SOURCE: “The Otherworld and Its Inhabitants in the Nibelungenlied” in A Companion to the “Nibelungenlied”, edited by Winder McConnell, Camden House, 1998, pp. 153-71.

In the following essay, Lionarons explores the relationship between mythical characters and humans in the Nibelungenlied.

Every reader of the Nibelungenlied soon recognizes that there are at least two different worlds, and perhaps two different times, coexisting within the poem. The first is the “real,” historically conceived society of Worms and Xanten: this is a chivalric, courtly world in which normal human beings—albeit sometimes kings and princesses—are born, live, marry, compete for influence and political power, and finally die. The second may be termed the “Otherworld.”¹ Not all its inhabitants are human, and those who are seem preternaturally strong, with knowledge and power far surpassing the denizens of the “real” world. The non-human inhabitants of the Otherworld come straight from myth and M...