them deeds were performed that fixed themselves in the memory of the
whole people, great victories or great disasters became the subject of
story and song. We need only to recall such names as those of Ermanric
and Theodoric to remind ourselves what an important part was played by
the Germanic peoples of that Migration Period in the history of Europe.
During it a national consciousness was engendered, and in it we have the
faint beginnings of a national literature. Germanic saga rests almost
entirely upon the events of these two centuries, the fifth and sixth.
Although we get glimpses of the Germans during the four or five preceding
centuries, none of the historic characters of those earlier times have
been preserved in the national sagas.

With these sagas based on history, however, have been mingled in most
cases primeval Germanic myths, possessions of the people from prehistoric
times. A most conspicuous example of this union of mythical and
originally historical elements is the Nibelungen saga, out of which grew
in course of time the great national epic, the Nibelungenlied.

The Nibelungen saga is made up of two parts, on the one hand the mythical
story of Siegfried and on the other the story, founded on historic fact,
of the Burgundians. When and how the Siegfried myth arose it is
impossible to say; its origin takes us back into the impenetrable mists
of the unrecorded life of our Germanic forefathers, and its form was
moulded by the popular poetic spirit. The other part of the saga is based
upon the historic incident of the overthrow of the Burgundian kingdom by
the Huns in the year 437. This annihilation of a whole tribe naturally
impressed itself vividly upon the imagination of contemporaries. Then the
fact of history soon began to pass over into the realm of legend, and,
from causes which can no longer be determined, this tradition of the
vanished Burgundians became united with the mythical story of Siegfried.