Wagner and Iceland

Wagner's grand opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen returns to the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Saturday in Robert LePage's excitingly technological production. We all know the story, with its stirring Wotan, evil dwarf Alberich, tragic valkyrie Brünnhilde, heroic Siegfried and the cruel dragon he slays. It's the German National Epic.

Even if Wagner's main sources were not ultimately German.

They were Icelandic.

Who is Wotan? None other than the God of Wednesday, Odin. And if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll know that the main source for stories of Odin is the 13th-century Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson.

In a well-known letter from 1856, Wagner jotted down the names of ten books that inspired him to write The Ring. 

Number three was Jacob Grimm’s German Mythology of 1835, which cites Snorri Sturluson's Edda, the Poetic Edda, Snorri's Heimskringla, and other Icelandic sagas. (In fact, if you take the Icelandic sources out of German Mythology, all that's left is an empty shell.)

Number four on Wagner's list was "Edda" (like most people at the time, he didn't discriminate between Snorri's Edda and the Poetic Edda).

Number five was the Icelandic Volsunga Saga, which Snorri did not write, but which was written in Iceland at roughly the same time Snorri was active. (Some scholars say it is earlier than Snorri's sagas, some say later.)

Number ten on Wagner's list was Heimskringla, Snorri's collection of sixteen sagas about the kings of Norway.

Wagner made this list just after completing Das Rheingold and Die Walküre; he wouldn’t finish Siegfried until 1871 and Götterdämmerung until 1874. The first full performance of the four-opera cycle was in 1876.

It was twenty-five years in the making. The idea for a cycle of operas based on Siegfried—or Sigurd—the Dragon-slayer and the accursed gold ring of the dwarves came to Wagner in 1851. A German translation of the Poetic Edda and some tales from Snorri’s Edda, he wrote, “drew me irresistibly to the Nordic sources of these myths,” the most expansive being the Icelandic Volsunga Saga.

Wagner had, three years before, written a libretto called Siegfried's Death based on the medieval German Nibelungenlied, or "Song of the Nibelungs." This libretto, according to Edward Haymes in his book Wagner's Ring in 1848, is quite similar to Götterdämmerung; "in fact," Haymes told me, "some of the scenes are taken over verbatim."

But Wagner wasn't satisfied. Only after he had discovered what he called "the Nordic sources," Wagner said, "did I recognise the possibility of making him [Siegfried] the hero of a drama; a possibility that had not occurred to me while I only knew him from the medieval Nibelungenlied."

The German "Song of the Nibelungs" was written at about the same time as Snorri was writing his Edda in Icelandic (c. 1220-1241). Some of the same characters appear: Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer (Wagner's Siegfried), Brynhild (Brünnhilde), Gudrun (Gutrune). But half of the "Song" takes place after their deaths; it has no counterpart in Wagner's Ring.

And much that Wagner loved about the Sigurd story exists only in the Icelandic sources: the dragon, the ring, the valkyries, the sibyl; the characters of Odin and the other gods, the giants, the dwarfs, Idunn’s apples, the rainbow bridge, the magical helmet, Valhalla, the Twilight of the Gods.

In his 2003 book, Wagner and the Volsungs: Icelandic Sources of Der Ring des Nibelungen (which is online here: http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Wagner.pdf), Icelandic scholar Arni Björnsson concludes that 80 percent of Wagner’s motifs are Icelandic. Five percent are German. Most of the remaining 15 percent are shared, appearing in both the Icelandic and German sources, though some—like the Rhine Maidens—are Wagner’s own invention, for he was nothing if not creative.

Like Snorri, Wagner took bits and pieces of myth and made of them something magical.

Join me again next Wednesday at nancymariebrown.blogspot.com for another adventure in Iceland or the medieval world. And don't forget to enter the raffle for a free, autographed copy of Song of the Vikings. For details, click here.

Snorri Sturluson, the Homer of the North

Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths has reached that delightful stage called “advance reader copies,” or ARCs—delightful for the writer because I get to see the final cover design, read my publisher’s description of the book, and (best of all) relish the first readers’ comments, or blurbs.

How Palgrave Macmillan describes Song of the Vikings:

“Snorri Sturluson, the thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain who gave us Odin, Loki, and Thor, was as unruly as the Norse gods he created.

“Much like Greek and Roman mythology, Norse myths are still with us. Famous storytellers from JRR Tolkien to Neil Gaiman have drawn their inspiration from tales of the long-haired, mead-drinking, marauding and pillaging Vikings. Their creator is a thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain by the name of Snorri Sturluson. Like Homer, Snorri was a bard, collecting and embellishing the folklore and pagan legends of medieval Scandinavia. Unlike Homer, Snorri was a man of the world—a wily political power player. One of the richest men in Iceland, he came close to ruling it and even closer to betraying it… In Song of the Vikings, author Nancy Marie Brown brings Snorri Sturluson’s story to life.”

Snorri by Gustav Vigeland. 
At Reykholt.

The first blurbs:

Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne, wrote:

“For readers who’ve long sensed that older winds blow through the works of their beloved Tolkien, Song of the Vikings is a fitting refresher on Norse mythology. Without stripping these dark tales of their magic, Nancy Marie Brown shows how mere humans shape myths that resonate for centuries—and how one brilliant scoundrel became, for all time, the Homer of the North.”

Scott Weidensaul, author of The First Frontier, said:

“In medieval Iceland, one of the most remote corners of the known Earth, a very un-Viking Norseman named Snorri Sturluson crafted the heroic mythology on which rests everything from Wagner’s Ring cycle and the Brothers Grimm to Tolkien (who considered Snorri’s work more central to English literature than Shakespeare’s) and even the evils of Nazism. In Song of the Vikings, Nancy Marie Brown brings to vivid life this age of poetic Viking skalds, of blood feuds and vengeance raids, of royal intrigue and fierce independence, when the barren, beautiful landscape of the North was haunted by trolls, giants, and dragons—all of which Snorri, the most important writer the world ever forgot, captured for eternity.”

