Nothing quite gets the blood flowing, nay, gushing and splattering, like a medieval storyteller describing life (and especially death) on the battlefield. The best of them, so beautifully vivid and precise are always garnished with the right touch of hyperbole – were they wading in a river of blood up to their ankles or was it up to their knees?
Wink Barnes (played by Ned Eisenberg) is delighted by the gruesome traffic safety film “Blood Flows Red on the Highway” in the 1985 movie Moving Violations (image: copyright 1985 20th Century Fox / SLM Production Group)
Today’s medieval bloodfest comes from Burton Raffel’s translation/rendering of the Middle High German 13th century epic poem Das Nibelungenlied.
Sifried (or Sigurd from the Völsung Legends) left the Netherlands for Burgundy to court princess Krimhild. He hung around King Gunter’s hall for a while, spinning his wheels, when, sure enough, some excitement finally came along. The Danish king Ludegast, and the Saxon lord Ludiger joined forces and threatened to destroy the Burgundians unless they agreed to pay them an obscene amount of money. With everyone in the hall shaking in their boots, Sifried smiled at the chance to show his host (and his prospective bride-to-be – via accounts from messengers) his favorite hobby – hacking and slashing!
This passage describes Sifried meeting King Ludegast on the battlefield:
Sifried struck so hard against his shining armor
that iron was broken through, a blow that only brass
-if that-might have blocked, and blood spattered the grass
and Ludegast was lost, suffering sharp, deadly harm.[1]
This next one shows us exactly what frame of mind Sifried was in when he spotted the Saxon lord Ludiger:
None of the Rhineland men were ever seen behind him.
rivers of red ran from his blade in a bloody line,
for where his sword came down helmets cracked with the blow.
And then he saw Ludiger, marshaling men, row after row.[2]
And finally, here is a nice wide angle shot of Sifried convincing King Ludiger to surrender:
The two princes battled on. Gashes sprung
on helmets everywhere, shields showed gouges long
and wide, still held in heroes’ hands. And all along
the blood of many men’s bodies came raining down on the thirsty ground.[3]
tolde by the weye 