Wading into Kudrun; on the Trail of a Legendary Mystery Man

Wade of Kudrun sits uneasily as a migration era hero in a high medieval romance. (Photo illustration by Rachel Hellman.)

Not much is as troubling as the discovery that you’ve lost something, particularly something of value. Medieval writers suggest that we should have a story about a figure that we know just enough about to be tantalized, and troubled. The mystery of Wade is a good tale. Scandinavia recalls him as a sea giant. Mallory knew him to be a great knight. Chaucer obliquely recalls his boat and a tale that could be told. The breadcrumbs are lined up and it’s difficult not to follow.

Every known reference to the legendary Wade has been gathered neatly together for generations. The trail seems to begin sometime in the tales spread by Germanic-speaking tribes as they fanned out across Europe. All of the English literary references to Wade had faded to almost a name. Old English recalls him as a legendary ruler. Middle English celebrates him for his strength, chivalry and the defeat of a dragon. Folklore in England connects his name to sites in the north related to a giant. The Old Norse Wade was a giant, the son of a king and a sea woman (often translated to mermaid.) 

But it is the German Wade, I feel, that requires our attention, as this Wade gives us the most insight into who readers of a specific time knew him to be, and how he may have changed from the distant past. Unlike other extant literary sources, Wade is a major character in the anonymously-written mid-thirteenth-century poem called Kudrun. Kudrun presents a Wade that seems to have become a stock figure of fiction, a blustering, sometimes comic, sometimes troubling old curmudgeon who prefers to do things the old way. But the poem preserves features of Wade that would have been a perfect fit in the Beowulf era and maybe even earlier, when he could have been a mythological figure, even a deity.

Throughout Kudrun, Wade’s most obvious attributes are his age, his strength, and his terrifying violence on the battlefield. What most struck me as a reader though, were clues that this continental, thirteenth-century Wade (Wate in German) was already a known commodity to readers. He performs a function in the story that presumes that the reader is already aware of him. Wade is mentioned by name in the poem before the royal lover, whose difficult suit Wade will facilitate, against a king who murders the envoys of his daughter’s suitors. It is a job only Wade can perform, the young king is told, though the strategy, to sneak into the kingdom disguised as a merchant, does not sit well for him: “I’m not suited to selling pretty trinkets to women.” Wade’s discomfort in this role is the beginning of a series of comic moments predicated on his being a warrior of an earlier time being forced into a courtly romance. 

The character who most dislikes the need to pretend to be something he isn’t, is, of course, the character most comic to be pressed to play a role. Despite Wade’s misgivings to play the part, everyone in the foreign court wants an audience with him. Scholar R.W. Chambers suggested that it is his rich clothing that draws their attention, but the Kudrun poet maintains that all of Wade’s contingent is dressed in the finest clothing possible as a means of disarming the Irish king into allowing them close to his daughter. Yet, in the midst of younger courtiers in his throng, everyone is curious about Wade, whose only described attribute is his large gray beard.

Perhaps it is just the beard that marks Wade as different from the younger courtiers, who would seem more likely to attract the attention of young ladies, but the ladies of the court pay the most attention to “old” Wade. The queen says that Wade “is such a strange man,” that she wishes to see him and even rises from her seat when he enters. The young ladies study Wade to see his behavior, and they flirt as girls might with an aged man they find funny. They ask whether Wade is more comfortable with young ladies or in danger on the battlefield, to which he states his preference is the battlefield. It is hard to know how the ladies would be able to tell that this is a warrior, but perhaps Kudrun’s intended audience already knew that Wade was a man from from before the civilized times of this romance.

The reader discovers that Wade’s lack of control over his rage and tendency to be gruff to the point of rudeness are characteristics that become so predictable about him. Given this, I suspect that the scene with the ladies and others are predicated on dramatic irony, the reader’s knowledge that Wade is only at home slaughtering enemies, and putting him in fine clothes in a courtly setting would effectively be a condition to cause him to blow his cover as a merchant in the scheme. The Kudrun poet must have thought that this scene would be so enjoyed by readers that he wrote two more based on the same joke, one where the princess essentially asks for a second meeting to study Wade (though not to kiss him!) and a scene with her father, King Hagan, a man in the mold of Wade.

