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The Volsung Saga | 
 enlarge | Author: Anonymous
Publisher: MacMay
Category: EBooks
Buy New: $0.99
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 65902
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B001G0MKRO
Publication Date: September 13, 2008
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Product Description
In Norse mythology, Vǫlsung was murdered by the Geatish king Siggeir and avenged by one of his sons, Sigmund and his daughter Signy who was married to Siggeir. Vǫlsung was the common ancestor of the ill-fortuned clan of the Vǫlsungs, including the greatest of Norse heroes, Sigurd. Their legend is known in Norse myth through the Volsungasaga and the Drap Niflunga and in Old German through the Nibelungenlied.
In the English epic Beowulf, when the Geatish warrior Beowulf has killed Grendel, a Danish bard at Hrothgar's court sings about Sigmund and his father Waels.
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Ian Myles Slater on: A Real Gem, but An Antique One Too August 22, 2005
Ian M. Slater (Los Angeles, CA United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a review of the 1870 William Morris and Eirikur Magnusson translation of the Old Icelandic "Volsung Saga" -- or, more exactly the Volsunga-saga, Story of the Volsungs. (Who the Volsungs are will be mentioned below.) The original is a prose version of older stories, some surviving in Old Norse poems, including events going back at least to the fall of the Roman Empire. Originally issued as "The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs: With Certain Songs from the Elder Edda," it was frequently reprinted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under a variety of titles. The spelling of Niblung (instead of Niflung or Hniflung) is common to all of editions of this translation, and was the translators' decision, presumably to make the connection to the German Nibelung (as in "Nibelungen-lied," and Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung.")
One of these editions (Walter Scott, London, 1888) is the basis of the Kessinger e-book, which still includes a now very antiquated Introduction by W. Halliday Sparks. As of this writing, it seems to be available new only in digital format, a Kessinger hard-copy print, and a very expensive edition I managed to locate on Amazon UK. The present e-book has some distracting, but not catastrophic, misprints (possibly including the spelling of the title!) There are also problems with the Table of Contents links to the texts, which I've seen in other Kessinger editions, and seems to be a result of haste; in this case the introduction and opening chapters are treated as a unit. (Don't worry, everything is actually there.)
The translation did have a long-lasting paperback edition from Collier Books, beginning in 1962 (also published in a British edition as a Collier-Mac), which had a very good introduction dealing with the Victorian background, by Robert W. Gutman (an authority on Wagner). This may be available used. Unfortunately, like other popular editions, including the present e-book, it lacked the notes giving corrections and explanations later supplied by Magnusson, and incorporated in May Morris' edition of her father's "Collected Works" in 1911. (This set was reprinted in the 1990s, and copies can sometimes be found in libraries; I used a UCLA set of the original edition in the 1970s, and made corrections in my copy of the Collier version.)
The Morris-Magnusson translation has co-existed with a variety of later translations, most of which are, unfortunately, presently out of print as well (see below for the exception).
I will describe the 1870 translation, its qualities and defects, and then discuss the original work.
William Morris (1834-1896) was a Victorian Poet-Socialist-Industrial Designer-Decorator-Preservationist-Fantasy Novelist-etc., etc., who worked with the industrious (and often under-appreciated) Icelander Eirikur Magnusson (1833-1913) for a number of years. Shortly after finishing work on "Volsunga Saga" and several other pieces, Morris became one of the Victorian literary figures to undertake a then-difficult pilgrimage to Iceland (with personal consequences unrelated to the destination). There is an excellent recent account of both men, and their large and influential production of translations (some not published until after Morris' death), with full historical context, in Andrew Wawn's "The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-Century Britain."
Morris and Magnusson had the happy thought of including older versions of the story from the "Poetic Edda' (or "Elder Edda"), not then readily available in English translation; particularly those old poems barely summarized in the prose account, or omitted. They are included in the Kessinger edition, and should not be confused with the Saga itself, although the prose text encapsulates brief quotations from older verse accounts, some of them otherwise lost. Less wisely, the translators inserted some additional stanzas from Eddic poems where they fit into the narrative, and even one chapter-length "Lament," which is attractive, but changes the matter-of-fact impression given by later translations to something more emotionally charged. (And messes up the chapter-numbering, too.)
