#hagen x kostbera

[haljathefangirlcat]

By the way, what are your thoughts on Glaumvor and Kostbera, if you had to include them in your "ideal" version of the story? Especially Kostbera. In terms of being difficult to get along with, much less remain married to, I would rate Hagens on a scale of Rosengarten Hagen > Nibelungenlied Hagen > Wagner Hagen > Volsung Saga Hogni > Thidrekssaga Hogni > Ballad Hogni. And of course Waltharius Hagen is the prequel where he isn't quite so intense, murderous, or scheming. And especially in the Continental sources, where there's no mention of a wife, it's hard to imagine him finding the time to get married with how much he's stuck babysitting his lord or friends. So if Kostbera exists, is she just clearing out of the room so Walther or Volker can take over and deal with Hagen's bad moods?

I've actually never tried to mix the canons, so to say, when it comes to these two.

As you said, Hagen never gets a wife or even a passing love interest in Continental sources -- he really seems like the sort of guy who'd always be too busy fixing up everyone's messes (and then, sometimes, contibuting to making even bigger ones, lol) to even think about that sort of thing, but to me, there's also the way he just feels almost removed from women and their whole sphere, in a sense. In the Nibelungenlied, he remembers Helche fondly, but she's already dead by that point and doesn't even figure in that story; he seems to like Gotelinde, but when they do meet in person, he really only talks to her due to the shield of another man, her dead brother, and then, that whole interaction between them serves mainly to set up the pretext that later allows him not to fight Rudiger; he seems to agree with every other man in Bechlaren that Dietlinde is lovely, but rather than appreciating her himself, he's more concerned with setting up a marriage for Giselher (and thus, an alliance for the Burgundians), while from Dietlinde's point of view, he seems to be the only strange new man in her home to intimidate her; Kriemhild clearly trusts him and feels comfortable with him in the beginning, but the one scene where we really see that dynamic between them is already the one where he's using her to find out how to kill Siegfried without any apparent regret even while addressing her in fairly affectionate terms, and their relationship only goes downhill from there; he goes from calling Brunhild a devil to passionately swearing he'll avenge her honor, but tbh, to me both of these things seem more like they're about Brunhild's shifting relationship to Gunther, rather than about Brunhild as her own person. And even in the Waltharius, his interactions with (the woefully underutilized) Hildegund pretty much boil down to a "hey, Walther, tell your girl to pour us some wine." I'm not saying that I see him as incapable of having significant relationship with women (on the contrary, I'll cling with all my strength to the scraps we get of his affection for Helche, the possibility of a pre-mess positive-if-deteriorating relationship with Kriemhild, and that one source of the story of Walther that's eluding me rn but where Walther apparently wants to flee with Hagen but Hagen stops him and is all like "wtf, no, Hildegund is great and she deserves better than you abandoning her like this"), or even that I don't ship him women (I do!), but when it's so much easier to build on his relationships with men (as much as those are still, ofc, influenced by hierarchies and alliances), imagining a stable straight relationship of any kind, much less a marriage, for him is just something that always feels a bit too much of a hassle or even too out of left field to me.

When it comes to Gunther's wife, too, I prefer to go with the Nibelungenlied/Klage version, where Brunhild doesn't kill herself but rather stays alive at least until the coronation of Siegfried Jr., her son with Gunther. I actually like to imagine she took on a role as Siegfried Jr.'s chief advisor, with a good chunk of Worm's best knights dead in Etzel's court and Ute being presumably grief-stricken. My girl can (try to) put the entire mess behind her and be a well-respected and influential Queen Mother with a son to shape as she pleases guide and no husband to answer to, as a treat. But that leaves little room for a second marriage...

On the Norse side of things, on the other hand, I see both Hogni/Kostbera and Gunnar/Glaumvor as complex relationships. The former because what little we see of them involves Kostbera repeatedly trying to warn Hogni off the journey to Hunaland and Hogni outright dismissing her fears (to reassure her? To reassure himself? He just kinda snapped at her because he had a lot on his mind? All plausible options, imo) but, at the same time, they worked well enough together to have three or four kids; the latter, because they essentially have a repeat of the warning scene between Kostbera and Hogni, except Gunnar concludes it by admitting he actually agrees with Glaumvor but will face the danger anyway, but also because I can't imagine Glaumvor never heard anything about the whole thing with Brynhild and married Gunnar with a light-hearted, optimistic attitude. I picture both as arranged marriages, with no big "I'd leap through the flames for you" moment, and I think that, while Kostbera may have married Hogni pretty readily around the time Gunnar married Brynhild and Gudrun married Sigurd or shortly after because marrying into the Gjukungs was probably looking like a great prospect at the time, Glaumvor may have been pushed into Gunnar's arms by relatives trying to inch their own way closer to Sigurd's gold. I don't see either Hogni or Gunnar as the type to mistreat his wife (... well, beyond the occasional deception) but I imagine both relationship as relatively detached in the beginning, then warming up slowly and gradually through the years, especially in Glaumvor's case.

If I had to mesh those two visions together, I think I'd have Kostbera and Hagen as two sharp, strong-willed people who do have some things in common yet feel distant and slightly awkward around each other nonetheless, with Kostbera either slightly lonely and resentful of Hagen for being more dedicated to his duty and closer to his male friends (or "friends") than to her but also slightly grateful at the same time for the chance to mostly just do her own thing without her husband sticking his nose into her business, or having her own tightly-knit and kind of dramatic circle of female friends (or, again, "friends") as a contrast to his own dynamics, or a bit of both. As for Glaumvor and Gunther, I'd imagine the same uncertainty and shyness I usually pick for Glaumvor and Gunnar... only taken even further and a lot more difficult to grow past, what with Kriemhild still being in Worms for a while after Siegfried's death/being seemingly sent off to a land of pagans after having her husband murdered. Yup, Glaumvor would really be like "oh god, what DID I get myself into" about it.

(Btw, I sort of cackled a bit at seeing Wagner!Hagen in the middle of that ranking, tbh. Not that I don't love him a lot (<33333) but my boy is self-loathing on legs plus generalized misanthropy to go with the usual murder plus a horrible sleeping schedule probably plus terrible family dynamics no matter where you look... and just the thought of Wagner!Alberich as a father-in-law is, imo, terrifying. XDD As for Waltharius!Hagen, he literally waxes poetry about the human condition and needs to be comforted with hugs and kisses when he's upset. I want to pinch his cheeks and ruffle his hair. <333)