Der Ring Des Nibelongen
 

In General Music class, we are going through the Romantic Era of music. Yesterday my teacher talked to us about Richard Wagner, a German composer who had to flee his country after taking part in an unsuccessful revolution. One of his operas was the Der Ring Des Nibelongen, or, The Ring of the Nibelongs.

She said it was about a city 'surrounded by mist and darkness', and occupied by elves or dwarves. They had a huge amount of treasure, which was protected by a dragon. A knight slays the dragon and gets the gold etc. I'm not certain on all the details and there are several variations, but my teacher says that this has a lot to do with Tolkien.

She asked the class, "Does any of this sound familiar to you?" A few heads bob up and down, and a few people begin mumbling something. "That's right! It sounds like The Hobbit!" My tacher exclaims.

When I thought about it...it did kinda sound like The Hobbit. Smaug and Erebor and Bilbo. Then she asked us to remember the title; Der Ring Des Nibelongen.

She claims that J.R.R. Tolkien "Must have had access to this. The similarities are too many to be a simple coincidence!" I'm not sure what to make of it though. Tolkien claims to not be influenced by Christianity, as has often been argued in the Books section. But do you think this old Norse/Scandinavian folk tale is the basis of The Lord of the Rings?

Then, She goes on to compare 'The Ride of the Valkyries' to one track on the TTT soundtrack, 'The Riders of Rohan'. What do you all think?

Aylwen

[ May 03, 2003: Message edited by: Aylwen Dreamsong ]

I read that before, but this article explains it better and much more indepth than I am capable of.

If its a norse folk tale im sure it has a lot to do with it, because Tolkien was a great fan of Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature, particularly folk stories and other writing of similar genres, like "beowulf".

No, I am sorry, you are all wrong, excepting gilraën and including Aylwen Dreamsong's teacher. Aylwen Dreamsong, you should let your teacher know about her mistake so she does not pass it on to anyone else.

Hm. I don't like it when people suggest things like this. Tolkien was influenced by many things, he did not copy them, and most assuredly Wagner would not be one of them.

I don't quite understand how people can find themselves entitled to say what Tolkien was "really writing". It gives the the false idea that Tolkien's works were just massive amounts of allegory, numeric code, or plagiarised storytelling. It's very annoying.

Wagner was hardly a Saxon, and if you really think about it, it isn't quite rational that there would be operas in Anglo-Saxon England or in Iceland during the period when the Norse mythology that Tolkien loved was written.

Iarwain

"Der Nibelungenring" is actually an ancient Saga from the Rhineland. I don´t know the Opera, but the saga is a typical Hero-legend thingy. Actually it´s pretty similar to greek mythology. For exaple there´s a character that is invincible everywhere exept for one spot of his body. Anyway, like I said, it´s an ancient tale and still popular. I guess it´s posible that Tolkien knew that tale and (maybe even unintentionally) was inspired. BUT: Be carefull on one thing: Der Ring der Nibelungen isn´t talking about a ring, like as in piece of jewlery. Rather, a RING of tales is a saga of different tales that are all coneccted. In this case, they are all coneccted by the Nibelungen Family.

Of course Tolkien knew the Nieblungerlied! That is like saying a professor of astronomy might not know about the moon landings...Good God, he was a professor of mediaeval studies, and this is one of the major works of mediaeval literature!
Wagner based his ring cycle of operas on the Nieblungerlied, a poem written in around the 13th century. This is the German version of the tale. An even earlier Norse (Scandinavian) version, which is rather different in many details, dates from around the 10th or 11th century.
And there is actually a 'ring' in the story, it is part of the dragon hoard of Fafnir and it is cursed.
Tolkien was immersed in all these poems, as part of his academic work. And the influence of Norse, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and Finnish heroic and mythological literature on his work is very strong and noticable to anyone who is familiar with this literature.
It is much more immediately obvious than his Christian themes, in my opinion. That is in no way to imply that Tolkien's work is unChristian, or that it is derivative or plagiarising anything, incidently. Authors have always used many sources as inspiration.

Care to explain why it's definitely wrong, burra?

It seems quite logical to me. Tolkien was very interested in the Norse legends and stories, and it seems likely he would have heard of this. I see no reason he couldn't possibly have been inspired by this, although of course changing it and putting his own ideas into it, making it his own. Every great author is inspired by something.

Varda, did you read the article I linked to? It makes it clear that Tolkien resented/refuted any suggestion that that was the case.

It makes it clear that Tolkien didn't draw anything from Wagner, yes. But it says that he drew from the Nibelungenlied.

Edit: Misunderstood something, sorry.

[ May 04, 2003: Message edited by: Falagar ]

Yes, I didn't make that clear, I'm sorry. He refuted any suggestion that he had copied Wagner.

I'm not entirely convinced by that article. I'm not saying that Tolkien was influenced by Wagner - they were *both* inspired by the Nieblungerlied - but I suspect some of the author's conclusions and assumptions are coloured by his own political beliefs.

Quite, and Wagner being what we were talking about.