I have read most of the existing translations, and love the Morris-Magnusson version. But the language of the translation, although often beautiful, is rather alien to modern readers. Between Morris' actual mistakes, improvement in text editions, and advances in Icelandic studies, it hardly meets modern standards of reliability. (Even leaving aside the question of the interpolations.) And Morris' archaizing style in his saga translations (which he used elsewhere without Magnusson) suggests that the sagas' language is highly wrought and romantically lush, when, by all accounts, the style is notably sparse, and even severe.
Note, too, that as "The Story of the Volsungs and the Niblungs: With Certain Songs from the Elder Edda," by William Morris, with or without "Volsunga Saga," as a main or subtitle, the translation tends to be confused with Morris' own epic, "The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs" (1876). If that long, sometimes diffuse, but in some places very impressive poem is what you are looking for, the present work will be a disappointment! (There are digital editions of the epic poem available on-line, although not, I think, commercially.)
To illustrate the differences: a recent translator (Byock) offers "'There was a dwarf named Andvari,' said Regin, 'He was always in the waterfall called Andvari's Fall.'" Morris' archaizing English rendered this as "'Now,' says Regin, 'there was a dwarf called Andvari, who ever abode in that force, which was called Andvari's force....'" In the 1876 epic, this becomes:
There is a desert of dread in the uttermost part of the world,
Where over a wall of mountains is a mighty water hurled,
Whose hidden head none knoweth, nor where it meeteth the sea;
And that force is the force of Andvari, and an Elf of the Dark is he.
Which of the translations you prefer is largely a matter of taste, and you may find the verse more attractive than either; but whereas the first two are equivalent statements, Morris' epic poem very obviously is closer to Tennyson than it is to the saga, or, despite the alliteration, to the Edda. (Morris has also quietly picked up Jakob Grimm's identification of "Dark Elf" with "Dwarf," using to substitution to make a complex narrative a little clearer.)
Morris was not happy with Wagner's treatment of the story in "The Ring of the Nibelung," nor with the way it overshadowed his epic; but his translation of the saga has been linked to the operas in edition after edition. Not the least merit of Gutman's introduction was that it clarified for readers just why the stories didn't match up.
As to the story: "Volsunga Saga" is mainly about the ancestors and the deeds of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, his murder, and the following (implied and explicit) cycle of vengeance. There are some digressions to allow another then-famous hero, Helgi Hundings-bane, to be drawn into the cycle, as one of Sigurd's older half-brothers, a process already at work in the collection of poems (and linking prose) known as the Elder Edda.
As has been mentioned, Volsunga Saga was translated into English a number of times in the twentieth century; a reflection in part of its own qualities as a story, in part of the celebrity of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, portions of which are, rather loosely, based upon it -- as well as other Norse and German versions, and Wagner's own notions of what Germanic myths should have been.
"Volsung" is actually a kin-group name which has also (not very logically) become the personal name of one of the grandfathers of Sigurd, as seen in the genealogical chapters which, as usual, open the saga, leading into a major set of stories about Sigurd's father, Sigmundr son of Volsung, and Sigmundr's older sons, Sinfjotli and Helgi.
In the English "Beowulf," we find the (expected) forms Waelsing and (in Sigurd's dragon-slaying role) Sigemund son of Waels, with off-hand mentions of Fitela (the Sinfjotli of the Edda and the saga), and, elsewhere in the poem, of a Danish Halga, probably one of the several prototypes of Helgi the Volsung. Sigurd's brothers-in-law Gunnar and Hogni show up elsewhere in Old English as Guthhere and Hagena, and there are also allusions to Aetla of the Huns, Eormenric and Theodric, the saga's Atli, Jormunrekkr and Thidrek, history's Attila, Ermanaric, and Theodoric the Great. (Gunnar and his family have less prominent historical prototypes, too.)
