Talk:Nibelungenlied

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old comments[edit]

May be it would be interesting to add something about the treatment of (more or less) the same story in the Edda and a comparism of the two sources. Would that be the right place for such a comparison? I'd enjoy to write it if it's welcome (I'm new here)

BTW in most german sources I know of the hero is called Siegfried, not Sigurd. I'll check out what's in the medieval German original.

Mostly Sivrit or Sifrit, apparently. Matthew Woodcraft


  • A comparison with the Edda sounds promising ;) -- Someone else 10:15, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Harlock[edit]

Wasn't there a Harlock OVA based on Nibelungenlied?

Tolkien?[edit]

Gtrmp, I would hardly say that the Nibelungenlied was Tolkien's chief inspiration for LotR, which was originally motivated by linguistic concerns: Tolkien wanted to created a world for his conlangs to exist in. He used the Nibelungenlied mainly as a source of names, mostly for dwarves in The Hobbit, but also for Gandalf.

However, Tolkien did draw a lot on the low, middle, and high Norse/German myths. The ideas of honor, trust, love, power and courtly manner are present in all his writings. At the very least, Tolkien was inspired in some fashion or another...and you're correct, in some cases he took names and some words for his languages as well from the Nibelungenlied.

The only Germanic word that appears in Tolkien's languages nearly unaltered is "Earendil", from "earendel". ("Eala Earendel engla beorhtast/ofer middangeard monnum sended.") The language of Rohan as it appeared in the book was indeed Germanic (Mercian). However, it was not intended to represent the actual tongue of the Rohirrim, but it stands in the same relation to English as Rohirric is supposed to Westron. So no, he took no words for his language from the Nibelungenlied.
As far as names go, the names of the dwarves in "The Hobbit" and LotR (plus Gandalf) were found not in the Nibelungenlied, but in the Poetic Edda, in the poem "Völuspá" and not, so far as I know, in the "Niflung" cycle. Although "The Hobbit" was not originally connected to the larger mythology (represented by The Silmarillion, not LotR) it became so, and the dwarf names were rationalized in the same way as using Mercian for Rohirric.
Incidentally, it was The Silmarillion that was inspired by Tolkien's languages. LotR was inspired by his publisher, who wanted a sequel to "The Hobbit". It connected up with the older mythology almost by accident, but ended up as the closing narrative of his mythological age.
It's true that there's a connection in a very broad sense between LotR and the Nibelungenlied -- the latter is a myth cycle from northeastern Eurpoe and LotR was written to occupy the same genre -- but there's no direct connection between them whatsoever. In a sneering reply to a comparison between LotR and the "Ring" cycle, Tolkien said, "Both rings are round, there the resemblence ends." TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Links for alt. spellings[edit]

Creating Niebelungenlied and Neibelungenlied as redirect pages since you can get reasonable numbers of hits for these alt. (2nd incorrect included) from Google Sjc 05:57, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's not an "alternative spelling" that is a misspelling. If someone is going to actually type the name in, there is a good chance that that person already knows German, which mean, "i", "ie" and "ei" do not cause such confusions for that person. --JoergenF 19:20, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I don't think one can assume that the person already knows German - lots of English-speaking operagoers won't know much, and "ie"/"ei" have more complicated rules in English, and people are always being confused. It's amazing how many kinds of orthographical errors a half-million articles can have - redirects from common misspellings are a useful technique to catch them. Stan 00:38, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Synopsis[edit]

The synopsis of the story is rather wrong, and too brief. Shall we expand? --JoergenF 19:01, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Aren't some details missing too? First, I suppose it shouldn't say he killed "a dragon", but he killed "THE dragon" Fafnir. I'll add that, correct me if it's wrong, but I don't remember there were other dragons Siegfried killed :) Moreover, shouldn't here also be mentioned the Ring of the Nibelungs? I'm not sure if there is another version without the Ring, so I won't touch that for now. And yes, I think the synopsis should be expanded too. --Arny 11:05, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But the dragon isn't named in the NL. --Pfold 11:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please take the one line synopsis out of the intro of the article. Most intros only describe the author, protagonist, history, and cultural origin of a written work. However, this intro gives away the story... (69.228.199.174 (talk) 01:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC))[reply]
How can you "give away" a story that has been an established part of European culture for over 1000 years? --Pfold (talk) 09:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of which, im writing here the reason why I want to erase the line about unesco. what is the connection? Postapocalypticnovella (talk) 21:18, 25 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You're kidding, right? UNESCO thinks the MSS are among the 200 most important documents in world history and you don't think that's a signficant fact about the poem?! --21:50, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciation[edit]

