nd subsequently to the presumed writing of
"The Chanson de Roland" and the Nibelungenlied, shows us in reality the
product of a people, the distant Scandinavians of Iceland, who were five
or six hundred years behind the French, Germans, and English of the
twelfth century. In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor
feudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason that I wish to
compare it with the Nibelungenlied, in order to show how enormously the
old epic stuff was altered by the new civilization. The whole social and
moral condition of the two versions is different. In the old
Scandinavian civilization, where the Viking is surrounded and served by
clansmen, the feeling of blood relationship is the strongest in people's
hearts; strangely and fearfully shown in the introductory tale of Signy,
who, in order to avenge her father Volsung, killed by her husband,
murders her children by the latter, and then, altered in face by magic
arts, goes forth to the woods to her brother Sigmund, that,
un-wittingly, he may beget with her the only man fit to avenge the
Volsungs. And then she sends the boy Sinfjotli to the man he has
hitherto considered merely as his uncle, bidding the latter kill him if
he prove unworthy of his incestuous birth, or train him to vengeance.
The three together murder the husband and legitimate children of Signy,
and set the palace on fire; which, being done, the queen, having
accomplished her duty to her kin, accomplishes that towards her husband,
and calmly returns to die in the burning hall. Here (and apparently
again in the case of the children of Sigurd and Brynhilt) incest becomes
a family virtue. This being the frightful preponderance of the feeling
of blood relationship, it is quite natural that the Scandinavian
Chriemhilt (called in the Volsunga Saga, Gudrun) should not resent the
murder of her husband Siegfried or Sigurd by her brothers at the
instigation of the jealous Brynhilt (who has in a manner been Sigurd's
wife before he made her over to Chriemhilt's eldest brother); and that,
so far from seeking any revenge against them, she should, when her second
husband Atli sends for her brothers in order to rob and murder them,
first vainly warn them of the plot, and then, when they have been
massacred, kill Atli and her children by him in order to avenge her
brothers. The slackening of the tribal feeling, the idea of fidelity in
love and sanctity of marriage belonging to Christianity and feud