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Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies

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Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies Volume 21 Number 2 Article 14 Winter 10-15-1996 Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies Gloriana St. Clair Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation St. Clair, Gloriana (1996) "Volsunga Saga and Narn: Some Analogies," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 21 : No. 2 , Article 14. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract “Narn”, one of the works in the Unfinished ales,T has many parallels with the thirteenth-century Old Norse Volsunga Saga, which Tolkien read and studied. This paper will assess comparisons between the heroes, women, dragons, plots, and tokens for their contribution to understanding Tolkien’s relationship to his sources, and will note Tolkien’s craft in source assimilation. Additional Keywords Aerin; Beowulf; completeness; dragons; dwarves; Fafnir; girdles; Glaurung; helms; mythology; "Narn"; Sigfried; Sigurd; swords; Tolkien: influences upon; úrin;T Volsunga Saga; Richard Wagner This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/14 Volsunga Saga and Nam: Some Analogies Gloriana St. Clair Abstract: “Nam”, one of the works in the Unfinished Tales, has many parallels with the thirteenth- century Old Norse Volsunga Saga, which Tolkien read and studied. This paper will assess comparisons between the heroes, women, dragons, plots, and tokens for their contribution to understanding Tolkien’s relationship to his sources, and will note Tolkien’s craft in source-assimilation. Keywords: Aerin, Beowulf, completeness, dragons, dwarves, Fafnir, girdles, Glaurung, helms, mythology, “Nam”, Sigfried, Sigurd, swords, Tolkien: influences upon, Turin, Volsunga Saga, Richard Wagner In a letter to Milton Waldman, a potential publisher of a “Sigurd the Volsung” has a number of versions - four may combined Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien be important here: the Eddas, the Volsunga Saga, Beowulf, says, “There is the Children of Hurin, the tragic tale of Turin and the Nibelungenlied. The Poetic Edda (800-1050 AD) is Turambar and his sister Niniel - of which Turin is the hero: the oldest repository of poems telling the Northern Myths. a figure that might be said (by people who like that sort of The Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson in the thirteenth- thing, though it is not very useful) to be derived from century, tells these stories more fully from an educated point elements in Sigurd the Volsung, Oedipus and the Finnish of view. Snorri also wrote the history of the kings of Norway Kullervo [Kalevala]” (Tolkien, 1981, p. 150). This paper and several sagas. Written by an unknown Icelandic author discusses the relationship between the “Narn i Hin Hurin” in the thirteenth-century, the Volsunga Saga recreates in and the Volsunga Saga, the story of Sigurd the Volsung. My prose the stories from the poetic Elder Edda in order to thesis is that the “Nam”, an Unfinished Work, shows less glorify the heroic past of the Norse people in their golden age polish and craft than The Lord of the Rings, revealing its on the Rhine (Volsunga Saga, 1971, p. 18). The Volsunga debts to the originating work more clearly. Tolkien pulled his author makes heavy use of his copy of the Elder Edda in the works out of the cauldron of his imagination. This study same way that Tolkien handily employed the materials he investigates what was in that cauldron and how it was served had written already about Middle-earth. Tolkien’s interest in up in this tale. While Tolkien did not find such studies creating a mythology for England paralleled the Volsunga particularly useful, I believe this one does offer a glimpse Saga author’s purpose. into his relationship with his materials and his craft. First, The eighth-century Old English poem Beowulf uses I’m going to outline the versions for the two stories, then material from the Volsunga legend as one of seven discuss the characters, survey some similar tokens, note interpolated narratives. However, the Volsunga Saga lacks some peculiar unfinished aspects, and draw some the craft that makes Beowulf notable. Volsunga's author does conclusions. not bring to his task the level of genius in the moulding of scenes, the construction of story, the portraying of details, or Versions of the Stories the creation of character that