Many famous stories center around this hero. In the Norse and Icelandic stories, the Volsunga Saga, he is Sigurd; in the Germanic epic, the Nibelungenlied, and in Wagner's opera, he is Siegfried. The stories told in both are much the same. He is said to come of a lofty race of great heroes, and he lived to become the greatest of them all. The sources of these tales are lost in antiquity for they were told for many centuries in the great halls of the north before they were gathered and written down in the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.

From Hero Tales From Many Lands