Brunhild- Germanic HeroHero"Queen of Iceland"

The Defiance and Punishment

In the Eddic poem Sigrdrífumál and the Völsunga saga, Brunhild was a valkyrie in the service of Wodan, a chooser of the slain who carried out his will on the battlefield. When two kings, Agnar and Hjalmgunnar, clashed in battle, Wodan had promised victory to the old king Hjalmgunnar. But Brunhild defied the All-Father's decree and granted victory to Agnar instead, slaying Hjalmgunnar on the battlefield.

Enraged by this disobedience, Wodan punished her by pricking her with a sleep-thorn and decreeing that she would never again choose the slain in battle but would marry a mortal man. She was enclosed in a shield-hall surrounded by a wall of flames on Mount Hindarfjall, sleeping until a hero brave enough to cross the flames would wake her.

The Awakening and Runic Wisdom

Sigurd, after slaying the dragon Fafnir and acquiring great wisdom by tasting the dragon's heart, rode his horse Grani through the flames and found the sleeping warrior maiden. He cut off her mail coat, which had grown into her flesh as she slept, and she awoke. Her first words were a prayer to the day and to the powers that had brought her back to consciousness, a formal invocation preserved in the opening stanzas of the Sigrdrífumál.

In the wisdom dialogue that follows, Brunhild teaches Sigurd the secret uses of runes. Victory runes are to be carved on a sword's hilt, with Tyr's name invoked twice. Ale runes guard against poison: scratch them on the drinking horn and on the back of the hand. She teaches each set with precision, runes that must be carved, stained with color, and invoked in the correct manner.

They exchanged vows and the ring Andvaranaut, not knowing it carried Andvari's curse, and Sigurd swore to return and marry her.

The Deception at Gunther's Court

But fate and a witch's magic intervened. When Sigurd came to the court of the Burgundian king Gibicho, the queen Grimhild gave him a potion of forgetfulness that erased all memory of Brunhild. Sigurd married Grimhild's daughter Kriemhild instead. Then Grimhild persuaded Sigurd to help her son Gunther win Brunhild for his bride.

Gunther rode to Brunhild's flame-ringed hall, but his horse would not leap the fire. Even when he borrowed Sigurd's horse Grani, the flames would not let him pass, for the fire recognized that only Sigurd was fated to cross it. So Sigurd and Gunther exchanged shapes through magic, and Sigurd, wearing Gunther's form, rode through the flames and wooed Brunhild. He spent three nights in her hall, but laid his sword between them on the bed. He took back the ring Andvaranaut and gave her another ring instead. Brunhild agreed to marry this man she believed was Gunther.

The Quarrel of Queens

Brunhild went to the Burgundian court and married Gunther, while Sigurd, his memory restored, could say nothing of what had passed. But the truth could not remain hidden. In the Völsunga saga, the quarrel erupts while the women wash their hair in the river: Brynhildr wades upstream to claim precedence, insisting her husband rode through the flames to win her. Guðrún reveals the deception and shows the ring Andvaranaut as proof. In the Nibelungenlied, the confrontation takes place before the cathedral doors, where Kriemhild challenges Brunhild's rank and produces the ring and belt that Siegfried took on the wedding night.

In both traditions, the revelation shatters Brunhild. She had been tricked into marrying a lesser man while the one she had sworn to marry wed another.

The Nibelungenlied: The Warrior-Queen

In the German Nibelungenlied, the story diverges in key details. Brunhild is queen of Iceland, a warrior of supernatural strength who will marry only the man who can defeat her in three contests: hurling a boulder, throwing a spear, and leaping. Any suitor who fails will die. Gunther, king of Burgundy, desires her but knows he cannot win. Siegfried agrees to help by wearing the Tarnkappe, a cloak of invisibility won from the dwarf Alberich, and performing the feats while Gunther mimes the motions.

Brunhild is thus deceived into believing Gunther defeated her and agrees to marry him. But on their wedding night, she easily overpowers Gunther, ties him up with her girdle, and hangs him from a nail on the wall until morning. Gunther must ask Siegfried to subdue her, which he does invisibly using the Tarnkappe, taking her ring and belt as proof.

The Death of Sigurd

In the Norse tradition, Brunhild demands Sigurd's death. She threatens to leave Gunther and tells him that Sigurd broke his oath by sleeping with her. It was a lie. The sword between them on the bed proved their restraint. But Brunhild knew the truth too well: Sigurd had kept faith with Gunther and abandoned her. Gunther and his brothers conspire to kill Sigurd, but they are bound by oaths of blood-brotherhood with him and cannot strike the blow themselves. Gutthorm, who had not sworn the oath, is fed wolf-flesh and snake-flesh to inflame his courage. He stabs Sigurd in his bed. The dying Sigurd throws his sword and cuts Gutthorm in half.

In the Nibelungenlied, it is Hagen who carries out the murder, stabbing Siegfried in his one vulnerable spot between the shoulder blades, where a linden leaf had fallen while he bathed in the dragon's blood. He strikes as Siegfried bends to drink from a spring during a hunt. Hagen had learned the location of the weak point from Kriemhild herself, who had marked it on Siegfried's garment believing Hagen wished to protect him in battle.

The Prophecy and Self-Immolation

When Brunhild learns that Sigurd is dead, she laughs. Then she weeps. In the Völsunga saga, she speaks at length, revealing the full truth of the deception for the first time and prophesying the doom that will follow. She foretells that Atli will marry Guðrún and that this union will bring catastrophic destruction to Gunther's house, a prophecy fulfilled in the later poems of the Edda when Atli lures the Gjúkung brothers to their deaths. Having laid bare the truth and the fate it has set in motion, she takes a sword and drives it into her own body.

Her final request is to be burned on the same pyre as Sigurd, with a sword laid between them as there was in life. The Eddic poem Sigurðarkviða hin skamma preserves her final lament, in which she arranges the details of her own death and pyre with the same commanding authority she once exercised on the battlefield. She orders the disposition of servants, handmaids, and treasure to accompany them in death. The two who should have been married in joy are united only on the pyre.

Áslaug

The Þiðreks saga af Bern draws on Lower German sources and offers further variants of the wooing and quarrel. Brunhild's daughter Áslaug, born of the brief union with Sigurd, survived hidden inside her foster-grandfather Heimir's harp and became the legendary wife of Ragnar Loðbrók, carrying the Völsung bloodline into a new cycle of saga.