Hagan also picks Wade out from all of the courtiers, to test his fighting skills. Hagan seems up to mischief and perhaps means to pressure Wade into a sword demonstration with Hagan’s best swordsman. Wade feigns ignorance of swordplay and even a reader who has not seen Wade fight expects a situation in which all are shocked to find Wade to be the greater fighter. Hagan’s fencing master quickly fears for his life fighting Wade, which leads Hagan himself to face him. Hagan’s strength, prowess, and battle rage are all established earlier in the tale and Hagan’s danger is the entire cause of Wade’s charade in his court, to avoid facing him in battle. Testing Wade, Hagan quickly learns that Wade is as strong as Hagan is (it is said of both Wade and Hagan that they have the strength of twenty-six men) and an expert swordsman. Hagan has to steel himself not to lose his temper in their friendly match. For his part, Wade drops the act that swordplay is unknown to him and attacks Hagan “like a wild Saxon or Frank.” The scene is made more interesting supposing the dramatic irony of knowing that Wade is more than a match for Hagan or his sword-master. The humor of Wade’s protesting not knowing how to fight and of Hagan’s patronizing him by offering to teach Wade “out of affection” for him, is greater if the reader knows what happens to anyone who fights Wade. Wade’s response that Hagan must vow not to kill him further raises the comic stakes, and demonstrates a level of coyness that fits the comic scene more than the incendiary Wade.

Wade Represents an Earlier Ethos

Wade’s fighting prowess is essential in all of the military actions in Kudrun, and must have been an understood element of the character. But the developing difficulty in Kudrun, is that Wade represents a theory of war that is out of step with the rest of the characters of the story. This further places Wade as a fish out of water, and is played for humor as Wade goes far beyond what is acceptable for this time. Where Wade’s young prince and princess would prefer to take hostages in battle and enact political marriages, Wade will slaughter to the last, even women and children. He is described as terrible and terrifying, dreadful, wild and ferocious. He fights like a wild lion, bellows like a wild boar. His eyes blaze, his teeth grind and he is at times drenched in the blood of his enemies. He is repeatedly described as merciless. Wade’s friends must continually pull Wade back to save the men he is fighting. But they cannot always stop him. In this manner, he slaughters babies in cribs. He cuts off the heads of noblewomen who have begged quarter. 

Wade’s practice to become enraged in battle, and dangerous to both friend and foe, was a feature of heroes in the Beowulf mold, whom Wade could have once been. Beowulf, like his monstrous adversaries–or our own, modern, Incredible Hulk–physically swells with rage during his fights. Beowulf is once praised for never killing a kinsman, hardly a high bar in many other places and times, certainly in the era of Kudrun. Wade’s friends only approve of his violence to the moment when the enemy is ready to surrender, while Wade is unwilling to stop until he has killed everyone, even threatening to kill both friend and foe to achieve his aims. Wade, the hero, the victor, is censored for his slaughter: “What good would come of it, if you killed everyone in this land of his?” one comrade complains. This version of Wade is more at home with the figure of the berserker of the Lewis Chessmen, biting his shield, ready to storm into battle.

Like the Incredible Hulk, Wade becomes a figure in Kudrun that cannot turn off the violence, and as with the Incredible Hulk, this is sometimes played for humor. After failing to stop him from executing the evil queen and a traitorous gentlewoman in front of her terrified ladies in waiting, Kudrun recognizes that they will just have to agree to disagree: “Wate can do what he wants with his own hostages.” Kudrun’s comment is funny because it understates her lack of control over him.  Just as humorously, Wade complains that his friends are too merciful. To the man who complains about Wade killing children, Wade retorts, “You’re like a child yourself.”  When Kudrun’s kidnapper prays for his freedom, Wade responds, “I would quickly make sure that his chains never bothered him again.” Wade’s frustration with Kudrun and his younger relations is that they would take the opportunity at victory to promote a lasting peace by intermarrying with their enemy’s family, which seems a larger message of the poem. But Wade sees in orphans a future war party returning for vengeance, as has happened in the story already.

