SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
The real problem here is, perhaps, an underlying feeling that to
talk of fate and honour - let alone of kinship and blood - is
inextricably bound up with National Socialist attitudes, and that
they are therefore topics to be eschewed. The ancient Germanic
peoples were not Nazis, but the importance of the blood link (blood
thought of not in terms of race but of kin) along with the
associated idea of honour upheld by vengeance must surely have
played a vital role in the "aristocratic" life and poetry of the
times, to judge by much that has come down to us. And the
"ethic of the blood" is essentially negative and (self-)destruetivethe
author himself speaks of the hero faced with decisions who, in
an intoxication of self-assertion, gives himself over to death (p. 22).
The fact that much of the early poetry must have been composed
by and for (nominal) Christians does not necessarily affect the
issue - the impact of the new faith on an ancient ethos hardly
resulted in massive conversions akin to that of Saul.
Professor von See devotes a chapter to Christian elements in
heroic legend and argues forcibly against the idea of a deliberate
suppression of heroic legend by the Church and incidentally also
against the commonly held view that the lost collection of lays
made, according to Einhard, by Charlemagne had anything to do
with ancient Germanic days: they would have dealt, the author
thinks, with Charlemagne's own ancestors and predecessors
in office, He also rejects the theory that the Waltharius story,
despite its Christian elements, is simply a creation of the monastic
mind and was unknown to genuine Germanic tradition. He sees
Beowulfas conveying an essentially Christian message, and points
to certain Christian traits in the Poetic Edda. In the various
pictorial representations of heroic themes (to which a whole
chapter, with illustrations, is devoted) he sees, on the whole, more
of Christianity than of paganism, and so necessarily rejects the
theories of Karl Hauck.
Here and there we also find passing references to classical
influence on heroic legend, e.g. the clear parallel between the
Weiand story and Daedalus, though possible classical parallels
to the grisly banquet served up to Atli by Guorun are not
mentioned (e.g. Ovid's tale of Tereus and Procne). Julius
Schwietering's conjecture that the Goths might have learnt something
of Greek heroic lays through contact with Greek traders in
the Black Sea area is not thrown completely out of court.
Professor von See considers that the Nibelungenlied and other
later German heroic poems do not come within the scope of his
book because they are not strictly speaking Germanic in that the
material is no longer seen "with Germanic eyes" Some,
depending on the precise definition of "Germanic", could take