The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One (17 page)

“What is it,” Jude said strangely, sitting upright. “What are you seeing, Michael?”

The historian remained in his trance a moment more, then shook it off. “Sorry—I had a flash of something there, but it’s gone, now. What was I saying?”

“The didactic poems?” Galen said.

“Right, thanks. The
Vafthrudismal
is equally valuable as source of myth. In it, the disguised Odin visits the aged giant, Vafthrudnir, to test his wisdom, and they enter into a contest of wits, in which each wagers his head.

“The giant went first, and Odin answered admirably. When it was Odin’s turn to ask the questions, the giant answered seventeen of them correctly, and doing so told of the origins of, well, the origins of everything. Then, Odin’s eighteenth question defeats him—Odin discloses his own identity by asking what he himself had whispered into Balder’s ear before he went to the funeral pyre, and as no one but Odin can answer this, the giant’s head was forfeit.

“It’s here where briefly, Thor comes into the picture, and in his turn, told how he had beaten the giants, claiming the whole world would be overrun by them were it not for him—at least, that’s the traditional telling.”

“And in the
Prime Edda
?” Galen asked.

“It seems the author or authors were still devoutly pagan, but also a little skeptical of their gods—here, Odin lost the contest and returned to Valhalla as a disembodied head, and Thor was eaten by the giants. Again, the Christian imagery is absent—Odin does not recover his body, as other myths influenced by religion would have allowed, and Thor—well, Thor just stays eaten.”

Michael shifted stacks and dug into a different set of notes, spilling half on the floor. In his head Galen revised his estimate of Michael’s necessary funding upwards the cost of a secretary.

“In the Codex Regius,” Michael said, having attained a semblance of order, “which is what we call the principal manuscript of Saemund’s
Edda
—which until now has been one of the chief manuscripts of the
Edda
—the title Havamal is applied to a collection of about one hundred and sixty strophes, or divided poetic sections. In applying this title, the author showed that he regarded all of these strophes as the words of Odin himself.”

“Headlines,” Jude remarked, grinning.

Galen snorted his drink, and Michael laughed heartily.

“Yeah—in our
Edda
, anyway. Whether the author of the Regius was right or wrong, it’s plain that the collection includes some six poems, or fragments, about various subjects and of questionable origin. In the
Prime Edda
, however, there is no question, as there are fully twelve poems, and almost two hundred strophes.

“If we could know the ages of the mythical lays and where they originated, we would be better able to evaluate them as sources of religious history—and these come close. I can date them to the seventh century, if not earlier.”

“That sure takes the wind out of the Codex Regius,” remarked Jude.

“And it destroys a popular theory that many of the Eddaic lays were Norwegian, and were written in the twelfth century,” said Michael. “Whether or not Sturluson had such lays in written form, it’s plain that he believed them to be very old—which suggests that even the latest of them were composed some generations before his time. We know now they were, and more, we know by who.”

“Do we have to ask?” Galen said.

“Just perfecting my presentation technique,” Michael said with a wink at Jude. “The author of the
Prime Edda
is Bragi Boddason.”

* * *

“Bragi Boddason, or Bragi the Old, as he was called, was the first to whom poetry in Scaldic form is ascribed. Bragi’s chief surviving poem is the
Ragnarsdrapa
, of which twenty strophes and half-strophes are preserved in Snorri’s
Edda
. In the
Prime Edda
, there are three hundred.”

“My God,” said Galen. “Are you sure? It’s really that complete?”

“Complete, I can’t promise—better than any other manuscript in existence by a far sight, you can bet your ass.”

“In the traditional poem, Bragi describes the pictures painted on a shield said to be given to him by Ragnar Lobrok, describing scenes from legend and myth which included Gefjun’s plough, and Thor’s struggle with the World Serpent, etcetera. In this set, Bragi’s poems are far broader, beginning with his romance with the Volsupan Sibyl.”

“From the
Elder
Edda
?” Jude queried.

