The Fall of the Niflungs

After Sigurðr’s death, Gunnarr and Högni took possession of Fáfnir’s treasure. Their victory over the man who had won it brought a new enemy. Atli blamed Gjúki’s sons for the death of his sister Brynhildr, and hostility grew between the two households.

They arranged a marriage to settle the conflict. Guðrún would become Atli’s wife. Before she agreed, she was given a drink of forgetfulness. The woman whose husband her brothers had killed was made the means of repairing their relationship with another powerful man.

Guðrún and Atli had two sons, Erpr and Eitill. Her daughter by Sigurðr was Svanhildr. Gunnarr had wanted Atli’s other sister, Oddrún, but had been refused; he married Glaumvör instead. Högni’s wife was Kostbera. The prose bridge names these people because the coming poems will tell their different parts in the same family’s destruction.

Atli invited Gunnarr and Högni to visit. Guðrún understood that the invitation concealed treachery. She sent a warning in runes and, as a token, a ring with a wolf’s hair tied into it. The bridge calls the ring Andvaranaut. Its messenger has alternative names, Vingi or Knéfröðr, showing how the prose joins details from more than one telling.

The brothers nevertheless came. Guðrún asked her sons to plead for their uncles’ lives, but they refused, according to this short account. Högni’s heart was cut out. Gunnarr was placed among serpents.

He played a harp and put the snakes to sleep, but an adder struck him in the liver. The bridge ends there. It gives the outline before the longer voices take it up: a marriage intended to make peace, a warning sent across the distance, and the deaths that the marriage could not prevent.