Volsungs

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The heroic family line descended from Volsung in the Norse sagas, including figures such as Sigurd and Sigmund
2. Legendary Norse kin group of Volsung whose tragic story is told in the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda
3. The mythic royal house of Volsung from Old Norse heroic literature, famed for its feuds and doomed heroes

Etymology: The Volsungs were a legendary Norse royal family, the descendants of Volsung, and their story is told in the "Völsunga saga," a thirteenth-century Icelandic prose work, though the material is far older. Its heroes include Sigurd (Sigurðr), who slays the dragon Fafnir, and the fated Brynhild. Much of the saga's material also survives in the Poetic Edda and in the Nibelung tradition that became the German "Nibelungenlied," so the family's story travelled across medieval Scandinavia and Germany. The name is built from "Völsungr," a male personal name formed on the Old Norse word "völsi," meaning a phallus, a detail that the saga itself does not dwell on. Scholars generally take the name as the eponymous ancestor's, so the family is named after its founder rather than after any object or idea. Because the Volsungs are a family of legend, the English word here is simply the plural of a proper name, used in English since the nineteenth century when translators such as William Morris rendered the saga for readers of English.