the Beowulf poet does. The Tolkien’s story about the Children of Hurin exists in several Volsunga Saga does not catch and hold our interest or versions: “The Lay of the Children of Hurin” is an suspend our disbelief with the power of the most exalted alliterative poem written in 1918 and existing in two separate pieces of literature. manuscripts, combined by Christopher Tolkien and Written at about the same time as the Volsunga Saga, the published in The Lays of Beleriand (Tolkien, 1985, pp. Nibelungenlied is a long German poem composed in a 3-130). “Turambar and the Foaldke” is a prose version of the complicated rhymed strophe. The poem was apparently story apparently written by the middle of 1919 while Tolkien designed to be performed by a bard in a princely court. The was working on the Oxford English Dictionary (Tolkien, medieval manuscript had been forgotten until it was 1984, pp. 69-143). The dating is derived from Humphrey rediscovered in the eighteenth-century, in the same way that Carpenter’s discovery of a passage written on a scrap of the Kalevala and the Elder Edda were {The Nibelungenlied, proof for the Dictionary in one of Tolkien’s early alphabets 1961, pp. xi-xiii). (Tolkien, 1984, p. 69). Another version of the tale appears as The contrast between the German poem and the Norse saga “Of Turin Turambar” in The Silmarillion. “Nam i Hin is stark. Like The Lord o f the Rings, the Volsunga Saga is Hurin” in Unfinished Tales provides the most comprehensive filled with action while The Nibelungenlied dwells at length telling of the story. on descriptions of costumes, arms, and feasts. So pronounced VOLSUNGA SAGA AND NARN 69 is the interest in clothing that the reader might imagine the Gwindor even though he has been warned of negative author to be a cloth merchant’s wife. The hardihood, consequences. Repeatedly, he attempts to start over by individual strength, and fearlessness of the Volsunga Saga are putting everything behind him and taking a new name. replaced with courtliness, vast armies, and treacheries. The Successively, he calls himself Turin, Neithan, Agarwaen, earlier tales of the Volsunga kin, the revenge for King Thurin, Mormegil, Wildman of the Woods, and Turambar. Volsung, and the winning of the gold are foregone in favour Had he acknowledged his unlucky fate and attempted to cope of expanded telling of the revenge for Sigfried (Sigurd). The with it, he would not have brought so much woe to so many. love story, which provides an uncomfortable motivation in As in the sagas, where character development is sketchy, the Volsunga Saga, is refined and magnified in Turin’s character is described when he is a child; he never Nibelungenlied. grows beyond it. Several times Tolkien mentions his fatal Because Wagner’s Ring cycle was being used by the Nazis pride and that of his mother, who would not humble herself for propaganda, Tolkien makes a number of disparaging to be an alms-guest even of the King. In pronouncing remarks about it in the Letters. Wagner made active use of judgment in the death of Saeros, King Thingol says that the same sources Tolkien did. Elizabeth Magee, in Richard Turin is too proud for his state (Tolkien, 1980, p. 83). Pride Wagner and the Nibelungs, notes that Wagner based the first as a motivating force has one of its greatest expressions in version, “Der Nibelungen-Mythus,” on the Eddas, the Greek play Oedipus, which Tolkien acknowledges as an Nibelungenlied, Thidreks Saga, and Das Lied vom Hiirnen inspiration for this work (Tolkien, 1981, p. 150). However, Seyfrid. In 1848, Wagner had not yet read the Volsunga Saga Oedipus is an appealing character while Turin is not. itself and knew it only through other works derived from it, These same criticisms can be levelled at the Volsunga such as the Amelungenlied and Wilhelm Grimm’s Deutsche Saga. Sigurd is equally unwilling to face up to his problems. Heldensage. Between 21 October 1848 and 1 January 1849, He remembers finally that he had plighted troth to Brynhild, Wagner borrowed von der Hagen’s translation of Volsunga but instead of making some provisions for the eventual Saga from the Royal Library at Dresden. His particular debts unmasking of that secret, he goes ahead with his regimen of to it include Siegfried’s ancestors, history of the sword, the hunting and combat. His pride leads him to give that same conception of Odin the Wanderer, much material in the troth ring Brynhild had had to his wife Gudrun.
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