“Yes!” Michael said excitedly. “Bragi is the connection, don’t you see? He’s the one who ties together the myth and history of all of the scope of both
Edda
s—the first description was the best. This is the
Prime Edda
, in every sense of the term.”

Michael paused to let that sink in. All three of them knew that that measure was the one which mattered—the lynchpin on which everything to come after would hang.

Jude seemed oddly passive, as if he was not entirely surprised, but Galen had adopted the countenance of a starving man who suddenly finds a cut of the rarest beef appear before him.

“Several other sources,” Michael said, continuing, “make mention of a god of poetry called Bragi—that he was the Scaldic poet promoted to godhead after death. If these works were seen to any degree before they disappeared into antiquity, then it’s no wonder—he would have been the primary source of all of the religious beliefs of centuries.”

“That’s probably what happened,” said Galen. “The priests who were corrupting the old mythologies would have certainly broken up any volume as complete as this—and the fragments which survived are what have been known until now.”

“That’s my thinking too,” said Michael.

“Here’s a second mystery, then,” put in Jude. “If it took the greatest historical literary scholar months to decipher this …” —Michael beamed uncontrollably— “… then how is it a composer managed to do it well enough to give it the name ‘
Prime Edda
’?”

Michael’s face fell. “Ah, you know, I never quite figured that one out,” he admitted. “Liszt had the manuscript first, that much we know, but there’s no telling how long he had it before giving it to Richard Wagner, nor how long Wagner had it after that. I can tell you that they must have read it thoroughly, as portions of the version of the
Ring Cycle
written here refer directly to correlative events I’ve only seen here.”

“Why would they have such a thing and not tell anyone?” Galen asked. “How could no mention of it been made at all?”

“Of all the questions I expected you to ask,” Jude said brusquely, “that is by far the stupidest.”

Galen turned red. “Now look here … Jude …” he began.

“Think about it—how many people have you told of this?”

Galen was silent. The only other people who were even vaguely aware of the existence of the
Prime Edda
were Michael’s assistants—and even they were only given one of the three translations apiece to work with—never the whole manuscript.

“That’s right,” said Jude softly. “If Wagner did have this, he would have used it to his advantage, and his alone. Given the constant precarious financial state of the Bayreuth Festival, I can’t really say I blame him.”

“What about the Wagner translation?” Galen said, abruptly switching gears. “How has it come out?”

“Quite well,” said Michael, reaching for another sheaf of papers. “As can be expected, it relies very heavily on the
Nibelungenlied
itself, but there were aspects to the Siegfried myths which could only be gleaned from the
Prime Edda
.

“The poem itself goes back to deep history, and unites the monumental fragments of half-forgotten myths and historical personages into a poem that is essentially Germanic in character. That the poem must have been exceedingly popular during the Middle Ages is evidenced by the great number of manuscripts that have come down to us—in all twenty-eight more or less complete manuscripts, preserved in thirty-one fragments, fifteen of which date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

“Of all these, only nine are so well preserved that, in spite of some minor breaks, they can be considered complete, and of this number, only three are looked upon as having any real historical value at all.

“As to the date of the poem, it is believed that in its present form it cannot go back further than about 1190, because of the exactness of the rhymes. That may be true of the preserved versions, but not of the original source, which has never been found. Many painstaking attempts have been made to discover the identity of the writer of our poem, but I think we’ve solved that one, too.”

“Bragi?” Galen asked.

“Yes—in the second set of strophes.”

Galen emitted a low whistle. This was getting richer by the minute—in several senses of the word.

“How can you qualify that?” Jude asked.

“The story of Siegfried,” Michael continued, explaining, “which lies at the basis of our poem, predates the
Nibelungenlied
by many centuries, each people and each generation telling it in its own fashion, adding new elements of its own invention. This great geographical distribution of the legend, and the variety of forms in which it appears, made it difficult to know where to seek its origin.

