Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.12.2007, Qupperneq 9

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. desember 2007 • 9
Icelandic literature and Wagner’s Ring cycle
Leif Nordholm
Dr. Árni Björnsson was surprised some years ago to fi nd that no one
had systematically studied
the literary origins of Richard
Wagner’s Ring cycle. When he
did so himself he discovered
that 80 per cent of the motifs in
this series of four operas are de-
rived solely from Icelandic lit-
erature. He explores this topic
in his 2003 book, Wagner and
the Völsungs.
Wagner’s Icelandic sources
were the topic of Árni’s lecture
on September 27. This was the
third talk in a three-part Beck
lecture series at the University
of Victoria.
Most of the audience was
made up of UVic music stu-
dents. Music professor Dr.
Michelle Fillion was excited
to hear about this lecture, and
invited Árni to present it to her
class. Afterwards she remarked
that it had been “very enlight-
ening.”
The best evidence for
Árni’s discovery comes from
Wagner himself, who admitted
that he did not see the possibil-
ity of treating Siegfried as a
hero until he read Old Icelan-
dic stories. Siegfried as a hero
was “a possibility that had not
occurred to me while I only
knew him from the medieval
Nibelungenlied,” said the Ger-
man composer.
Árni’s research has shown
that only fi ve per cent of the
Ring cycle story is based sole-
ly on German literature, while
15 per cent is common to both
German and Icelandic litera-
ture. The remainder can be
traced exclusively to Icelandic
sources. This fi nding may seem
surprising until we remember
that the Nibelungenlied lacks
gods, Norns and valkyries.
Thus Brünnhilde, for ex-
ample, derives from the Poetic
Edda. And, as one of Árni’s
images suggested, her moun-
tain ringed with fi re suggests
an Icelandic volcano — es-
pecially in a 19th-century en-
graving.
The Icelandic works that
Wagner used included the
Prose Edda, the Poetic Edda,
the Saga of the Völsungs, Gis-
li’s Saga, and Þiðreks saga.
These became available to
Wagner through German trans-
lations that appeared in the
course of the 19th century. But
why was it that these transla-
tions appeared? Why were the
Germans infl uenced by Icelan-
dic mythology?
Árni informed us that inter-
est in the Icelandic sagas was
created by the demoralization
caused by Germany’s humilia-
tion by Napoleonic France. The
French were a united country,
whereas Germany was com-
posed of numerous states, some
large, many small, each jealous
of its independence. A Ger-
manic mythology was needed
to unite the nation.
Jacob Grimm used the term
“Pan-Germanic” to refer to
the culture of the north which
he viewed as unitary. Unfortu-
nately its “revival” was all too
successful. The national myth
to which Grimm and Wagner
contributed, Árni says, could
be turned to terrible ends, such
as the patriotism that made Na-
zism possible.
The sources of the mythol-
ogy of the Ring cycle are most-
ly the Icelandic Eddas. In these
you can learn about the gods.
“The mythological gods like
Óðinn, Þór and Freyja — they
were our personal buddies,
similar to Tarzan or Harry Pot-
ter today.” The purpose of tran-
scribing the Eddas was not to
present old Nordic pagan myth,
but to teach young poets how to
make poetry. The poetry exist-
ed primarily to tell the stories.
“Religion,” says Árni, “doesn’t
make you a good poet.”
Eddic poems, says Árni, are
works of art, not religious texts
like the Bible. It has only been
in the last two to three centu-
ries that people have treated the
Eddas as religious texts. In an
interview Árni said, “it is my
opinion that people overesti-
mate the religious side of art,
such as the paintings of Leon-
ardo da Vinci. It was his duty
— he was paid to make The
Last Supper. Was he himself
was very religious? I doubt it.”
On the topic of what moti-
vated the Icelanders to record
these important stories, Árni
referred back to his lecture on
misconceptions about Iceland.
He said that the reason was not
that the Icelanders had bigger
brains than their continental
counterparts, or that they were
bored and isolated during cold,
dark winters. The main reason
was this: when writing was
introduced into Iceland, its
society was more democratic
than were societies elsewhere
in Europe at the same moment
in their cultural histories. It is
this that explains the Icelandic
manuscripts to which we owe
our knowledge of Old Icelan-
dic literature — the subject
of some of Árni’s memorable
slides.
Still today in modern Ice-
land, Prose Edda extracts are a
part of the primary school cur-
riculum. As Árni commented,
“when the short version of
Wagner’s Ring was performed
in Reykjavík 13 years ago, you
could hear an old person in the
theatre whispering: ‘But this is
not correct! It was not like this
in my schoolbook! This Wag-
ner must have misunderstood
something!’”
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PHOTO: TRISH BAER
Dr. Árni Björnsson spoke as part of the Beck Lecture series.