ABSTRACT

The Hildebrandslied (HL) is like a fly caught in amber. It is the unique representation, both in German and from the south Germanic region, of what must have been a widespread genre, namely the heroic lay (Heldenlied), a short poem extolling the valour and nobility of character of a great hero of the past. In addition, the MS text is older than that of any other surviving work of Germanic heroic literature. Although the evidence for the existence of such a genre is circumstantial, it is nevertheless considerable: Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard tells how the emperor ‘directed that the age-old narrative poems, barbarous enough, it is true, in which were celebrated the warlike deeds of the kings of ancient times, should be written out and preserved’ (Thorpe 1969: 82); and the poems in the Old Norse collection known as the Edda, a main source of knowledge of such famous German heroic figures as Siegfried, are clearly of German origin.