The Lay of Atli

Atli sent Knéfröðr to Gunnarr’s hall with an invitation. The messenger crossed the dark forest and took a seat among men drinking in a room lined with weapons. His words promised a welcome worthy of kings: shields, helmets, horses, scarlet clothing, servants, and rich lands. Atli offered abundance in every form that might tempt a warrior ruler to travel.

Gunnarr turned to Högni. What treasure could Atli offer that they did not already equal? Their halls held swords with golden hilts; their horses, bows, armour, and helmets were among the best. The invitation did not answer an obvious need. Högni considered another message that had arrived with it: Guðrún had sent them a ring with a wolf’s hair woven into it.

He read the token as a warning. Their road would be wolfish if they went. The men around Gunnarr were reluctant too, but the king answered in the proud, dismissive manner expected of him in the drinking hall. He chose to ride. His decision was not the innocent acceptance of a friendly invitation. The possibility of betrayal had already been named.

As they left, those at home wept. Högni’s young heir wished the travellers a safe journey. The brothers rode through mountains and Myrkviðr toward the land of the Huns, their horses carrying them into the danger the ring had suggested. High walls, watchtowers, and armed men greeted them at Atli’s dwelling.

Guðrún saw them enter and immediately warned Gunnarr. He had been betrayed. Why had he not come in armour with a full household of warriors, ready to make Atli himself face the serpents? Gunnarr answered that it was too late to summon the Niflungs from the Rhine. The distance they had confidently crossed could not now be crossed in time by rescuers.

Atli’s men seized Gunnarr and bound him. Högni resisted fiercely, killing seven and throwing an eighth into the fire before he too was overcome. The poem honours the strength of that resistance without suggesting that a handful of fighters could reverse the prepared trap. The king then demanded the treasure as the price of Gunnarr’s life.

Gunnarr asked for Högni’s heart to be cut from his breast and placed before him. Atli’s people first killed the servant Hjalli and brought his heart on a platter. Gunnarr rejected it. This was the heart of a fearful man, still trembling outside the body, unlike the heart his brother would possess.

They cut out Högni’s heart while he lived. He laughed and did not weep. When the platter returned, Gunnarr accepted what he saw: the heart lay steady, as it had been steady within Högni. The horrific test had secured the certainty he wanted, and only then did he reveal the purpose behind his demand.

While Högni lived, two men had known the secret of the treasure. Now Gunnarr alone knew it. Atli would never obtain the gold. The Rhine could keep the wealth that had passed through gods and heroes; its rings would shine in the water’s depths rather than on Hunnish hands. Killing the second keeper of the secret had made the first impossible to bargain with.

Atli ordered him taken away. Guðrún reminded her husband of the oaths he had sworn by sacred powers and objects. He had broken them as surely as her brothers had broken faith with Sigurðr. Her words could pronounce the significance of the deed, but they could not halt the wagon carrying Gunnarr toward death.

The living king was thrown into an enclosure full of serpents. He struck the harp-strings with his hand, and the music sounded amid the crawling creatures. This poem does not describe him playing with his toes; that detail belongs to the other Atli lay. Here the harp marks the resistance of a man who will protect the treasure’s secret even when protection costs him his life.

Atli rode home from the killing place. Hooves and weapons rang in the courtyard, and Guðrún came to meet him with a golden cup. She invited him to eat freshly slaughtered young animals. The household assembled for a feast, with loud drinking and the assurance of men who believed their enemies had been removed.

After Atli ate, she told him what she had served. The hearts were those of their sons, Erpr and Eitill, prepared with honey. He would never again call the boys to his knees or see them at the ordinary tasks of a young nobleman’s life, tending horses and shaping spear shafts. The poem names those lost activities beside the terrible meal, restoring the children’s future just as their mother announces its destruction.

The hall broke into noise and weeping. Guðrún did not weep for her brothers or the young sons she had borne to Atli. Her revenge had struck the husband through children who were hers as well as his. She distributed gold among the household, allowing the wealth at the centre of so much violence to pass out through her hands.

Atli drank until he was unguarded and without a weapon. Guðrún gave the bed his blood. Then she released the dogs, roused the household servants, and put fire to the hall. The people who had returned from Gunnarr’s killing were caught within it. Old timbers fell and the royal dwelling burned with its occupants.

The poem closes by declaring the extraordinary scale of her vengeance. Its language can praise her resolution while the narrative shows the young, the captive, and the dependent destroyed along with kings. No restored family waits outside the flames. Atli fails to gain the treasure, Gunnarr dies keeping its secret, and Guðrún answers the loss of her brothers by annihilating the household in which she lives.

The invitation had begun with gifts, rich clothing, food, and hospitality. The final welcome uses the same forms: a cup, a meal, and the opening of a hall. What made those gestures trustworthy has been destroyed. The story’s last feast completes the betrayal announced by the wolf’s hair in the first ring.