HKB
except her wounded pride. In the "Nibelungenlied", too, she disappears from view after Siegfried's death, whereas in the Norse tradition she ascends his funeral pyre and dies at his side.
The circumstances of Siegfried's death are likewise totally different in the two versions. In the Norse, as we have seen, he is murdered while asleep in bed, by Gunnar's younger brother Gutthorm. In our poem he is killed by Hagen, while bending over a spring to drink. This is preceded by a scene in which Hagen treacherously induces Kriemhild to mark the one vulnerable spot on Siegfried's body, on the plea of protecting him. This deepens the tragedy, and renders Kriemhild's misery and self-reproaches the greater. After Siegfried's burial his father, who had also come to Worms with his son, vainly endeavors to persuade Kriemhild to return with him to the Netherlands. Her refusal is unnatural in the extreme, for she had reigned there ten years or more with Siegfried, and had left her little son behind, and yet she relinquishes all this and remains with her brothers, whom she knows to be the murderers of her husband. This is evidently a reminiscence of an earlier form in which Siegfried was a homeless adventurer, as in the "Thidreksaga".
The second half of the tale, the destruction of the Nibelungs, is treated of very briefly in the early Norse versions, but the "Nibelungenlied", which knows so little of Siegfried's youth, has developed and enlarged upon the story, until it overshadows the first part in length and importance and gives the name to the whole poem. The main difference between the two versions is that in the older Norse tradition it is Attila who invites the Nibelungs to his court and attacks them in order to gain possession of the treasure, while Gudrun (Kriemhild) first tries to reconcile the warring parties, and, not succeeding in this, snatches up a sword and fights on the side of her brothers and later kills her husband as an act of revenge. In the "Thidreksaga" and the "Nibelungenlied", however, she is the instigator of the fight and the cause of her brothers' death, and finally suffers death herself at the hands of Master Hildebrand, who is furious that such noble heroes should fall at a woman's hand. The second part of the poem is grewsome reading at best, with its weltering corpses and torrents of blood. The horror is relieved only by the grim humor of Hagen and by the charming scene at Rudeger's court, where the young prince Giselher is betrothed to Rudeger's daughter. Rudeger is without doubt the most tragic figure of this part. He is bound on the one hand by his oath of allegiance to Kriemhild and on the other by ties of friendship to the Burgundians. His agony of mind at the dilemma in which Kriemhild's command to attack the Burgundians places him is pitiful. Divided between love and duty, the conviction that he must fulfill his vow, cost what it may, gradually forces itself upon him and he rushes to his death in combat with his dearest friends.
Towering above all others in its gloomy grandeur stands the figure of Hagen, the real hero of the second half of the poem. Fully aware that he is going to his death, he nevertheless scorns to desert his companions-in-arms, and awaits the fate in store for him with a stoicism that would do honor to a Spartan. He calmly accepts the consequences of his crime, and to the last mocks and scoffs at Kriemhild, until her fury knows no bounds. No character shows so little the refining influences of Christianity as does his. In all essential respects he is still the same old gigantic Teuton, who meets us in the earliest forms of the legend.