Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXXIII. The Promise of Kriemhild

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is an excerpt from *Teutonic Myth and Legend* (1912) by Donald A. Mackenzie, a retelling of the Nibelung saga — specifically the opening of the Siegfried and Kriemhild narrative drawn from the *Nibelungenlied*, the medieval German epic tradition. The text covers Kriemhild's prophetic dream of a falcon slain by eagles (which her mother interprets as foretelling a husband's early death), Siegfried's arrival at Worms, his year-long separation from Kriemhild before they finally meet at a banquet, and his battlefield feats — capturing two enemy kings — that raise his status enough to warrant introduction to the princess. Mackenzie renders the material in a romanticized, archaic prose style ("methought," "twain," "nigh") that consciously evokes medieval chronicle while remaining accessible to Edwardian popular readers. The excerpt is notable for foregrounding Kriemhild's initial resistance to love alongside her dream's dark prophecy, framing the entire romance as one already shadowed by doom — the narrator explicitly notes that her husband will be killed by her own kin and that her vengeance will claim many lives. It functions as scene-setting for the full Nibelung tragedy rather than making any original scholarly argument, presenting the myth as heroic legend for a general audience rather than as academic analysis.

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXXIII. The Promise of Kriemhild

Related pages View as graph →