Our hero sets off to slay a dragon, guided by the old wizard, and picks up a magic ring of invisibility along the way – or was it a cloak? If you’re not sure if I’m referring to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit or JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, well that’s the point. It could be both; it could be neither: they could be one of many stories from centuries past.
Many years ago I was reading a summary of the early 13th century German epic poem Nibelungenlied (also the basis of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Opera, der Ring des Nibelungen) and was stunned to find parallels to the then wildly popular show, Game of Thrones (GoT), all the way down to the Red Wedding. The hero is Siegfried, who is known for having killed a dragon in his youth, and who sets off on a quest with a cloak of invisibility in hand. His Nordic counterpart Sigurd features in the Völsunga Saga, in which early chapters feature a pair of incestuous twins whose family are killed by a wolf (á-la Jamie and Cersei of GoT and rival wolf house of Stark). We follow Sigurd on his quest to slay the dragon Fafnir, after which he steals his cursed ring…
One character that felt particularly familiar to me was the warrior queen Brunhild (aka Brynhild), clearly a precursor to Brienne of Tarth: unbeatable in battle, bonded to the king-slayer/dragon-slayer, and threatened only by sexual violence (in a chapter reimagined in the origin story of Sleeping Beauty). I dare say she represents one of the earliest instances of the lone warrior woman trope; now prevalent in characters from Eowyn in Lord of the Rings to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The early narratives tended to frame these women as something of a rarity; the modern feminist era celebrated their power, to the point of evolving into the problematic Strong Female Character trope.
Besides the aforementioned rings, wolves, dragons and warrior women, other motifs that appear in manuscripts and carvings across the European continent (at least) include: the sword that only a true hero can wield, deceptive shape-shifting, the ability to understand the speech of animals, and the one-eyed omnipotent being. My attempt to track down the earliest relevant works brought up everything from Merlin to the Old Norse Elder Edda poetry (on which the Völsunga Saga is based), the Old English epic poem of Beowulf, all the way back to the writings of Plato!
Of all the connections to modern fiction (whether books, comics, TV shows, or movies), I’m most amused by GoT because it is essentially trashy fantasy entertainment rather than high literature. But then again, at heart the classic sagas stemmed from the tradition of storytelling and entertainment, whether spoken around the campfire or broadcast over television to millions of viewers. As it turns out, the themes don’t change much: I guess we’ll always be suckers for monsters, magic, and a bit of drama.
This post is dedicated to Jenny Green, who passed away several years ago. Jenny, as I read the Völsung Saga and dwelt on the ideas that eventually wound up here, I kept wishing I could ask you your blunt and honest opinion. None of this would’ve been news to you; I know I’m ever ignorant, but reading and blogging is part of my effort to amend this. I hear you’ve dismissed Beowulf as being merely about “hairy men erratically swinging axes” (though I’d bet you were being purposely facetious), so I can only imagine what you thought of the rest. It would have been a stimulating conversation.
Truth, Beauty and a Picture of You 