The Greenland Ballad of Atli

Guðrún understood the council being held around her. Atli was planning the deaths of her brothers and had arranged an invitation to bring them across the sea. She could not travel with the messengers to warn them herself. Instead she carved runes, trying to send her knowledge where her own voice could not reach.

Vingi altered the message before delivering it. At Gunnarr and Högni’s home, the envoys were welcomed with ale and fire. Kostbera, Högni’s wife, and Glaumvör, Gunnarr’s, attended to their guests. The men accepted gifts and drank deeply. Gunnarr agreed to go if Högni would accompany him, and Högni agreed in turn. Hospitality gave the deception time to become a promise.

Kostbera examined the runes by firelight. She knew enough to recognise that something was wrong: the characters were strange, and the meaning beneath them seemed to warn of death. Guðrún had not really asked her brothers to come. One sign was missing or others had been tampered with. Kostbera urged Högni to delay the journey.

He dismissed her fear and trusted the promised gold. She then told him her dreams. His bed-covering burned while fire rose through the house; a bear entered and shook the building; an eagle brought blood. Each image suggested a threat approaching the household, and each received a harmless explanation from him. Worn linen might burn, bad weather might roar, animals would be slaughtered. Atli, he insisted, was trustworthy.

Glaumvör had dreams for Gunnarr too. She saw a gallows, wounds, wolves, and a flood running through the hall around the brothers’ feet. Dead women came asking him to join them. Gunnarr finally answered that the decision was already made, even if their lives would prove short. The warnings failed not because the women lacked words, but because the men refused to let those words change a public commitment.

Morning brought the departure. Högni’s sons Snævarr and Sólarr and Kostbera’s brother Orkningr accompanied the expedition. The women followed to the fjord and pleaded again. Glaumvör questioned Vingi about the welcome they had given him and whether he was repaying it honestly. He swore that giants or a gallows should take him if he had deceived them.

Kostbera wished the travellers well. Högni told those remaining to take courage whatever happened; words alone could not always bring people home. They looked tenderly at one another until their paths separated. The poem has spent many stanzas on these households because the men approaching Atli are husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, already loved by people whose judgment could have saved them.

They rowed fiercely, straining the ship’s fittings, and came to the stronghold. There Vingi dropped the pretence. The entrance was a trap, and the gallows awaited them. Högni refused to be frightened. The brothers killed the messenger, fulfilling the destruction he had so lightly invoked in his false oath, but doing so did not undo the larger ambush.

Atli’s warriors assembled across the courtyard. Words became arrows and blows. A servant carried news of the fighting indoors. Guðrún flung aside her ornaments, opened the doors, and went out to greet her brothers for the last time. She explained that she had tried to keep them at home and attempted to negotiate peace. No one would agree.

She took up a sword and fought beside her kin. Atli’s brother fell among those she killed. The battle continued for hours, with the Niflungs cutting through armour and striking helmets, until their small company was exhausted and overcome. This Guðrún does not remain only a watching sister. Before turning to later revenge, she attempts to preserve her brothers’ lives with her own hands.

Atli complained that his family had been diminished and that marriage to her had brought him no happiness. Guðrún answered with accusations of his own cruelty. He ordered Högni’s heart cut out and Gunnarr cast among snakes, explicitly seeking to increase her grief. Högni told him to do what he wished: while they were whole they had resisted, and wounds now left them in his power.

A steward proposed killing the cook Hjalli instead. Terrified, Hjalli fled about and begged for life, offering to do the lowest work if spared. Högni intervened and asked that the servant be released; he would rather face the knife himself than hear the continued pleading. Unlike the substituted heart in Atlakviða, this version gives Högni a moment in which his courage also saves another person.

He laughed as his captors took him. Gunnarr played a harp with his toes, making music so moving that men and women wept. The brothers died, leaving their fame behind. Atli stood over the result and told Guðrún it was morning and she now lacked her loved ones. She answered that he would never escape sorrow while she lived.

He offered compensation in servants, jewels, and silver. She rejected the idea that her brothers could be replaced. They had grown up together, shared games, and received their mother’s gifts in the same house. Yet she then spoke as though she acknowledged his power and softened her manner. Atli trusted the change, ignoring the hostility he had heard as clearly as her brothers had ignored their wives’ warnings.

They prepared a funeral feast for the dead on both sides. Guðrún summoned her two young sons. The children came to her arms and asked what she wanted. She killed them, then made their skulls into cups, mixed their blood into drink, and served their roasted hearts as meat. The poem gives the children voices before their deaths; they are not merely unnamed instruments in a revenge plot.

Atli asked where the boys had gone. Guðrún told him everything. He had mocked her loss in the morning; now evening had brought his own. He threatened punishment, and she answered with further defiance. Their shared house held no remaining place of trust. Högni’s son Hniflungr, also seeking vengeance, joined her in planning Atli’s death.

They attacked him as he slept. Waking wounded, Atli demanded to know who had struck him. Guðrún named herself and Högni’s son. The dying man accused her of betraying a husband who had given her wealth and standing. She answered by recalling Sigurðr and her brothers, contrasting that remembered life with the cruelty of the marriage that followed.

At last Atli asked for one kindness after death, for the honour of them both. Guðrún promised a ship, a fine coffin, and a carefully prepared shroud. She would see to the funeral as though they had loved one another. He died, and she kept the promise. The poem says she later sought death but lived on. Its ending leaves a woman capable of fulfilling a final obligation to the man she has killed, after every earlier attempt at warning, bargaining, and reconciliation has failed.