“The northern version is in many respects older and simpler in form than the German, but still it is believed that Norway may not have been the home of the saga, which instead came to prominence in Germany along the banks of the Rhine. The Scandinavian version of the Siegfried legend, however, has been handed down to us in five different forms, but only three were direct enough retellings or were uncorrupted enough by Christianity to be of any use.

“The first of these is the
Elder
Edda
, which is partly heroic, and partly mythological in character. It’s written in alliterative strophes interspersed with prose, and has the form of dialogues, among which we find a number of songs which deal with the adventures of Siegfried.“The second source of the Siegfried story is the so-called ‘
Volsungasaga’
, a prose paraphrase of the ‘
Edda
’ songs. It dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, but the account was probably written a century earlier. This one is important because it supplies a portion of the Codex Regius which has been lost, and thus furnishes us with the contents of the missing songs.

“The third source is Sturluson—he was acquainted with both the poetic
Edda
and the
Volsungasaga
, and follows these accounts closely. It recounts only briefly the Siegfried saga, but is considered an original source since it made use of previously unknown songs that give an account of the origin of the treasure.

“The story as given in the older Norse versions is in most respects more original than in the
Nibelungenlied
. It relates the history of the treasure of the Nibelungs, tracing it back to a giant who received it from the god Loki as a compensation for the killing of the former’s son whom Loki had slain in the form of an otter. Loki obtained the ransom from a dwarf named Alberich, who in turn had stolen it from the river gods of the Rhine. Alberich pronounces a terrible curse upon the treasure and its possessors, and this curse passes from Loki to the giant, who is murdered when asleep by his other two sons, one of whom cheated the other out of the coveted prize by, and who carried it away to the heath, where he guards it in the form of a dragon.

“This treasure, with its accompanying curse, next passes into the hands of a human named Siegfried, a descendant of the race of the Volsungs, who trace their history back to Odin—but where the
Nibelungenlied
stops with the death of the Nibelungs, the
Ring
continues with the principal conflict added by Wagner from the other sources—the conflict between Hagen and Siegfried.

“It’s generally acknowledged that this version of the story, though more original than the German tradition, does not represent the simplest and most original form of the tale; but what the original form was, has never been known.”

“Until now,” said Jude, anticipating where Michael was going.

“Until now,” Michael affirmed. “In the
Prime Edda
, Bragi created a foundation myth for Siegfried, and attempted to present the story in simplest terms—which still got twisted about in later versions. One aspect saw in the story the personification of the forces of nature—the other sought a more purely human origin for the tale, namely, a quarrel among relatives for the possession of treasure. According to Bragi, the nucleus of the Siegfried myth is the old story of the murder of relatives.”

“Fascinating,” said Galen. “Hagen and Siegfried as Cain and Abel.”

“Or Hagen and Attila,” said Michael, “since the enemy of Hagen is always married to Hagen’s sister Grimhild. It’s useless to try connecting the date of such an episode with something from actual history—murders such as that frequently occurred, and could be localized anywhere. The heart of the legend, however, has traditionally been the enmity between relatives, which exists in two forms: the one in which the son-in-law kills his father-in-law, and the other in which Hagen kills his son-in-law and is killed by him, too. But Bragi indicated that both the Norse and the German versions have forgotten the original connection between the two stories—the common motive of the treasure.

“This is the crux of Bragi’s accountings of the legend, and, I believe, the one which Wagner was integrating into his Ring.”

“That’s it, “ Galen exclaimed, rising. “That’s the heart of what Wagner was doing—in all of the other tales, the treasure itself was merely incidental, but Wagner intended to return it to the fore, the way it was originally meant to be.”

“How was it done, Michael? How did Wagner frame it?” Jude asked.

“He wanted to present it as a year-myth—a myth of cycles,” said Michael. “The dragon is the symbol of winter, and the dwarfs of darkness, while Siegfried represents the bright summer, and his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winter. When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of winter—and somehow—it’s unclear in what way—Siegfried uses the treasure in some way to accomplish this.”