Maybe we should put a pronunciation of the Nibelungenlied? This might help greatly especially to people who do not speak native German or people who are not familiar with it. -jayjay-203.177.177.124 10:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Parallel Synonyms[edit]

Parallel is especially appropriate when the two things compared are so like each other that their lack of divergence suggests two parallel lines; the term is often used in negative expressions. Sometimes, especially when actual comparison is implied, the word suggests that the two things follow a similar course, order or line of developement.

Counterpart often suggests a complementary and sometimes an obverse relationship. More commonly, however, the word implies a duplication, especially in another sphere, or age, or language.

Analogue usually implies a more remote likeness that the preceding words and suggests comparison with something familiar and tangible for the sake of clarifying an explanation or enforcing an argument. Like counterpart, it often involves reference to something in another sphere, or order, or genus.

Correlate retains its primary implication of correspondence, but does not retain that of complementary relationship. A thing which is a correlate of another is what corresponds to it from anotherpoint of view or in a different order of viewing.

Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms, 1973. --Jbergquist 22:18, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Flavius Aëtius[edit]

Shouldn't it be at least mentioned in the article that Etzel might not be Attila, king of the Huns, but the Roman general Flavius Aëtius (see his article)? Or, more exactly, a melange of both historical persons? Although being a Roman general, Flavius Aëtius had many Huns fighting for him and might have appeared to the Burgundians as a Hunnish king. Due to the names sounding quite similar, later storytellers would easily merged Attila and Aëtius into one person.

The whole time and place section needs a complete rewrite for that and other reasons. --Pfold 22:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Etzel's fortress is given as Gram (Esztergom), a location also associated with Attila. I also don't believe "later storytellers" would confuse two historical opponents.

Marvel Comics[edit]

FYI I don't know how to incorporate this into the article, but in Thor (Marvel Comics) a Marvel Comics wrote a short series based loosely on this and the Volsunga in between issues #292-300. MPA 22:57, 16 April 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MPA (talk • contribs)

Who - apart from some irrelevant idiots - gives a single shit on marvel comics??? The Nibelungenlied is ART of the highest grade: marvel comics and the rest from it's origin are simply trash. --84.141.19.9 (talk) 20:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Nibelungenlied/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

It has just about everything. The main shortcoming is there is a significant amount of unreferenced/uncited material. If not a C, I would say it is almost a C. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 17:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 01:11, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

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Improvements[edit]

A year since the maintenance tags were added and the issues haven't been tackled. To be honest, in spite of regular small additions, the article has not been significantly improved for years.

