Ortnit, or Otnit, German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 hero of romance

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

, was originally Hertnit or Hartnit, the elder of two brothers known as the Hartungs, who correspond in German mythology to the Dioscuri.

The story

Ortnit's seat was at Holmgard (Novgorod), according to the Thidrekssaga (ch. 45), and he was related to the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n saga heroes. Later on his city of Holmgard became Garda, and in ordinary German legend he ruled in Lombardy

Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

. Hartnit won his bride, a Valkyrie

Valkyrie

In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one of a host of female figures who decides who dies in battle. Selecting among half of those who die in battle , the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin...

, by hard fighting against the giant Isungs, but was killed in a later fight by a dragon

Dragon

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...

. His younger brother, Hardheri (replaced in later German legend by Wolfdietrich

Wolfdietrich

Wolfdietrich is a German hero of romance. The tale of Wolfdietrich is connected with the Merovingian princes, Theodoric and Theodebert, son and grandson of Clovis; but in the Middle High German poems of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich in the Heldenbuch....

), avenged Ortnit by killing the dragon, and then married his brother's widow.

Analysis

Ortnit's wooing was corrupted by the popular interest in the Crusades

Crusades

The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...

 to an Oriental Brautfahrtsaga, bearing a very close resemblance to the French romance of Huon of Bordeaux

Huon of Bordeaux

Huon of Bordeaux is the title character of a 13th century French epic with romance elements. He is a knight who, after unwittingly killing Charlot, the son of Emperor Charlemagne, is given a reprieve from death on condition that he fulfill a number of seemingly impossible tasks: he must travel to...

. Both heroes receive similar assistance from Alberich

Alberich

Alberich was a legendary sorcerer who originated in the mythology or epic sagas of the Frankish Merovingian Dynasty of the 5th to 8th century AD, and whose name means king of the elves , who possessed the ability to become invisible...

 (Oberon), who supplanted the Russian Ilya

Ilya

Ilya, Illya, Iliya, Ilja, or Ilia is the Slavic form of the male Hebrew name Eliyahu , meaning "My god is He". It is pronounced with stress on the second syllable. The diminutive form is Ilyusha or Ilyushenka...

 as Ortnit's epic father in Middle High German

Middle High German

Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...

 romance. Karl Friedrich Neumann

Karl Friedrich Neumann

Karl Friedrich Neumann , German orientalist, was born, under the name of Bamberger, at Reichsmannsdorf, near Bamberg....

 maintained that the Russian Ortnit and the Lombard king were originally two different persons, and that the incoherence of the tale is due to the welding of the two legends into one.

Further reading

See editions of the Heldenbuch and one of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich by Dr. J.L. Edlen von Lindhausen (Tübingen, 1906); articles in the Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum by Karl Müllenhoff

Karl Mullenhoff

Karl Viktor Müllenhoff was a German philologist and a student of Teutonic antiquities.-Biography:...

(xii. pp. 344–354, 1865; xiii. pp. 185–192, 1867), by J. Seemuller (xxvi. 201-211, 1882), and by E.H. Meyer (xxxviii. pp. 85–87, 1894), and in Germania by F. Neumann (vol. xxvii. pp. 191–219, Vienna, 1882). See also the literature dealing with Huon of Bordeaux.