The protracted narrative of Sigurd's ancestry and his descent from Odin
has no counterpart in the Nibelungenlied. Here we learn merely that
Siegfried is the son of Siegmund. His father plays an entirely different
part; and his mother's name is not Hjordis, as in the Edda, but
Siegelind.

Of Siegfried's youth the Nibelungenlied knows very little. No mention is
made of his tutelage to the dwarf smith Regin and preparation for the
slaying of the dragon Fafnir. The account of him placed in the mouth of
Hagen (strophes 86-501), how he won the hoard, the _tarnkappe_, and the
sword Balmung, and slew the dragon, is evidently a faint echo of an
earlier version of this episode, which sounds out of place in the more
modern German form of the story. From the latter the mythical element has
almost entirely vanished. It is worthy of note, moreover, that the very
brief account of Siegfried's slaying of the dragon is given in the
Nibelungenlied as separate from his acquisition of the hoard, and differs
in detail from that of the Edda. Of Sigurd's steed Grani, his ride to
Frankenland, and his awakening of Brynhild the Nibelungenlied has nothing
to tell us. Through the account of Siegfried's assistance to Gunther in
the latter's wooing of Brunhild (Adventures 6 and 7) shimmers faintly,
however, the earlier tradition of the mythical Siegfried's awakening of
the fire-encircled valkyrie. Only by our knowledge of a more original
version can we explain, for example, Siegfried's previous acquaintance
with Brunhild which the Nibelungenlied takes for granted but says nothing
of. On this point of the relation between Sigurd and Brynhild it is
difficult to form a clear account owing to the confusion and even
contradictions that exist when the various Northern versions themselves
are placed side by side. The name of the valkyrie whom Sigurd awakens
from her magic sleep is not directly mentioned. Some of the accounts are
based on the presupposition that she is one with the Brynhild whom Sigurd