  1. The only references are for points marginal to the core material. Not a single mainstream work is cited (or even listed) apart from Müller under "Further Reading", never mind anything on specific areas. There are several mentions of "scholars", with only one giving a name and reference. All this was understandable perhaps 10 years ago, when the main task was just to provide coverage of the topic, but it leaves the article well below current WP standards.
  2. There are books mentioned in the text without entries in the notes or bibliography.
  3. The summary of the text is too long (for the length of the article, at least) and mixes storytelling with (unsourced) commentary. (BTW, I'm not one those who thinks a plot summary needs to cite a source.) It also lacks clear and consistent reference to the Aventiure numbers.
  4. In spite of its importance, there's nothing on the poetic form.
  5. There's no sense of the place of this work in the literary history of its period.
  6. There's little material about the ethos or interpretation of the poem beyond the comments mixed in with the synopsis.
  7. The intro is really rather thin considering the length of the article.
  8. The text sample uses a century-old English translation, which is not listed in the bibliography. No sources are given for the MHG and Modern German texts.
  9. The External Links could do with more links to the online digitised manuscripts.
  10. On a more positive note: while the initial maintenance tag warns of OR, I'm not so sure there's actually anything here which can't be found in the literature, though proper references would help to sort that out. --Pfold (talk) 14:04, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed all of these problems as well. I'm currently putting together an article on the Nibelungenklage in my sandbox, and after that I want to put together a basic article on the whole concept of Germanic heroic poetry/legend, but I'm certainly in favor of and willing to help with improvements here as well. The article currently makes no mention of most of the other texts in the Nibelungen tradition either, including Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid (which I only made an article for last week), the Nifling episodes in the Thidrekssaga, the Nibelungenklage, or the Rosengarten zu Worms and Biterolf und Dietleib. I've been adding these things to the Nibelungenlied navbox, but it would be good to mention the broader "Stoff" here as well.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:18, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
A few minor things that I wanted to bring up: 1) shouldn't that picture of Siegfried getting Bruenhild out of the fire be removed? It's either of the Norse versions or else of Wagner's opera; 2) it would seem to me to make sense to rename "Further reading" "References" and to rename "References and Notes" to "Notes"; 3) for the German translation of the opening stanza: if we want to keep it (and I'm not really sure that we need a modern German translation), would it make sense to use Simrock's translation? Otherwise, I can provide the translation from Heinzle's newer edition/translation:
Uns ist in alten Geschichten viel Staunenswertes gesagt
von ruhmwürdigen Helden, von großer Mühsal (im Kampf),
von Freuden und Festen, von Weinen und Klagen,
vom Kampf kühner Helden könnt ihr jetzt viel Staunenswertes sagen hören.
Heinzle, Joachim, ed. (2014). Das Nibelungenlied und die Klage: nach der Handschrift 857 der Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen. Mittelhochdeutscher Text mit Übersetzung und Kommentar (2 ed.). Berlin: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. ISBN 978-3-618-66120-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) --Ermenrich (talk) 18:34, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
1) Yes. And the article could do with some more MS images
2) I was going to do this, so I'm happy for you to!
3) Let's use a modern translation. I had thought of using Brackert, but Heinzle's fine. I couldn't find the source of the current text.--Pfold (talk) 09:24, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
2 and 3 are done then.
Subpoint on 2: do we need to italicize the MHG of the first stanza? That seems very German academic journal to me, it should already be clear that it's a block quote from the context.
On 1: there are actually a bunch of illuminations from the Nibelungenlied on Wikimedia Commons we can use without even uploading new ones of our own.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also did 1 now.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:30, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have a number of citations that might be useful for fixing the section currently labled "authorship" in the article Nibelungenklage that I just created.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:54, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[Outdent] I've created a section on form and style based Mueller (2009) and Millet. On the "authorship" section: it would seem to make more sense to label it "Origins", which opens the question: do we discuss the broader "Stoffgeschichte" there or does that get its own section? It seems to me to be impossible to discuss the creation of the epic without discussing the material from which it was created. Probably it make sense, at any rate, to move it to after the synopsis. What do you think?--Ermenrich (talk) 15:34, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would separate the authorship from the origins. The authorship section needs to include stuff about dating, patronage and what can be deduced about the author, all of which is quite separate from the devlopment of the stories over the previous hundreds of years. The authorship section is tightly focussed on the circumstances in which text was written, rather than what led up to it. But certainly the synopsis should come first. BTW, have a look at the French NL article, which is *very* good and which might offer ideas about structuring the material. --Pfold (talk) 16:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, that is a very good article, although I'm not sure we need so many little sections. We probably need at least the following sections: Synopsis, Authorship, Origins, Form and Style, Themes, Influence (i.e. medieval reception), Modern Reception. Can you think of anything else? The romance elements of the poem can probably be included under themes, but some of them could probably go under style. The Old Norse parallels and possibly Hürnin Seyfrid could be mentioned in origins, whereas the wider Nibelungen-tradition in Germany can be mentioned in influence.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:37, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You might even get the romance elements in under authorship - one of the issues there is the literary influences on the author which come from outside the heroic tradition.--Pfold (talk) 10:41, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've started putting together a new version of the "Origins" section, split into 1) historical origins and development of the saga, and 2) The Nibelungen-poet's reworking of the saga. No doubt they will still need some improvement when I'm done.
Millet has some interesting comments on authorship beyond "it's anonymous". He notes further that no other author identifies the Nibelungen poet.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[Outdent] I've completely rewritten the authorship section. That leaves:

  1. manuscripts must be sourced/rewritten;
  2. the summary must be trimmed and the strange commentary as well as the ascription of emotional motives to the different characters removed, etc.;
  3. a section on the Nibelungenlied's influence and reception in the MA must be created;
  4. the modern reception section must be sourced/rewritten. Possibly the current section "adaptations" can be folded into it.

