, but on the island of Lindisfarne, with the essential plot element being the protagonist's compulsion to relive events that occurred back when the Vikings sacked the monastery. An engrossing story. *****
- Alfred Duggan: The King of Athelney. Alfred the Great; interesting.
- Parke Godwin: (this guy is all over the place) A Memory of Lions. A nice little romance (and rather violent) about the Norman Conquest
- Hope Muntz: The Golden Warrior. Along with Hemingway, etc. (as expected), my professor in college in an advanced writing seminar [Andrew Lytle, who achieved a degree of fame as a Southern writer of the heroic, Agrarian school] made this book required reading. Odd choice, but he was right. This is truly one of the all-time classic historical novels, written in the spirit of the old chronicles, all about Harold Godwinson (King Harold of the Battle of Hastings). It is superb. How can you not fall in love with a woman named Edith Swan-neck? Even Winston Churchill went out of his way to praise this book. ***** (more on this...)

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes overran most of the Celtic Province of Britain in the mid-hundreds of the first millennium, but it was partly because they saw an underpopulated and unprotected land at odds within itself after the withdrawal of the Roman Legions, and they were being forced out of their own territories by Germanic but foreign invaders from the steppes of Asia. These people -- the Goths, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Vandals, etc., 'middle Europeans' -- were in turn being forced westward by Huns from the Ukraine, who were in turn being pressed by the Mongols of East Asia. Sort of a Domino Effect. Rome was weak, and fell to the Gothic tribes, the Celts of Gaul were overrun by the Burgundians and Goths and Allemans and Franks -- hence 'France' --, and the Britons of course fell to the swamp folk from Frisia and the Lowlands around the mouth of the Rhine. In spite of jokes about British weather, you have to admit they went to a better clime and improved themselves as a result -- better crop seasons, less flooding, etc. Transference from a harsh continental climate to a temperate island one did wonders for these swamp rats.

But when you get right down to it, when you consider the German legends of Siegfried (Sigurd), Attila (Atli) the Hun, Hagan, Beowulf, and that lot, plus their appalling but appealing warrior gods Odin, Thor, Loki, etc., there is a lot of very interesting stuff (Odin was particularly devious and plotted out his crazy schemes generations in advance, which, after all, is what gods should do). Christianity was never able to erase, for example, the names of our weekdays or holiday names (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Easter, Yule, etc.), just as even the great Romans Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus kept months named after them, and what better memorial is there than that?

NEW WEB SITE

January 1998. I have started up a new web site for a general history of Europe during the pre-Medieval period, based on the books in my library: The Ancient World. Please visit, even though it is still very much a work in progress. --Grobius

Please E-Mail me with comments. I would appreciate your opinions.

[the colored version of the Walknot represents the Alps: sky, snow, and trees]

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