The Great Tales

The story of Sigurd the dragon-slayer is one of the most celebrated tales in all of European literature—but it doesn't come to us in a single, authoritative form. Instead, it spreads like a root system across languages, centuries, and cultures: Old Norse sagas and Eddic poetry, Middle High German epic, Scandinavian ballads, and medieval German song. In this episode, we begin mapping that rhizomatic network, introducing the major sources that preserve the Völsung-Nibelung tradition before diving deep into three extraordinary poems from the Icelandic Codex Regius.

Greatest among the Norse and Germanic tales is the Völsunga saga – the story of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer, the cursed ring of Andvari, and how a powerful family of storied warriors went up (literally) in flames. Let the #HoaryNorthernWinter begin!

Fr. Andrew and Dcn. Seraphim conclude their discussion of "Andreas," the Old English poem about St. Andrew rescuing St. Matthew from an island of cannibals.

One of the wildest stories involving the apostles is told in multiple early sources, from the 4th-century Greek "The Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the Anthropophagi" to Homily XIX in the 10th-century Old English Blickling Homilies to the 1700-line 10th-century Old English poem “Andreas,” found in the Vercelli manuscript.

In this story, the Apostle Andrew rescues one of his fellow apostles from Marmidonia, a city of cannibals. In the earlier source, it’s St. Matthias, but in later sources it’s the Apostle Matthew the Evangelist. (Could they be the same saint?) The devil makes an appearance, as does Christ multiple times and some angels. St. Andrew appears here as a rescuing hero who nonetheless is entirely dependent on God.

And of course there’s a flood and a ring of fire.

Delving into Old English sources, Fr. Andrew and Dcn. Seraphim read “Andreas,” the 10th-century poem that looks and sounds like Beowulf and tells the tale of how St. Andrew rescued St. Matthew from a city of cannibals.

Back from their pilgrimage to Scotland and Northumbria, Fr. Andrew and Dcn. Seraphim tell two tales from the road -- how St. Cædmon went from shepherd to hymnographer and how St. Oran insisted he be buried alive on Iona.