Study guide
Kudrun
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Overview
- Composed
- Probably between about 1230 and 1250, in the Bavarian-Austrian area; the date rests on style and on the poem's evident knowledge of the Nibelungenlied, since no early manuscript survives
- Author
- Anonymous. The poet never names himself; he was evidently a well-read court poet who knew the Nibelungenlied and the courtly romance
- Language
- Middle High German, preserved only in a sixteenth-century copy with modernised spelling
- Length
- 1,705 strophes in 32 aventiuren ("adventures"); Nichols calls them "tales"
- Metre
- The Kudrun strophe: four long lines rhyming aabb, each divided by a caesura, like the Nibelungen strophe, but with feminine rhymes in the second couplet and a lengthened final half-line
- Manuscript
- Only one: the Ambraser Heldenbuch (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 2663), copied by Hans Ried for Emperor Maximilian I between about 1504 and 1516
- Structure
- Three generations: Hagen of Ireland (st. 1–203), his daughter Hilde (st. 204–562) and her daughter Kudrun (st. 563–1705)
- Setting
- The North Sea world: Ireland, the Hegeling lands of Denmark and Friesland, Zeeland, the island of the Wülpensand, and Normandy (Ormanie)
- Sources
- The old Germanic Hilde legend, known in Norse as the everlasting battle of the Hjaðningar; the Kudrun story itself is attested only here
- Key themes
- Constancy (stæte) and loyalty (triuwe); bride-quest and consent; rank and birth; women's suffering and authority; revenge set against reconciliation
Context
Kudrun is the second great heroic epic of medieval Germany, after the Nibelungenlied, and it was composed a generation or so later, probably in the second quarter of the thirteenth century in the Bavarian-Austrian region. The poet does not name himself. He knew the Nibelungenlied closely: he uses a variant of its strophe, he gives the name Hagen to a fierce king, and he builds his story around a woman who, like Kriemhild, loses a protector and suffers grievous wrong. Most critics read the poem as a deliberate answer to its predecessor (Hoffmann 1967) (Bumke 1990).
The poem survives in a single manuscript, the Ambraser Heldenbuch, a large collection of courtly and heroic poems copied between about 1504 and 1516 by Hans Ried, a customs official at Bozen, for the Emperor Maximilian I (Unterkircher 1973). Ried's spelling reflects the language of his own day, and the text has suffered omissions and errors, so every modern edition is a reconstruction. Nineteenth-century scholars, notably Karl Müllenhoff, tried to separate 'genuine' older strata from later additions; modern editors print the poem as a whole (Müllenhoff 1845) (Bartsch 1965) (Stackmann 2000).
The poem is built on three generations and on the repeated pattern of the bride-quest. Hagen is stolen by a griffin and grows up in the wilderness; his daughter Hilde is wooed by trickery and carried off by Hetel's men; her daughter Kudrun is abducted by force and held captive in Normandy for thirteen years. Each story varies the last, and critics have studied how the poet links them through recurring figures, scenes and formulas (Siefken 1967) (McConnell 1988).
The middle part goes back to the Hilde legend, one of the oldest stories of the Germanic north. In the Old Norse versions, the poetry of Bragi, Snorri's Edda and Saxo's History of the Danes, Heðinn carries off Hildr, daughter of Högni, and the two men fight a battle that Hildr renews each night by waking the dead, so that it lasts until the end of the world (Faulkes 1987) (Fisher 1980). The Old English poems Widsith and Deor know Heoden and his singer Heorrenda, who corresponds to the Horant of Kudrun (Malone 1933). The German poet has turned the endless feud into a reconciliation, and has added the Kudrun story, which has no certain earlier source.
Kudrun was neglected until the nineteenth century, when Romantic scholars hailed it as a German 'Odyssey' beside the Nibelungenlied's 'Iliad', and it was often translated into English. Mary Pickering Nichols's 1889 version, quoted in this guide, renders the poem stanza for stanza in long lines with a marked caesura and calls the heroine 'Gudrun', the form preferred by many nineteenth-century editors (Nichols 1889). Modern English translations include those of Brian Murdoch, of Marion Gibbs and Sidney Johnson, and of Winder McConnell (Murdoch 1987) (Gibbs 1992) (McConnell 1992). In this guide the names in our own prose follow the Middle High German forms (Hetel, Herwig, Wate, Fruote, Gerlind), and stanza numbers count the 1,705 stanzas of Nichols's translation in sequence.
Plot overview
Hagen, son of King Sigebant of Ireland, is carried off as a child by a griffin. He kills the griffins, grows up in the wilderness with three captive princesses, returns home and becomes a fearsome king, the 'Devil of all kings'. He marries one of the princesses, Hilde of India, and their daughter Hilde is so closely guarded that Hagen hangs her suitors' messengers.
Hetel, king of the Hegelings, sends Wate, Horant, Fruote and others to Ireland disguised as merchants. Horant's wonderful singing wins young Hilde's consent, and she is carried off. Hagen pursues and fights Hetel and Wate, but Hilde makes peace, and Hagen accepts Hetel as his son-in-law.
Hetel and Hilde's daughter Kudrun is wooed by Siegfried of Moorland, Hartmut of Normandy and Herwig of Zeeland. She chooses Herwig. While Hetel is helping Herwig against Siegfried, Hartmut and his father Ludwig carry Kudrun off. Hetel pursues and is killed by Ludwig on the Wülpensand, and the Normans escape. In Normandy Kudrun refuses to marry Hartmut, and his mother Gerlind forces her to work as a servant and to wash clothes on the shore.
