History to Myths: Social Network Analysis for Comparison of Stories over Time (2020)

Abstract: We discuss on how related stories can be compared by their characters. We investigate character graphs, or social networks, in order to measure evolution of character importance over time. To illustrate this, we chose the Siegfried-Sigurd myth that may come from a Merovingian king named Sigiberthus. The Nibelungenlied, the Völsunga saga and the History of the Franks are the three resources used.

## introduction the legend of siegfried-sigurd had a major place in the germanic tradition. the best-known extant texts of the legend are the norse völsunga saga (vol) and the continental germanic nibelungenlied (nib). these two texts present similar sets of characters and events. they are often seen as reporting historical events that occurred in the 5 th and the 6 th centuries. this period was largely told in decem libri historiarum (dlh). in this paper, we use the dlh as a historical source to quantify borrowings into nib and vol. to encourage further study in this domain, we made annotations and graphs available 1 . this paper begins with a summary of the texts 1. next, in 3 we review recent analyses of these texts as well as methods to extract information from social networks. in 4, we present in detail the data used in subsequent analyses. the construction of character networks for our and the comparison between texts are explained in 5. finally, results will be discussed in 6. @xcite the legend of siegfried, the dragon-slayer 2.1 völsunga saga vol tells the destiny of a family from sigi, an offspring of odin himself, to svanhildr, sigurðr's 2 daughter. sigurðr, son of sigmundr son of völsungr, later kills a dragon named fafnir after events involving gods becomes possessor of cursed gold. he later wakes brynhildr up (a myth similar to the tale sleeping beauty) and they promise to marry each other. yet sigurðr marries guðrún, daughter of gjúki and grímhildr and brynhildr marries gunnar, guðrún's brother, after a treason permitted by magic use. when it is unveiled, brynhildr orders gunnar to kill sigurðr, so gunnar incites guttormr to kill sigurðr, what he does. brynhildr regrets and kills herself. later guðrún marries atli, king of the huns. the cycle of revenge leads atli to kill gunnar, guðrún to kill atli. after she tried to kill herself, guðrún is married by force to jonakr and her daughter svanhildr, (that she got with sigurðr), once grown up, is coveted by jörmunrekkr, king of the goths. once again, jealousy and revenge lead svanhildr and guðrún to be killed. finally, all sigi's lineage was killed. ## character network analysis according to the generic process of character analysis sketched out in subsection 3.2, this work is on fiction for nib and vol, and dlh is historical, yet most of processes are similar. figures 1 and 2 summarise the workflow followed in the present work. the three main processes are described more precisely in the following subsections. ## interpretation sygiberthus remained a main character and even got a strong importance in vol (high rank of degrees as well as other measures) despite the fact that he was killed at the middle of the story. guntharius appears as a main character that is in the shade of other more prominent characters (high closeness and relatively low other measures). as a king or prince at the court of burgundy, gunnar and gunther got a stronger role (higher measures and rank) compared to guntharius. this is because the plot was more centered onto the burgundian kingdom. brynhildr and brünhild has almost a similar role to gunnar, gunther although her role is more limited because she disappeared at the middle of nib and vol (see below for a deeper analysis of her ego-graphs). sigimundus got a higher role in the germanic tradition. attila got a more important role in the germanic tradition with poems with his name. his name was feared for centuries after his death. alaricus plays a one-time role in dlh that may explain why his fate in the myth was not equal (he is not mentioned in vol and in nib he plays a role but was transformed into a dwarf). a contrario, theodoricus plays a central role without being at the top. he has a small influence on events but often participates. his tradition remained in some texts only. he has his own saga thiðrekssaga and is also called dietrich von bern in the continental germanic tradition. hagen and högni do not play exactly the same role in nib and vol. his role is essential in nib where both his influence and importance are very high, but his place does not make him a protagonist because of his attitude. this is a feature that is not captured by graph metrics, but could be analysed by sentiment analysis. ragnacharius and farro are anecdotal in dlh while vol made them important (they are mythical beings) in regard to the hero, whereas they simply do not appear in nib. brünhild's ego-graphs (figures 3, 4 and 5) deserve some explanations. the closest characters con-9 networkx.org nected to her are her relatives and her husband for the three texts. dlh have many characters of a small interest in the story. vol. some characters did not find correspondences in ## conclusion this work provides an annotated (named-entities) corpus of a related myth. a character-based graph was used to analyse similarities and differences between the texts. some characters got more importance while others vanished. future research can include an analysis of phonetic evolution for such proper nouns so that it is a marker of common characters. more sources could be included in the analysis because some characters do no appear in all mythical texts of the germanic tradition. characters may appear in texts but not directly with same names and same features: role and name reassignments are quite common in these texts and need better models of characters in a myth to be detected and quantified.