There's a lot of talk of gold in the trenches even more talk I think. The violence is always shown to be problematic you can't really deal with an aggressor like Zeke read in a non violent way so the violence is necessary. When secret bathes in the blood he becomes his own skin become scaly like that of a dragon right and he starts and the book onions as well when they drink this blood they start like losing all that manners like you know you begin to wonder where it really is the difference between human and animal. Why do you think they wanted to shed so much blood in the poem or show much so much blood shed? To up the stakes.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Song of the Nibelungs, a twelfth century German epic, full of blood, violence, fantasy and bleakness. It is a foundational work of medieval literature, drawing on the myths of Scandinavia and central Europe. The poem tells of two couples, Siegfried and Kriemhild and Gunther and Brunhilda, whose lives are destroyed by lies and revenge. It was extremely popular in its time, sometimes rewritten with happier endings, and was rediscovered by German Romantics and has since been drawn from selectively by Wagner, Fritz Lang and, infamously, the Nazis looking to support ideas on German heritage.
The image above is of Siegfried seeing Kriemhild for the first time, a miniature from the Hundeshagenschen Code manuscript dating from 15th Century.
With
Sarah Bowden
Reader in German and Medieval Studies at King’s College London
Mark Chinca
Professor of Medieval German and Comparative Literature at the University of Cambridge
And
Bettina Bildhauer
Professor of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews
Producer: Simon Tillotson