The Soul of the Ring
How Hidetaka Miyazaki and Norse epic poems brought us Elden Ring
Over eight hundred years ago, The Song of the Nibelungs was written. Originally an oral tradition of epic stories and poems, the Nibelunglied (and its fellows, the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and and Volsunga Saga) would go on to influenced popular culture in myriad ways, from the The Ring of the Nibelung cycle to The Lord of the Rings and even the modern epic Berserk. The adventurous heroics of the Nibelunglied echo so strongly throughout artistic media that we have come to see their wide-spread influence as common Norse mainstays. The Eddas themselves, written not long after The Song of the Nibelungs by Snorri Sturluson, are categorically our reference to the Icelandic epic tradition as a whole — almost everything we know about modern Norse mythology stems from them.
“The Tarnished will soon return…” [via the Elden Ring trailer]
A Familiar Tale
After an agonizing (but expected) wait, Elden Ring has been shown for the first time. No longer a storied existence belonging to nothing more than a simple teaser trailer (and years of fan theories and Dark…