This suggests that some Scandinavians, possibly the Icelanders themselves, were improvising a bit, elaborating on the Viking-Age traditions of their mainland ancestors, and related stories acquired later from Germany. (The joints are sometimes visible if you know where to look, but the Norwegian "Thidreks Saga" demonstrates just how some of the "southern" versions reached Iceland. In fact some passages from it were actually borrowed into the present work at some stage.) A distinctively Icelandic preference for complicated family histories and interweaving of causes and effects over generations may have been at work. For example, the dwarf Regin recruits Sigurd as his champion in a property dispute with his brother Fafnir, who, transformed into a dragon, guards the blood-price paid to Hreidmar, their father, for the killing of another shapeshifting brother, Otr the Otter, by Odin, Sigurd's divine ancestor. (The Edda and Saga versions of the confrontation seem take for granted the efficacy of dwarf-magic; the Victorian Morris explained in his epic that the gods were taken at a disadvantage, because "Ye have changed the world, and it bindeth with the right and the wrong ye have made / Nor may ye be gods henceforward save the rightful ransom be paid.")
This treasure had been extorted by Loki (Otter's actual killer) from Andvari, whose fish-form Loki had caught in a net. Andvari's curse on the last ring, "and all the gold withal" was immediately seen to be effective when Fafnir killed Hreidmar -- and apparently continued to work.
In this version, unlike the "Nibelungenlied," Gudrun avenges her brothers on Atli, who carries out a de facto vengeance for Sigurd motivated by his greed for the dragon-hoard which the Niflungs have retained. In the German version (wonderfully adapted to the silent screen by Fritz Lang), Siegfried's widow Kriemhild (= Sigurd, Gudrun) incites Etzel's vassals against her brothers -- a very different working out of the family tensions.
The tale is continued in the Saga beyond the fall of the "Niblungs" (very roughly the historical Burgundians and their king Gundaharius, victims of Hunnish attacks in 437) and the death of Atli (equally roughly Attila the Hun, d. 453), and linked through Gudrun, Sigurd's widow, to the story of Jormunrek (the pre-Hunnic Gothic king, Ermanaric, d. 375; mere chronological order doesn't come into it!). In a continuation found in the main manuscript of the saga, but not included in this or most other translations, Gudrun's line is continued to include the Viking-Age hero (and dragon-slayer) Ragnar Lodbrok, and his sons.
Even without the genealogical extension, the story continues well beyond the conclusion of the best-known alternate version, the German "Nibelungenlied," which stops short with the fatal conflict between Etzel (= Atli) and Gunther (Gunnar). And the Saga differs from the "Nibelungenlied" in more than chronological scope, major details of the plot, and in being in Old Icelandic prose rather than Middle High German verse. The Icelandic narrative is rich in a sense of personal honor offended, and legal precepts followed or ignored, in places where the German account is very much concerned with the outer signs of rank and feudal hierarchy. Both, although fantastic narratives in places, are reflective of medieval reality; but different realities.
As indicated, "Volsunga Saga" was translated into English a number of times in the twentieth century. A very good version by Jesse L. Byock is currently available in paperback from both University of California Press and Penguin Classics (see my review of it for details of other translations as well.) This multiplication of translations reflects in part its own qualities as a story, in part the celebrity of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, portions of which are, rather loosely, based upon it, as well as other Norse and German versions, and Wagner's own notions of what Germanic myths should have been. And, more recently, publishers have drawn attention to some important, but tangential, relations to "Lord of the Rings" as a selling-point as well.
This may attract readers who otherwise wouldn't bother looking, but it really doesn't need such help, at least for those with a little patience with some unfamiliar story-telling techniques. And not all that unfamiliar -- the Icelandic predilection for turning everything into a web of familial and neighborhood disputes isn't all that far from soap operas.
Well, soap operas with swords pulled from trees (not stones), Dwarf-Smiths, talking dragons, werewolves, cursed rings, gods, valkyries, and the like.
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