The Legend of Brynhild

Brynhild is easily the most compelling figure in early Germanic literature and is central to our understanding of the heroic mentality. For a century and a half, scholars have studied the story of her love for Sigurd, and this book brings their findings together in English for the first time. 'The legend sings principally of the woman, not the man,' writes Theodore M. Andersson, and he examines the medieval accounts of Brynhild with a view toward reaching a fuller appreciation of her character. Reopening a long-standing debate, Andersson builds upon the work of earlier scholars and develops a synthesis of old and new. His analysis clarifies the relationships among the most important Scandinavian and German texts ('Poetic Edda', 'Snorra Edda', 'Þiðreks saga', 'Nibelungenlied'), but he does not attempt to deduce from them a single prototype of the story. Instead, he argues that there are distinct Norse and German variants that interacted at various times, particularly in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when the German version became familiar in Norway and Iceland. He shows that Norse and German treatments of Brynhild as a figure of legend and poetry are widely divergent. In Iceland she was the object of sympathetic admiration, and her character gained in depth and complexity as the tale evolved. In Germany, on the other hand, her dominant role appears to have alienated the poets who traced her fortunes, and her importance was diminished. This discrepancy suggests to Andersson a difference between northern and southern attitudes toward women in literature. Reflecting the author’s impressive command of the complete range of Germanic texts, this book will interest not only Scandinavianists and Germanists but general medievalists as well.