Hints of a Mythological Past

Chambers detected the hint that Wade began life as a storm deity in the manner of his death in Thidreks Saga: being buried by an avalanche. There are myths about storm gods being trapped underground or in the underworld realm of death. Chambers’s logic works on the premise that mythological tales sometimes undergo changes that make them appealing to audiences that no longer seek mythology or deities in tales. Gods then become mortal heroes, here a storm god demoted to a giant who wades across the sea and happens to be killed by a landslide. Chambers’s logic applied to Kudrun reveals details that could also suggest a mythological figure transformed into an exceptional man. One may start with Wade’s perpetual stage of agedness.   

Ever Gray

Kudrun does not imbue its characters with the sort of detail one expects of modern fiction. No character’s age is addressed with specificity. So it is not strange that Wade’s specific age is never stated. What does seem to be unusual, even within the style of the poem, is that Wade is old at the beginning of a story that spans generations and is old at the end. Wade kidnaps a princess at the beginning of the poem, and then rescues that princess’s adult daughter at the end. Wade, who was an old man when he met the mother, says he will have to wait for children to grow up to seek vengeance. Wade has no doubts of his longevity, but the mother’s response is “Ah, if only I could live that long.”  It may not be exceptional for a normal person to live through several generations, but it is strange that the queen, who viewed Wade as an aged curiosity when she was young, expects that she will not outlive him.

A Man with a Storied Past

Of the characters of Kudrun, Wade is the only one with a past that extends beyond the action of the narrative. Not only does Kudrun’s Wade have a past, but all of the details of his past are remarkable for their connections to magic. In the first bloody battle of the tale, when Wade faces off against the similarly powerful Hagan, Hagan’s kidnapped daughter begs her captors to stop Wade from killing her father. It is then revealed that Wade is a “master” healer: “They had heard a long time ago that Wate had learned healing from a forest woman.” Kudrun translator William Whobrey shares that his translation of wilden wibe has the possible sense of herbalist, healer, witch, and even creatures half woman, half animal. He shares the glosses “woman adept in magic,” and “wise woman of the woods” that two other translations have used. After all of Wade’s bloodshed in this battle, he is able to save lives and bring wounded men back to health. Wade’s sudden willingness to heal his enemies, if not his ability to heal itself, is incongruous with his behavior in the rest of the story.

Wade also tells a story when his fleet of ships is captured by a magnetic force when they pass the mountain at Givers, a geographically indeterminate location given the hazy geography of Kudrun: “Long ago as a child, I heard tell seafaring stories that in the mountain at Givers a great kingdom was founded. People live in comfort there.” Wade goes on to describe rivers of silver and gold and says that all who are pulled to the mountain are rich forever. Wade, on his dire mission of rescue and revenge, then prays they are pulled to the mountain, as if lost in reverie, while his companions remain in the moment and wish to escape the magnetic power. The overpowering strength of the seas on ships has probably led to many myths. The Odyssey has the whirlpool Scylla, the Sirens and Circe, who all overpower seafarers in various ways. By sharing his story, Wade recalls a childhood that gives him a history outside the boundaries of the story, which make him exceptional in Kudrun.

Mythological Connections to the Sea

Wade frequently travels in ships in the poem Kudrun, but I noticed details that I think have the flavor of a deity connected to the sea. The first is Wade’s horn, which he uses to rouse his troops to battle at dawn. His first horn blast can be heard thirty miles from shore. His second blast moves all of the troops into position, but the description of the third blast stuck out to me: “He signaled a third time with such great force that the shore quaked and the waves echoed the sound. The cornerstones of Ludwig’s castle could have been shaken loose.” The horn and the power of creating earthquakes are attributed respectively to the sea gods Triton and his father Poseidon, the earth shaker. This is also not the first time in the poem that Wade shook the earth. In his fight with Hagan early in the story, the text runs: “Then old Wate bore down and the shoreline shook.” 

The three major battles Wade fights in Kudrun are on the shore near ships that he has piloted, as others have noted, “strong rudder in his hand.” It seems unusual, if not implausible, that each of these battles take place on the beach, as if to accommodate a figure traditionally connected to the sea, or who may have traditionally gained power from the sea. In the first battle, Wade’s forces debark to find Hagan’s forces approaching from sea. During the second battle Kudrun’s kidnappers debark on an island that is not their destination for reasons not explained. Finally, Kudrun’s kidnappers’ castle that Wade shakes with a blast of his horn is also on the sea, above a beach that Wade’s forces have landed on.

