avian, but a Southern, a
Rhenish, a German hero. The whole scene of the tragic events is laid in
the Rhinelands, where the killing of the Worm also takes place. On a
hill in Frank-land Sigurd frees Brynhild from the magic slumber into
which Odin had thrown her on a rock of punishment, because she, as a
Valkyr, or shield-maiden of his, had brought about the death of a Gothic
king to whom the god of battle had promised victory. In the south, on
the Rhine, Sigurd is murdered. In the Rhine, Hoegni (Hagen) hides the
Nibelung treasure. Many German tribes--Franks, Saxons, Burgundians,
Goths, even a Svava-land, or Suabian land, are mentioned in the "Edda."
The "Drama of Revenge," after Sigurd's death, though motives of the act
somewhat different from those stated in the "Nibelungen Lied" are
assigned, is also localized on the Lower Rhine, in the Hall of Atli, the
King of the Hunes. In the "Nibelungen Lied," that name appears as Etzel
(Attila), King of the Hunns.

In the "Edda" and in the "Vilkina Saga," Germans are referred to as
sources for some details of the Sigurd story. So strong was, in
Scandinavia, the tradition of the Teutonic origin of the tale, down to
the twelfth century, that, in a geographical work written in Norse by
the Abbot Nicolaus, the Gnita Heath, where Sigurd was said to have
killed the Dragon, was still placed half-way between Paderborn and
Mainz. Thus it was from Germany that this grand saga spread all over the
North, including the Faroeer. In the "Hvenic Chronicle," in Danish songs,
we even find Siegfried as "Sigfred;" Kriemhild as "Gremild;" and she is
married to him at Worms, as in the "Nibelungen Lied," while in the
"Edda" Sigurd's wife is called Gudrun, and the remembrance of Worms is
lost. The scene of the Norse poems is wholly on Rhenish ground.

[Illustration: Siegfried slaying the Dragon.]

Now, in that neighborhood, in the northwest of Germany, a Teutonic tribe
once dwelt, called Hunes, which is also traceable in Scandinavia. Sigurd
himself is, in the "Edda," described as a Hunic king. His kith and
kin dwell in Huna-land. "Hune" probably meant a bold and powerful
warrior. The word still lingers in Germany in various ways; gigantic
grave-monuments of prehistoric times are called Hunic Graves or
"Huenen-Betten," and a tall, strong man a "Huene." In his "Church History"
the Anglo-Saxon monk Baeda, or Bede, when speaking of the various German
tribes which had made Britain into an Angle-land, or En