I need this for my own thesis writing purposes so here's bad summaries of the first 2 chapters of this book (hagen von tronje by hohlbein):
Chapter 1
The book starts with Hagen, returning to worms. Because he was on some sort of military outing expedition trip type thing and he meets a maybe real girl and goes with her to her mother's hut and the mother is still in touch with the old gods. a lot of this book seems to be about changing times, about the old norse Germanic beliefs receding and Christianity, taking its place. at the same time it is about Rome falling, the huns are gaining power, that is sort of the setting of this. Anyway, this mysterious witch woman, who's maybe real, maybe not, maybe the gods, I don't know, tells Hagen that his fate will be decided by a woman, she heals a wound of his, she has thor's hammer, she has some sort of rune magic thing at her house. And from then on, we always see a bird of bad luck, a crow, floating around in the sky.
Chapter 2
We begin chapter 2 with hagen, deciding to fully ride back to worms. He tries to have the bird of bad luck, the crow, shot out of the sky. But the arrow misses, and this is a sort of sign that the bad luck will definitely happen. Hagen returns and he meets his king Gunther. Gunther is wounded. Gunther fell of a horse and his younger brother Giselher is sort of in a fight with Gunther. Hagen on his military expedition travels didn't see anything specific, he thinks everything is sort of unstable. Something is looming, something dark is coming. He believes there isn't really anything to tell. And he also hears that burgundy, this kingdom, has signed a treaty with Rome and Rome will retract its legions because Rome is slowly dying. also Gunther, and burgundy have embraced Christianity fully. They are preparing for Easter. it turns out that the fight that gunther and giselher were having was about Gunther wanting to marry Brunhild. She is this Warrior Queen mystical lady from Iceland who kills all her suitors unless they can best her in a fight. and Gunther as a king is described very unmanly, very weak. He was just thrown off a horse, he can't do this, and giselher tells him you can't do this, you will die. But hagen is subject to the king, so he just sort of goes, okay, I'll help you. horrible idea, he thinks but he will help him. He then also goes to visit the local princess Kriemhild, gunther's sister. She has had a terrible dream and this dream is, of course, taken from the original medieval epic, which is Kriemhild raised a Falcon to hunt for her. It's a beautiful Falcon and a great hunter. And then the Falcon gets torn apart mid-air by 2 eagles.
I don't really get hagen and Kriemhild's relationship. It makes 0 sense to me. I don't know what's going on there. He says he loves her. She's like 15 at this point and he loves her neithee as a woman nor as a daughter, he just sort of loves her for some reason. And he obviously loves her because she is the woman who will doom him, but I just I don't know, just love her like a daughter or something if you want to. I don't know strange very strange and then he sees the the bird again. And the dream is also much more detailed than it is in the original source material to better match the actual fight that will later happen in this book. And it already compares hagen and one of the eagles. I don't like that it's taking me by the hand too much. The dream is treated as this mystical thing that Kriemhild believes because she's a stupid little child. When the original source material is the mother that tells her how to interpret this dream and then in this book, Kriemhild and Hagen are the 2 people who are still in touch with the old magic and the old gods and everyone else has sort of fallen to Christianity. It's strange.