The Man from Stormland

Finally, Kudrun’s Wade is from a place that Whobrey gives alternately as Stormarn and Stormland. No detail is ever given of this location, but Wade is summoned from there frequently and returns there between quests for his king. Though the geography of Kudrun is hard to relate to real places, locations are often named, some, like Ireland, seem to correspond to a real location, others, like Waylays and Ormanie, which bear similarities to the lands Wales or Normandy, but do not seem to correspond to them. Stormarn could refer to the district of Schleswig-Holstein of modern Germany, but, again, the inner logic of place names in Kudrun, if there is one, is not understood. Obviously, a figure associated with storms and the sea hailing from Stormland would seem significant.

There are details of Wade’s battles that can be interpreted as related to storms. In his battle with Hagan, “many brave men saw sparks flying off the helmets like flashes from a smithy’s fire…then old Wate bore down and the shoreline trembled.” Though I have suggested that the ground trembling could be the hint of a figure able to cause earthquakes, it is also possible to envision the flashes of fire and trembling earth as thunder and lightning. In a later battle, Wade’s charge in battle darkens the sun with a cloud of dust, which could hint at a gathering storm cloud.

A Retirement 

Wade ends his story in Kudrun being given a position of honor in the queen’s household, which seems a bit of a downgrade from his job of commanding one of the king’s castles, which was his role at the beginning of it. Whobrey’s translation says he is made “seneschal,” which is a court officer in charge of ceremonies and feasts (the German was truhsæze), but the etymology of seneschal indicates that it once meant “old servant,” which Wade clearly was in the history of this kingdom. I see the shift as an indication that the queen recognizes that the time of Wade as the commander of armies and warrior-in-chief have passed. I like to see it as a fond farewell to a figure whose time had really passed in the era of Kudrun, to the extent that he has fairly or unfairly lapsed into the role of a comical figure. In this manner Wade sits uneasily in Kudrun given that he is the only figure who enables the happy ending that this romance wants as its proper conclusion. 

We have lamented the loss of a “Tale of Wade,” that elaborates on his magic boat and whether that version of Wade relates to the giant of the sea. However, here we have a Wade that seems modeled on the wild Saxon or Frank (or Geat) that would have fit into migration age stories represented in the poems “Widsith,” and “Deor.” That may not bring us closer to understanding who Wade was in his lost English tale, but it fills in a gap for a character long enough lived for literature to ease him into retirement. 

The Privilege of Hubris

A medieval miniature of Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea in a bathysphere, from Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre, ca. 1420, f. 77v (Wikimedia). The bathysphere is curiously shaped like Reza Baluchi’s “hamster wheel.”

Mythological hubris and its attendant risks and rewards are increasingly beyond the common man’s reach even as the wealthy capitalize on daring, foolhardy adventure. Hubris is defined as excessive pride or confidence. What I call mythological hubris, or classical hubris, is the same, but it incorporates the desire to overcome a sphere that is by nature off limits to human beings. Today in the United States a number of the ultra-wealthy seem to see no natural limits, and without government controls, like the tragic heroes of yore, they have only the natural consequences of their actions to face. This is not so for the average person.

Reza Baluchi and one of his water craft by Jim Rassol from the Florida Sun Sentinel.

Take the example of Reza Baluchi, the extreme athlete and eccentric inventor who seems intent on imperishable fame whether or not it amounts to his death. In August, the US Coast Guard stopped Baluchi from a trans-Atlantic crossing in what authorities have described as a “hamster wheel” held afloat by buoys in a metal frame. The Coast Guard officers saw a man in danger, but the power they wielded to save him was the bureaucratic power of the modern state: Baluchi’s craft was not registered.

The Fall of Icarus, alternate title: Daedalus Icaro alta nimis ambienti orbatur. Etching appeared in: The Metamorphoses of Ovid, plate 75, second edition illustrated by Antonio Tempesta, published 1606.

