Von Island bis an Rhein und Donau: über die Darstellung von Hochsee- und Binnenschifffahrt im Nibelungenlied

Abstract

Descriptions of ocean and inland navigation play a role in structuring the text of the Nibelungenlied. On the one hand, in a manner serving to guide the reader, over long stretches of the narration they provide anticipatory and retrospective references and create constitutive preconditions for phases of the plot. On the other hand, they characterize and codify important persons by means of direct nautical roles and functions. This also occurs within the framework of a possible juxtaposition with coeval writing on the part of both the author and reader, in which context ecclesiological symbolism may play an important role as a mode of contrast. Moreover, through the literary references to foreign - but to some extent real - places, the knowledge and conception of geography and oceanography of the time of the work's writing was treated in a complex and varied manner, also including allusions to the contemporary, i.e. Hohenstaufen, political and mental outlook. Caused in part by the varied accessibility of the respective sources, the Nibelungenlied reveals clear differences in knowledge about conditions in Central Europe on the one hand and the Lower Rhine region as well as Scandinavia and the North Sea region on the other. In addition, however, - precisely through the resulting reality-related attention to detail in the former case, and the more blurred but not entirely fictional depiction in the latter - there also arises a deliberate relationship of dramatic tension among the vast regions in which the Nibelungenlied is set.