Grimhild- Norse FigureMortal"Queen of the Gjúkungs"

The Drink That Drowned Memory

When Sigurd Fáfnisbani came to the hall of the Gjúkungs, he carried with him oaths sworn to Brynhild on the mountain ringed by fire. Grímhild saw in the slayer of Fáfnir a match for her daughter Gudrún and brewed a horn of ale mixed with herbs of forgetting, runes of power scratched into the horn itself. Sigurd drank and remembered nothing of Brynhild. The Völsunga saga records that the drink was blended with the strength of earth and sea, the blood of a boar, and runes scored upon the horn. With his memory wiped clean, Sigurd swore brotherhood with Gunnar and Högni and took Gudrún as his wife. He even rode through the wavering flames a second time in Gunnar's shape to win Brynhild for his blood-brother, never knowing he betrayed his own oath.

Brynhild, believing herself abandoned by the one man who had passed through fire for her, demanded Sigurd's death. Gunnar and Högni arranged the killing. Gudrún was left a widow, her happiness built on enchantment and collapsed with it.

The Second Potion and the Marriage to Atli

After Sigurd's murder, Gudrún fled her brothers' hall and lived in grief and exile. Grímhild sought her out again, this time for political advantage. In Guðrúnarkviða II, she arrives with a retinue bearing gifts of gold and offers Gudrún another drink, laced with potent herbs and charms. The poem names the ingredients: an ice-cold draught mixed with earth's strength, sea's blood, and sacrificial boar's blood, scored with runes.

Gudrún resisted but drank at last and forgot her grief enough to consent to marriage with Atli, king of the Huns. Atli would murder Gunnar and Högni for the Rhinegold. Gudrún would avenge her brothers by slaying her own sons by Atli and feeding them to their father at a feast before burning his hall around him.