It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening to Daedalus, who strapped on wings of his own invention and conquered the sky. Of course there was no modern bureaucratic state, no FAA to report him to, as airline pilots reported kindred-spirit Larry Walters, the man who in 1982 rose to 16,000 feet in a lawn chair attached to a multitude of weather balloons. Like Walters, who later took his life, Baluchi seems like a troubled man. Faced with being stopped from running 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to London, England, Baluchi threatened to harm himself with a knife and to blow himself up with wires he claimed were attached to a bomb. It was Baluchi’s fifth attempt to make a major ocean crossing in a similar, self-made craft. In 2016 the Coast Guard shot and scuttled his vessel, sending it to the bottom of the ocean. Baluchi’s friend said that Baluchi had invested more than $120,000 into the craft.

Larry Walters in his lawn chair from the Smithsonian Magazine.

Perhaps if Baluchi had the money and clout to charge a small group of wealthy passengers $250,000 a spot to join him on his perilous mission, like the doomed entrepreneur Stockton Rush, he would have been allowed to run as far as his legs could take him. The cost of legally facing life-threatening danger that allows people to travel to spaces unfit for our survival has become the rich man’s game. Rush’s cofounder Guillermo Söhnlein recently announced his desire to build a colony in the hellish atmosphere of the planet Venus. Elon Musk has garnered attention with his plans to reach the planet Mars. These modern-day Nimrods will commission others to die building their Towers of Babel and chances are, they will find a way around zoning restrictions.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563, from Wikipedia. Extra-biblical traditions name Nimrod as the ruler who commissions the Tower of Babel.

Our modern bureaucracy may stand in the way of ordinary mortals seeking fame or death, but it isn’t against using mythological wonder to inspire us to support expensive ventures with our tax dollars. NASA has long used the cache of myth to inspire Americans, by naming missions after Greek gods and heroes. The Artemis Program to return Americans to the moon is only the latest example of this. NASA’s advertising department created colorful cell phone and desktop backgrounds for Artemis in an attempt to excite the public imagination. The Smithsonion’s Air and Space Museum isn’t above celebrating Walters’s illegal flight by displaying his lawn chair. Give the government some time and it might look back more charitably on Baluchi’s hamster wheel.

Larry Walters's lawn chair, from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

We all presumably have the mythological wonder to appreciate the dreams that inspire men like Baluchi and Walters. It is not hard for me to understand what drove Baluchi to brave the laws of man and nature to make five different attempts at crossing the ocean in a self-built, self-propelled bubble-wheel. It isn’t hard for me to understand Walters, who reportedly said “It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm.” Nothing separates these intrepid, slightly mad adventurers from the rest of us, but the will to carry out their dreams, no matter the cost. And nothing separates them from the men who take those risks without fear of government interference, but a few cool billions.

Teaching Gluskabe: Wrestling with American Values

Gluskabe turning man into a cedar tree. Scraping on birchbark by Tomah Joseph 1884. (Image from Wikipedia).

I never read a piece of Native American literature in school. I think I can say that of university as well. This continued until I found myself at the age of 45, writing about folk literature and mythology and realizing I knew much, much more about the mythology and folk stories of far flung lands than I did about those tales of my native land of New England, which is to say, zero. This seemed a terrible deficit and it has led me to put in the work to find tales to share with others. I've done that through this blog with two previous pieces and I decided it was time to share some of those tales with my high school American literature students. The relatively tiny number of tales my students have studied (compared to the amount of white texts they will read this year in my class) has produced fascinating discussions with my students about American culture and our values as a people. I can't think of a better outcome.

This September I taught the first five stories from Still They Remember Me, Penobscot tales of the Wabanaki culture hero Gluskabe. These tales are a time of great transition for Gluskabe, who begins as a character who acts selfishly. Under the tutelage of his grandmother, he corrects his behavior and by the end of the fifth tale Gluskabe not only acts in the interest of his descendants, he corrects the behavior of others who are selfish. I wrote about the text in my last post and I describe some of the tales in more detail in that piece. The tales were collected from a Penobscot storyteller by anthropologist Frank Speck and published in 1918. Still They Remember Me is a newly published treatment of the tales by a Penobscot language expert and two Maine professors, in bilingual format to help reclaim the Penobscot language.

“Still They Remember Me,” with a photograph of Penobscot tale-teller Newell Lyon, from University of Massachusetts Press.