Why are ARCs delightful?

Because they got it. “Unruly” is the perfect word to describe Snorri Sturluson and his creations—and I didn’t think of it. “How mere humans shape myths” is an excellent summary of my theme—again, I wish I’d written it. A medieval Icelander influenced Wagner, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Tolkien, the Nazis—yes, that’s the point I was making, that and the importance of not forgetting a great and influential (if unruly) writer.

Song of the Vikings won’t be in bookstores until October, but I’ll be sharing more about it in posts throughout the summer and early fall. Meanwhile, I’m planning my book tour. If you’d like me to visit your library, local bookstore, bookclub, or school, please let me know.

And if you’re lucky enough to attend Book Expo America in New York next week, stop by the Palgrave Macmillan booth and pick up an ARC of Song of the Vikings. 

Lord of the Ring of the Nibelungs

My biography of the Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, Song of the Viking: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myth, has just gone into production at Palgrave-MacMillan. The official publication date is October 30. (Loud cheers and hurrahs!) Here’s an attempt I made to explain Snorri’s importance. Clever readers will also see that it explains the name of this blog, “God of Wednesday”:

  

Peter Jackson’s long-awaited film of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is in production in New Zealand.

“Das Rheingold,” the first episode in the Metropolitan Opera’s thrilling new production of Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle, “The Ring of the Nibelungs,” is being sung in New York tonight.

What do these cultural blockbusters have in common, besides dwarves, dragons and awe-inspiring technological wizardry?

The obvious answer is a magic ring.

Tolkien categorically denied any connection. In a letter to his publisher in 1961, he slammed the Swedish edition of The Lord of the Rings, the sequel to The Hobbit. When the translator opined, “The Ring is in a certain way ‘der Nibelungen Ring,’” Tolkien scoffed: “Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.”

The translator’s theory was “a farrago of nonsense,” Tolkien wrote. “He is welcome to the rubbish, but I do not see that he, as a translator, has any right to unload it here.”

Yet connecting the two artists is neither rubbish nor nonsense. Both Tolkien and Wagner based their fantastical worlds on the writings of a thirteenth-century Icelander, Snorri Sturluson.

In 1851 a German translation of Snorri’s Edda and parts of the Poetic Edda was given to Wagner. A later German poem, the “Nibelungenlied,” is often thought to be Wagner’s inspiration, particularly since his “Ring,” first performed in 1876, became the ultimate expression of Germanic folk culture. But a point-by-point comparison shows Wagner to be more indebted to Snorri.

In the 1920s, while teaching at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien tried to add Snorri to the English canon. He argued that reading Old Icelandic was more important than reading Shakespeare—Icelandic was more influential, more central to our language and our modern world.

Snorri, son of Sturla, was a lover of poetry, a writer of history and saga, and a teller of myths. One of the richest chieftains in Iceland in the early 1200s, he could call up armies of thousands. He himself was not a fighter, but bought favors or won them at law. He had few scruples, and could out-argue anyone. He was fat, troubled by gout, given to soaking long hours in his hot tub while drinking stout ale—not a Viking warrior by any stretch of the imagination. Shortly after finishing his classic books in 1241, he was murdered cowering in his cellar: He had betrayed Iceland’s other chieftains and made a pact with the king of Norway, selling out Iceland’s independence so he himself could be called an earl. And then, rather foolishly, he had betrayed the king.

Yet his work lives on. He may be the most influential writer you’ve never heard of. His Edda may be the most important book you’ve never read.

A 1909 translation calls it “the deep and ancient wellspring of Western culture.”

All the stories we know of the Vikings’ pagan religion—the Norse myths of Valhalla and the Valkyries, the World Tree Yggdrasil, the Rainbow Bridge, Ragnarok or the Twilight of the Gods—come from Snorri. He is our major, and often our only, source.

Without Snorri, we would know next to nothing about the god for whom Wednesday was named (Odin, Wagner’s Wotan). Ditto Tuesday (Tyr), Thursday (Thor), and Friday (Freyja or Frigg).

The history of Scandinavia in the Viking Age (roughly 793 to 1066) we know almost entirely through Snorri. With his vivid portraits of kings and sea-kings, raiders and traders, he created the archetype of the Viking: the tall, blond, independent warrior who laughs in the face of death.

And from Snorri’s books springs modern fantasy. All the novels, films, video games, board games, role-playing games, and on-line multi-player games that seem to borrow their elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards, and warrior women from The Lord of the Rings have, in fact, derived them from Snorri and the Icelandic literature Tolkien so loved.

In 2013 The Hobbit is forecast to arrive on the big screen. If you miss tonight’s “Das Rheingold,” you can guarantee your seats to next season’s complete “Ring of the Nibelungs” performances by subscribing to the Met’s 2012-13 season. When the magic of the rings envelops you, give a thought to an Icelander from long ago. Because of Snorri Sturluson’s wizardry with words, our modern culture is enriched by Northern fantasy.

Learn more about the Met's Ring series here: 

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/season/subscriptions/ring/index.aspx?type=next

Keep up with Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" here: 

http://www.thehobbitblog.com/?cat=1

Photos: Statue of Snorri Sturluson by Gustav Vigeland at Reyholt. Snorri by Christian Krogh.


For more about Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myth, stay tuned. I'll post the cover as soon as it's available. Have a place you want me to include on my book tour? Please contact me.