In studying these heroic poems, therefore,
we are confronted by problems entirely different in character from
those which have to be considered in connexion with the mythical
texts. Those are in the main the product of one, the Northern,
branch of the Germanic race, as we have seen (No. 12 of this series),
and the chief question to be determined is whether they represent,
however altered in form, a mythology common to all the Germans, and
as such necessarily early; or whether they are in substance, as well
as in form, a specific creation of the Scandinavians, and therefore
late and secondary. The heroic poems of the Edda, on the contrary,
with the exception of the Helgi cycle, have very close analogues in
the literatures of the other great branches of the Germanic race,
and these we are able to compare with the Northern versions.
The Edda contains poems belonging to the following heroic cycles:
(_a_) _Weland the Smith_.--Anglo-Saxon literature has several
references to this cycle, which must have been a very popular one;
and there is also a late Continental German version preserved in
an Icelandic translation. But the poem in the Edda is the oldest
connected form of the story.
(_b_) _Sigurd and the Nibelungs_.--Again the oldest reference is in
Anglo-Saxon. There are two well-known Continental German versions
in the _Nibelungen Lied_ and the late Icelandic _Thidreks Saga_,
but the Edda, on the whole, has preserved an earlier form of the
legend.
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