Rhinemaidens - Origins

Origins

Alone of the Ring's characters, the Rhinemaidens do not originate from the Poetic Edda or Prose Edda, the Icelandic sources for most of Norse mythology. Water-sprites (German: Nixen) appear in many European myths and legends, often but not invariably in a form of disguised malevolence. Wagner drew widely and loosely from those legends when compiling his Ring narrative, and the probable origin of his Rhinemaidens is in the German Nibelungenlied. In one part of the Nibelungenlied narrative Hagen and Gunther encounter certain "wise women" (thereafter described as water-sprites), bathing and refreshing themselves in the waters of the Danube. Hagen creeps softly towards them, but he is seen, whereupon the sprites retreat and mock him from a distance. Hagen then steals their clothes. To obtain the return of these, one of the sprites, Hadeburg, promises falsely that Hagen and Gunther will find honor and glory when they enter Etzel's kingdom. After their clothes are returned, another sprite, Sigelinde (a name Wagner would adopt again for use elsewhere), tells Hagen that her sister has lied. If they go to Etzel’s land, they will die there.

This story, itself unrelated to the Ring drama, is echoed by Wagner both in the opening Das Rheingold scene and in the first scene in Act III of Götterdämmerung. Wagner first adapted the story for use in his early libretto of Siegfried's Death (which eventually became Götterdämmerung), introducing three unnamed water-maids (Wasserjungfrauen), and locating them in the Rhine, where they warn Siegfried of his impending death. Later these water-maids became Rhinemaidens (Rheintöchter), and were given individual names: Flosshilde, Wellgunde, and Bronnlinde. As Wagner continued working on his reverse chronology from Siegfried's death, he arrived at what he determined was the initial act of the drama — Alberich's theft of the Rhine gold. Believing that a simple abduction of the unguarded gold would lack dramatic force, Wagner made the Rhinemaidens the guardians of the gold, and he introduced the "renunciation of love" condition. Bronnlinde became Woglinde, probably to avoid confusion with Brünnhilde.

Wagner may also have been influenced by the Rhine River-based German legend of Lorelei, the lovelorn young maiden who drowns herself in the river and becomes a siren, luring fishermen onto the rocks by her singing. Further possible sources lie in Greek mythology and literature. Similarities exist between the maiden guardians in the Hesperides myth and the Rhinemaidens of Das Rheingold; three females guard a highly desired golden treasure that is stolen in the telling of each tale. Wagner was an enthusiastic reader of Aeschylus, including his Prometheus Bound which has a chorus of Oceanids or water nymphs. One author, Rudolph Sabor, sees a link between the Oceanids' treatment of Prometheus and the Rhinemaidens' initial tolerance of Alberich. Just as in Greek myth the Oceanids are the daughters of the titan sea god Oceanus, in Norse mythology—specifically the Poetic Edda—the jötunn (similar to a giant) sea god Ægir has nine daughters. The name of one of these means "wave" (Welle in German) and is a possible source for Wellgunde's name.

Wagner's operas do not reveal where the Rhinemaidens came from, or whether they have any connection to other characters. Whereas most of the characters in the cycle are inter-related, through birth, marriage, or sometimes both, the Rhinemaidens are seemingly independent. The identity of their father who entrusted them with the guardianship of the gold is not given in the text. Some Wagnerean scholars have suggested that he may be a "Supreme Being" who is the father of Wotan and all the gods—indeed, of all creation. Others take the German Rheintöchter literally and say that they are the daughters of the Rhine River. Whatever is surmised, the Rhinemaidens are in a different category from Wotan and the other gods, who are destroyed by fire at the end of Götterdämmerung, while the Rhinemaidens swim happily away in the river, bearing their recovered treasure.