#in my defense: i made a free account on academia.edu

[haljathefangirlcat]

Another thought: the Old English poem Deor is narrated by a character inserted into the eternal battle of Hjandiningavig, but almost all its allusions are to the Dietrich cycle. From start to end we hear of Wayland chained with snakes (or attacked with snake-like swords), Beadohild pregnant and abandoned, Geat and Maethild robbed of sleep, Dietrich exiled for thirty years with his followers the Maerings, Ermanaric torturing his subjects as they long for their rightful king (Dietrich). Of all these, Geat and Maethild is the only one that can't be placed in context in Scandinavian or continental sources. There's supposedly scholarly consensus that it refers to Harpans Kraft, a Scandinavian ballad which stars lovers called Gauti and Mathilda, where Mathilda is tortured by nightmares before her wedding day, and despite Gauti's attempts to protect her, she is abducted by a merman, but when Gauti plays beautiful music on his harp, the appreciative merman surrenders her back to him. The issue is that I'm not sure how this connects to the rest of the episodes, as they seem to be a chronological list of events in the Dietrich cycle. We know exactly what the troubles are and how they'll pass. Wayland escapes his captivity by flying off, leaving Beadohild pregnant. Her son will be Wudga, who she'll send to reunite with his father, and who will alternate his loyalties between Ermanaric and Dietrich. Dietrich will remain in exile as Ermanaric usurps his rightful throne, but he will return in triumph and kill Ermanaric, which will also relieve the pains of the Gothic nation as a whole. The only part that doesn't link up is Geat and Maethild. As presented in the poem, their story happens between Wayland's escape and Dietrich's exile, but what role they play in Dietrich's story is likely forgotten.

Oh, yeah, you're right -- that is quite an ambiguous passage, and it would make a lot a sense, in terms of fitting in the context of the poem, if it was referring to a lost tradition.

I wish I could offer some additional info about how it's been analyzed, but the only paper coming to mind is this one... which I actually haven't read, despite telling myself "yeah, okay, one day I'll do the "read 100 free articles per month" thing on Jstor for who even knows how long now. XD