Fricka’s sister Freia is based on Freya, most beautiful of all the gods, while their brother Froh is based on the Norse god Frey. In Norse mythology, Thor is Odin’s son (and not his brother-in-law, as he is in Das Rheingold). Fricka is based on Frigg, the queen of the Aesir gods and Odin’s wife her name gives us the word “Friday.”įricka’s brother Donner is based on the god Thor, whose name is the basis of the word “Thursday.” Thor’s most famous attribute is his magic hammer, which produces thunder and lightning when it strikes things in fact, Donner means “thunder” in German. The English word “Wednesday” comes from Odin’s name-if you say the phrase “Odin’s day” out loud, the connection becomes more obvious. Odin is one of the Aesirs, warrior gods who live in the land of Asgard. Wotan is based on Odin, the one-eyed king of the gods. A brief overview of the characters in Das Rheingold illustrates this well.
Wagner freely adapted the Norse stories to suit his own artistic needs, yet parallels between his characters and their Norse counterparts remain. Wagner was particularly intrigued by the story of the hero Siegfried, and when he decided to write an opera on the subject, he turned to five 13th-century sources for inspiration: The Poetic Edda, an anonymous Icelandic collection of Norse myths The Prose Edda, a collection by the medieval Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson The Nibelungenlied, a German epic about the tribe of “Nibelungs” the Norse V ö lsunga Saga, about Siegfried’s“Völsung” tribe and the Old Norse narrative The Saga of Didrek of Bern. Like many 19-century intellectuals, he felt that these stories held profound truths about contemporary culture and society, and for much of his adult life, he immersed himself in the great sagas of Norse mythology. Richard Wagner was fascinated by folk tales and medieval legends. Below, learn more about the composer’s Nordic sources of inspiration. Mythology was a good match for Wagner’s theatrical temperament, providing a steady supply of gods, goddesses, and psychosexual dynamism to satisfy his rich and ingenious imagination.
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