Fate In The Song Of The Nibelungs

The inescapable grasp of fate is persistent throughout the tale of those who gained so much and lost so much. The court of Burgundy becomes undone by factors of their own greed and wants. But is it written in the stars that tragedy would come through their court or was it perpetuated by their own selfish actions? There is evidence that would strongly support the outcomes are decided long before the action is initiated, but there are also scenes where character’s actions are clearly going to come back around and affect them negatively. “The Song of the Nibelungs” has prophetic dreams and mythological insights into the future, but there is not a time where a character sees their future and successfully changes or maintains their behavior

In the vision, there is a falcon that has been reared by the queen. In front of her, this falcon was torn to death by two eagles. She interpreted this to mean that she should not marry, for whoever she was wed to would surely end up violently losing their life. “Till death, and no man’s love shall bring me misery.” (page 45) The image that is presented shows a falcon, a bird of prey usually considered to be near the very top of the food chain, being attacked by birds that are only slightly bigger and in greater quantity. Kriemhild does wed. In perhaps her own arrogance or hubris, but she decides to go back on what she had vowed, a mistake that many characters make throughout the poem. Perhaps it is the crossing of fate that sets an individual up for failure in the grandiose fashion that appropriate to their lifestyles. Characters in the work have a tendency to make choices that directly contradict vows and promises that they have made earlier. Hagan becomes the undoing of a man he swore to protect (page 187) and it leads him down a path that twists him into a different being than the one we were presented with in the beginning. The lack of consistency is often what becomes the down fall for these characters. The majority of the character development has the individual becoming less trusting or more nefarious. In Kriemhild’s case, fate showed her the future as the falcon being

The less a character wants to be the big hero in the situation the kinder fate will be to them. An example of this is in the union of Brunhild and Gunther. Gunther is so enamored by Brunhild that he is willing to deceive her and fate with the help of Sigfrid. I think that it is possible to deceive fate, but not for any prolonged amount of time. Gunther did end up with what he wanted, but he was not sincere in his approach, disregarded the courtly, and to a lesser extent the heroic, nature of the challenge that Brunhild set up. Those who attempt to deceive the fates meet the same ending. Gunther and Hagan are both exposed as figures that were held very highly when they were introduced, but degenerate into characters that the reader/listener must work to distinguish as a much darker characters. The opposition to what omens dictate will happen, shows that there is some notion of having more control that one actually does. The greed that exists in this type of character denatures them and makes them brasher than the average middle High German. Perhaps these men think that they possess so much power that causation does not affect them or that they will somehow become powerful enough to overthrow the cosmic chain events, but all attempts result with the same outcome, death at without true achievement of the individual’s goals. Those who are portrayed as courtly figures still have