Edward R. Haymes, The Introduction of Nordic Sources for the Nibelung Legend into Germany

November 2012, Volume 6, Number 3, 25–36.

Even if the magnificent figure of Siegfried had always attracted me, it first really enchanted me when I was successful in seeing it freed of all later costuming in its purest human appearance before me. Only now did I recognise the possibility of making him the hero of a drama; something that had never occurred to me as long as I knew him only from the medieval Nibelungenlied.

These words from Richard Wagner’s A Communication to my Friends demonstrate both his disdain for the Middle High German epic Nibelungenlied, and his attitude toward the Nordic versions of his tale, which he saw as earlier and ‘freed of all later costuming.’ He derived these ideas largely from the work of Wilhelm Grimm, Franz Joseph Mone, and – perhaps most decisively – Jacob Grimm. The process he went through to adapt his medieval sources to the operatic stage has been widely discussed, but the entry of medieval Nordic ideas into German thought in the early 19th century has been treated neither by the historians of the Nibelung legend nor by the students of Nordic literature.