I taught the five tales, none longer than a page long, over the course of two classes. Within those classes the students read and responded to the tales, and showed an understanding of the themes. The stories are simple enough for a child to understand, but the cultural differences of them are enough to challenge the teenage students I teach. The closing exercise to the tales asked students to imagine what the U.S. would be if the Wabanaki values from the tales were our values. The results were exciting. Students thought we would have a cleaner environment and that global warming might not be the problem it is. Animals would not be farmed in factories, or pushed into tight confines as they are in two of the early Gluskabe stories. We would have more respect for the creatures around us.

The topic of money raised interesting conversations. Students envisioned a distinctly socialist system where no one took more than they needed and everyone had as much as they needed. An exciting exchange came as we discussed the value Grandmother Woodchuck puts on the hunting prowess Gluskabe displays as a child. “Of course, we are not a hunting society,” I said. “We don’t rely on hunting to survive.” The most memorable student comment came from a young man who became an Eagle Scout last summer. He said: “We hunt money.” I asked, “Do we only hunt for as much money as we need? Do we give back the money we don’t need?” A titter of laughter broke out and a sea of faces shook their heads no. I should add that most (but not all) of my students are white and that most (but not all) of their families are financially secure.

My assertion in my last piece on these tales, that Wabanaki values are the values of our family lives, rang true in student understandings of the tales. We teach our children to share and to be kind to others with their things. I saw that in an exchange between a mother and little boy at a Labor Day cookout over sharing a toy helicopter with another child. My students, in applying Wabanaki values, introduced the idea of distributing wealth more fairly and none were shocked by that notion. They also realized that this would be a great shift in American culture, that it would disrupt the American goal of (a student’s description) “taking as much as you can get.” I found that a win for comprehension and critical thinking. I knew that such discussions could also get me targeted by Fox News personalities.

Natives, Colonists and the Creation of an American Literature

Lisa Brooks’s Our Beloved Kin, a real historian’s history, but it touches on the role Wampanoag people of Massachusetts played in some of the earliest publishing on this continent and features a Greek myth written by a Native scholar filtered through Puritan sensibilities. This text informed my approach to the Wabanaki tales and the Colonial Puritan era

I used the tales as a counterpoint for many of the American texts to come in my American Literature class. The course has long been a series of texts by dead white men though we have made some shifts in recent years. It is difficult to identify elements of the culture one lives in without the perspective of another culture. Because it is an American Literature class, that culture should really derive from an American text and the Wabanaki tales, short and easy as they are for students, provided that counterpoint. I followed the Gluskabe tales with the Puritan poem “Day of Doom” after the suggestion of Lisa Brooks’s Our Beloved Kin, a history of warfare between New England colonists and Natives. Brooks also inspired me to use 1650s Harvard graduate Caleb Cheeshateaumuk’s letter thanking his benefactors for helping him spread Christianity to his people. Caleb recounts a version of the Greek myth Orpheus and Eurydice. Let me add that one student (unprompted) thought that Caleb, a Wampanoag native, displayed Wabanaki values in his concern for his descendants, even if that concern was for the safety of their souls. I plan to follow with another Brooks suggestion, Dakota-writer Susan Power’s “First Fruits,” a modern short story in which a Dakota girl goes to Harvard and encounters Caleb’s spirit as she tries to find herself in the new cultural context.

I think that opening an American Literature course with these Native folktales is a great choice. They help disrupt what will otherwise be a very white experience. They provide context and help students recognize and articulate their culture. They are short and allow everyone to engage in a discussion and focus on high level thinking. So many other texts I will teach will require outside reading and some ability to navigate difficult texts. I will rarely have an entire class of students starting a discussion with as similar a level of preparation without much more teaching from me.

I still believe that the Gluskabe tales are wonderful for younger readers and even for students who need to be read to. Children will not have the trouble some of my teens had in accepting that Gluskabe’s grandmother is a woodchuck, but he is a person. (High school English teachers everywhere are nodding their heads—did these kids never see a Muppet movie or a Disney cartoon!?) That kind of cognitive dissonance must be learned. The values of sharing and not being selfish, of acting in the interest of others rather than oneself are values many parents will embrace for their children and the children will embrace them for themselves.