The Nibelungenlied

This is a version of the legend on which Wagner's ring cycle is based. A. T. Hatto has translated the thirteenth-century poem - purported to be the greatest of German medieval epics - into businesslike prose. The narration is brisk and direct, with no use of suspense. Indeed the grim ending is given away in the first chapter:

In the land of the Burgundians there grew up a maiden of high lineage, so fair that none in any land could be fairer. Her name was Kriemhild. ...The time came when she was wed with honour to a very brave warrior... What terrible vengeance she took on her nearest kinsmen for slaying him in days to come! For his one life there died many a mother's son.

The doomed husband-to-be is Prince Siegfried, who travels to Burgundy when he hears of Kriemhild's beauty. With his matchless strength and his cloak of invisibility, Siegfried helps Kriemhild's brother, King Gunther, to win the fierce Icelandic queen Brunhild (and subsequently to woo her, in a scene which pretty thoroughly offends both chivalrous and feminist sensibilities). In return for this help, King Gunther agrees that Siegfried may marry Kriemhild.

This happy state of affairs does not last, for Siegfried impudently stole a ring and a girdle from Brunhild while he was invisibly assisting Gunther. A spat between the two queens reveals Siegfried's possession of the items, which has unseemly implications. Brunhild's allies murder Siegfried in retaliation for the scandal. Kriemhild eventually achieves her revenge, and the epic ends with a bloodbath that leaves over a thousand dead.

Reading the Nibelungenlied gives a glimpse into an alien culture, a society in which it is common courtesy to crowd around and jostle strangers to show that they are welcome. What caught my attention was the poet's emphasis on clothes. Clothes are brought up constantly: for example, a wedding is shown to be a grand event because every guest is wearing brand-new clothes. Before anything important can happen, the first step seems to be to put on splendid clothes.

Clothes are important for us, too. But as far as I can tell, in the Nibelungenlied clothes are not valued for self-expression, or fashion even. Clothes are important solely and supremely as a signal of wealth; of status.

And status has weighty implications for medieval kings and their vassals. So maybe a lesson that can be drawn from the epic is the potential fragility of the feudal system. After all, the catalyst of the entire tragedy is Brunhild's confusion about Siegfried's social standing. Tampering even slightly with the network of loyalties that is supposed to maintain stability has violent consequences.