Sigurd the Volsung
In the Germanic/Norse myths the peoples were often analyzing the major conflicts between the forces of good and the forces of evil, often playing into what we now know as the concept of Karma. By taking a deeper look into the actions and reactions of the characters in Norse mythology we can see how their beliefs in every action having a consequence affected the way the stories represented events of their lives. Since these myths are still alive today we can further delve into how society has used and still uses myths. In looking through various theoretical viewpoints we are able analyze deeper the myth of Sigurd the Volsung to better understand a small part of history and the impact it has on today’s culture.
To better understand what we are analyzing we must first understand what a myth is. Now dictionary.reference tells us that a myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature” but these ideals belong to the people of today’s society and not back in the times of the people telling these stories. So I’d like to use a broader view that a myth 1) can be most aptly defined as the meaning or context that one perceives in the phenomena one encounters, and 2) is an inescapable part of all perception and all thought – yours, mine, and everyone else’s.(McCoy) Since we cannot know things for certain we cannot say that a myth is either objectively true or objectively false we can only understand that this is the way the Norse peoples perceived the world during their time. This does not entail that we now understand the world better than they did but rather that we understand it differently.
The epic of Sigurd the Volsung