ORTNIT, or OTNIT

This article appears in Volume V20, Page 341 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: ORC-PAI

ORTNIT, or OTNIT , German hero of romance, was originally Hertnit or Hartnit, the elder of two

brothers

BROTHERS, RICHARD (1757-1824)

known as the Hartungs, who correspond in German mythology to the Dioscuri. His seat was at Holmgard (

Novgorod

NOVGOROD
NOVGOROD (formerly known as V elikiy-Novgorod,
Great
- GREAT
Novgorod)

), according to the Thidrekssaga (chapter 45), and he was related to the Russian saga heroes. Later on his city of Holmgard became Garda, and in

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

German legend he ruled in Lombardy. Hartnit won his

bride

BRIDE (a common Teutonic word, e.g..Goth. bruths, O. Eng. bryd, O. H. Ger. prs2t, Mod. Ger. Bract, Dut. bruid, possibly derived from the root bru-, cook, brew; from the med. latinized form bruta, in the sense of daughter-in-law, is derived the Fr. bru)

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

dragon

DRAGON (Fr. dragon, through Lat. draco, from the Greek; connected with SEpeoľay " see," and interpreted as " sharp-sighted "; O.H. Ger. tracho, dracho, M.H.G. trache, Mod. Ger. Drachen; A.S. draca, hence the equivalent
English
- ENGLISH
form " drake," " fire-drake,

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

Ortnit

ORTNIT, or OTNIT

by killing the

dragon

DRAGON (Fr. dragon, through Lat. draco, from the Greek; connected with SEpeoľay " see," and interpreted as " sharp-sighted "; O.H. Ger. tracho, dracho, M.H.G. trache, Mod. Ger. Drachen; A.S. draca, hence the equivalent
English
- ENGLISH
form " drake," " fire-drake,

, and then married his brother's widow.

Ortnit

ORTNIT, or OTNIT

's wooing was corrupted by the popular

interest

INTEREST

in the crusades to an Oriental Brautfahrtsaga, bearing a very close resemblance to the French romance of Huon of Bordeaux. Both heroes receive similar assistance from Alberich (Oberon), who supplanted the Russian Ilya as Ortnit's epic father in middle lligh German romance. Neumann 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.
See editions of the Heldenbuch and one of Ortnit and Wolfdietrich by Dr. J. L. Edlen von Lindhausen (

Tubingen

TUBINGEN

, 1906) ; articles in the Zeitschrift fiir deutsches Altertum by K. Mullenhoff (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.

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