The Icelandic Hǫgni: The Re-imagining of a Nibelung Hero in the Eddic Tradition

Abstract

Much critical attention has been paid to the character of Hagen in the Nibelungenlied and much ink spilt in various attempts to reconcile the murderer of the early part of the poem with the heroic warrior of the latter âventiures. 2 Franz Bäuml identified Hagen as "the archetypal 'dark figure'", a concept he defined as: ambiguous, a combination of significant virtue with significant evil for a purpose which may itself be ambiguous, but the achievement of which demands a capacity of understanding, evaluation, knowing which exceeds that of other figures. Both, the combination of significant virtue and evil, and the superior knowledge and understanding of the figure, imply a certain demonic ingredient. (Bäuml 1986, 89) Certain analogues of the German Hagen, such as Efnysien in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, also demonstrate just such a mixture of evil and virtue; Efnysien, halfbrother of Brân, king of Britain, senselessly mutilates the horses of the Irish king, Matholwch, upon learning that he is to marry his sister, Branwen, and later murders Gwern, his sister's son, yet he is redeemed in the final battle through his self-sacrifice, which destroys the Irish Cauldron of Rebirth. When seeking a northern parallel to the "dark" Hagen, however, it is not to Hǫgni, his nominal counterpart in the Icelandic incarnation of the Nibelung legend, that Jesse Byock turns but to Egill Skalla-Grímsson, who demonstrates all the necessary characteristics of a "dark figure" (Byock 1986, 152).Byock's choice is entirely understandable since the Icelandic Hǫgni has not the requisite darkness to be considered a "dark figure". Most obviously, Hǫgni does not appear in the eddic accounts of Sigurðr's death as the slayer of Sigurðr. This is especially significant since it is the slaying of Siegfried which acts as the defining moment for Hagen in the Nibelungenlied, cementing his 'dark' reputation in later scholarship. 3 The effect of making Hǫgni innocent of Sigurðr's murder in the Poetic Edda is to make him less problematic, arguably even less complex, as a character. Edward Haymes has noted that:1 Names follow normalized Old Norse orthography, except in quotations, though names in eddic translations have been emended for clarity.