I think that's it. Can you think of anything else that needs to be done? I'm not really that eager to do 1 and 2, but I might have time for 3 and 4 later in the week.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:57, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to work on 1 and 2, though it may not be for a few days. That will be enough to be going on with for the moment, I wd say - the article by then will be much more presentable. --Pfold (talk) 16:48, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a plan. I happened to have a look at the Kudrun article today, as I'm going to link to it in the reception section here. It's in even worse shape than the Nibelungenlied article was, I suspect a lot of it is directly copied from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. I would suggest that once we're done here we might try to improve that page as well.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:20, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is there consensus to remove the warnings on the top of the article? It seems to me that the sections still in need of work are now clearly marked.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:53, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[Outdent] I'm going to try to put together a section on themes and interpretation, but I'm not in much of a hurry.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:55, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now that the whole thing is much more acceptable, there's no need to rush the things that still need doing. I certainly won't have time to do anything much in the next few days.--Pfold (talk) 10:28, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oldest?[edit]

The article states "The oldest version seems to be the one preserved in manuscript "B"." That is disputed. 79.106.203.68 (talk) 16:22, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Can you supply a reliable source?—Ermenrich (talk) 17:01, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Too many to list. This is basic stuff. The "C" text is the oldest. The question of which content may be closer to the original cannot be proven. In fact, for the past 100 years, most scholars have held that all versions are equal. Why are you always on here if you do not know much about the content? Nice username. Do you have an alt-account called "Hagen"? 79.106.203.95 (talk) 10:04, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need to list *every* scholar - just a couple of the most respected and most recent. But your ad hominem attack on Ermenrich does not in fact encourage anyone to take your coimment as serious and well-informed. --Pfold (talk) 11:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another error[edit]

The caption under the Karlsruhe MSS "C" states:

"First page from Manuscript C (c. 1230)"

The article itself even explains this test was written between 1190-1204. The entire article is riddle with errors! Who approved this to be published in the world's current most famous encyclopaedia? 79.106.203.34 (talk) 09:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another display of ignorance. The MS is from 1230-ish but, like all medieval MSS, contains works written sometimes decades, even centuries earlier. You can hardly imagine that you've spotted an error, when you must surely be aware you know nothing about the subject.--Pfold (talk) 12:46, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly Wikipedia is the most famous "encyclopedia" (quotation marks because it's an encyclopedia at all only in a limited, non-traditional sense), but it's far from the most respected--not because it's biased or some such thing but because of its very premise: anyone can edit it (including you yourself, Mr. Anonymours 97 etc.) So no one approved the thing you dislike, and you can change it yourself--and then someone can come along and change your change. TheScotch (talk) 23:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seyfrids wedding[edit]

I showed the sources. The song of "Seyfrids wedding" was discovered in 2022 and published in the same year. Please, before there anybody change again the texts, inform you. On the German Wikipedia the article can be found under "Siegfrieds Hochzeit". Mario Bauch: Die Grimmener Lieder vom Hürnen Seyfried und von der Hochzeit des Hürnen Seyfrieds, Daon - Verlag, Grimmen 2022 ISBN 978-3-00-073498-4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by MichelKat (talk • contribs) 13:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This section belongs at the bottom of the talk page. I can find zero literature discussing this find. The discoverer (who released the edited text within a year of finding it) is not an academic, but an SPD politician who collects old books. The "editor" is also the owner of the publishing house, meaning that it is self-published. You would expect something like this to get an announcement at Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum but there is nothing. The only literature cited on German WP is a website. We need to wait for this to be confirmed by actual academics before we start putting it on WP.—Ermenrich (talk) 13:48, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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