After some time had elapsed, Siegfried and Kriemhild went to visit Gunther, when the two women fell into a dispute about the relative merits of their husbands. Kriemhild, to exalt Siegfried, boasted that it was to the latter that Gunther owed his victories and his wife. Brunhild, in great anger, employed Hagan, liegeman of Gunther, to murder Siegfried. In the epic Hagan is described as follows:
"Well-grown and well-compacted was that redoubted guest; Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest; His hair, that once was sable, with gray was dashed of late; Most terrible his visage, and lordly was his gait."
—Nibelungen Lied, stanza 1789.
This Achilles of German romance stabbed Siegfried between the shoulders, as the unfortunate King of the Netherlands was stooping to drink from a brook during a hunting expedition.
The second part of the epic relates how, thirteen years later, Kriemhild married Etzel, King of the Huns. After a time, she invited the King of Burgundy, with Hagan and many others, to the court of her husband. A fearful quarrel was stirred up in the banquet hall, which ended in the slaughter of all the Burgundians but Gunther and Hagan. These two were taken prisoners and given to Kriemhild, who with her own hand cut off the heads of both. For this bloody act of vengeance Kriemhild was herself slain by Hildebrand, a magician and champion, who in German mythology holds a place to an extent corresponding to that of Nestor in the Greek mythology.
THE NIBELUNGEN HOARD
This was a mythical mass of gold and precious stones which Siegfried obtained from the Nibelungs, the people of the north whom he had conquered and whose country he had made tributary to his own kingdom of the Netherlands. Upon his marriage, Siegfried gave the treasure to Kriemhild as her wedding portion. After the murder of Siegfried, Hagan seized it and buried it secretly beneath the Rhine at Lochham, intending to recover it at a future period. The hoard was lost forever when Hagan was killed by Kriemhild. Its wonders are thus set forth in the poem:
"'Twas as much as twelve huge wagons in four whole nights and days
Could carry from the mountain down to the salt sea bay;
Though to and fro each wagon thrice journeyed every day.
"It was made up of nothing but precious stones and gold;
Were all the world bought from it, and down the value told,
Not a mark the less would there be left than erst there was, I ween."
—Nibelungen Lied, XIX.