It shall yearn, and be oft-times holpen, and forget their deeds no more,
Till the new sun beams on Balder and the happy sealess shore.”
According to another version of the story, Sigurd was treacherously slain by the Giukings while hunting in the forest, and his body was borne home by the hunters and laid at his wife’s feet.
Gudrun, still inconsolable, and loathing the kindred who had thus treacherously robbed her of all her joy, fled from her father’s house and took refuge with Elf, Sigurd’s foster father, who, after Hiordis’s death, had married Thora, the daughter of King Hakon. The two women became great friends, and here Gudrun tarried several years, working tapestry in which she embroidered the great deeds of Sigurd, and watching over her little daughter Swanhild, whose bright eyes reminded her so vividly of the husband whom she had lost.
BRUNHILD.—Th. Pixis.
Atli, King of the Huns.
In the mean while, Atli, Brunhild’s brother, who was now King of the Huns, had sent to Gunnar to demand atonement for his sister’s death; and to satisfy these claims Gunnar had promised that in due time he would give him Gudrun’s hand in marriage. Time passed, and when at last Atli clamored for the fulfillment of his promise, the Niblung brothers, with their mother Grimhild, went to seek the long-absent Gudrun, and by their persuasions and the magic potion administered by Grimhild succeeded in persuading her to leave little Swanhild in Denmark and become Atli’s wife.
Gudrun dwelt, year after year, in the land of the Huns, secretly hating her husband, whose avaricious tendencies were extremely repugnant to her; and she was not even consoled for Sigurd’s death and Swanhild’s loss by the birth of two sons, Erp and Eitel. As she lovingly thought of the past she often spoke of it, little suspecting that her descriptions of the wealth of the Niblungs excited Atli’s greed, and that he was secretly planning some pretext for getting it into his power.
Finally he decided to send Knefrud or Wingi, one of his subjects, to invite all the Niblung princes to visit his court, intending to slay them when he should have them at his mercy; but Gudrun, fathoming this design, sent a runic-written warning to her brothers, together with the ring Andvaranaut, around which she had twined a wolf’s hair. On the way, however, the messenger partly effaced the runes, thus changing their meaning; and when he appeared before the Niblungs, Gunnar accepted the invitation, in spite of Högni’s and Grimhild’s warnings and the ominous dream of his new wife Glaumvor.