Thirteen years later Hilde sends a great army. An angel in the form of a swan announces it to Kudrun. Herwig and her brother Ortwin find her washing in the snow and recognise her. The Hegelings storm the castle; Herwig kills Ludwig, Hartmut is captured, and Wate beheads Gerlind. At home, Kudrun reconciles her mother with the Normans and arranges marriages that bind the former enemies together, and the poem ends with four weddings and an oath of friendship.
Tale by tale
Tale 1: The Griffin
Tale I, st. 1–66
Summary
Sigebant, king of Ireland, marries a princess from Norway, and the couple have a son, Hagen; the queen is called Uote (Nichols's 'U-te'). At her urging Sigebant holds a great court festival with tournaments. On the tenth day, while the company is distracted by a boastful minstrel, a griffin swoops down and carries off the seven-year-old Hagen. The feast breaks up in grief.
Analysis
The poem opens in the manner of a courtly romance, with wedding, knighting and festival, and then breaks that order with a creature from travellers' tales. The queen's complaint that her husband hoards wealth instead of displaying it at feasts introduces a lasting concern of the poem: lordship proves itself by public generosity. The pattern of a joyful feast suddenly turned to sorrow recalls the Nibelungenlied, but here the loss will be repaired.
A shadow now came o’er them, / from wings that bore him fleet, As if a cloud had risen; / great strength had the bird, I weet.
The griffin's arrival, seen first as a shadow like a cloud. The marvellous enters the court world without warning.
Tale 2: Hagen and the Three Princesses
Tale II, st. 67–113
Summary
The griffin's young drop the boy, and he hides in the forest, where he finds three princesses whom griffins had stolen earlier, from India, Portugal and 'Iserland'. They live in a cave on roots and herbs. When a pilgrim ship is wrecked, Hagen takes armour, bow and sword from a drowned knight and kills all the griffins. He grows up in the wilderness, slays a monster and drinks its blood, which gives him the strength of twelve men, and kills a lion. After twenty-four days' march the four reach the shore and hail a passing ship.
Analysis
Hagen's boyhood belongs to the world of the 'minstrel epics' and of Herzog Ernst, where griffins and shipwrecks are common, and the poem frames it in Christian terms: the boy survives because God wills it, and he wins the maidens' trust by declaring himself a Christian. The drinking of the beast's blood, a counterpart of Siegfried's bath in dragon's blood, explains the superhuman strength of the later 'wild Hagen' (McConnell 1988).
Now for its blood he thirsted, / and, when of this he had taken, He felt great strength come o’er him; / and many thoughts began in him to waken.
Hagen drinks the monster's blood. Strength and a new wildness enter him together.
Tale 3: The Voyage Home
Tale III, st. 114–150
Summary
The ship belongs to the Earl of Garadie (Garadé), an enemy of Sigebant. When he learns who Hagen is, he plans to hold him as a hostage and keep the princesses at his own court. Hagen throws thirty sailors into the sea and forces the crew to sail to Ireland. On arrival he sends messengers to his parents, offering as proof a golden cross on his breast.
Analysis
The episode tests Hagen's growing sense of rank: he refuses to be anyone's bondsman, a point the Kudrun story will repeat in a woman's voice. At the same time he acts as peacemaker between the earl and his father, which anticipates the poem's closing concern with ending feuds rather than prolonging them.
He quickly said in anger: / “No bondsman will I be; That may no man ask for, / who would unscathed go free.
Hagen refuses captivity. The poem's heroes, male and female, all insist on their free and royal birth.
Tale 4: Hagen, King of Ireland
Tale IV, st. 151–203
Summary
Uote recognises her son by the cross, and the family is reunited. Hagen reconciles his father with the men of Garadie. He is knighted and marries Hilde, the Indian princess who shared his exile, and Sigebant hands over the kingdom to him. Hagen rules with severe justice, wars on his neighbours and earns the name 'Devil of all kings'. His daughter, also called Hilde, grows up so jealously guarded that Hagen hangs the messengers of every suitor.
Analysis
The first part closes by turning the rescued child into the tyrannical father of a bride-quest story: the young hero becomes the obstacle the next generation must overcome. The Middle High German calls him vâlant aller künege, devil of all kings, and the epithet links him, at least by name and temper, to the grim Hagen of the Nibelungenlied (Hoffmann 1967).
Rightly his name was Hagen; / but later men did own He was “of kings the Devil;” / so came he to be known
The epithet that defines Hagen's reign. The rescued child has become a ruler whom all his neighbours fear.
Tale 5: The Wooing Expedition
Tale V, st. 204–371
Summary
Hetel (Nichols's 'Hettel'), king of the Hegelings, whose lands include Denmark and Friesland, decides to woo the younger Hilde. His vassals Wate of Sturmland, Horant and Fruote of Denmark, Morung and Irolt plan a trick: they sail to Ireland disguised as merchants and exiles banished by Hetel, with armed men hidden below deck. Hagen receives them generously. Old Wate, grey-bearded and impatient among the ladies, takes a fencing lesson from Hagen's master and then from Hagen himself, and proves at least his equal.
Analysis
This long tale is the classic shape of the Germanic bride-quest (Brautwerbung): a dangerous father, a wooing by proxy, and a ruse of disguised merchants, as in König Rother. The comedy of Wate among the ladies and at the fencing lesson is unusual in heroic poetry and shows the poet's lightness of touch. It also introduces Wate, whose ferocity will dominate the end of the poem.
The man sent there to seek her / is either slain with blows, or dies by hanging.”
Horant's warning about Hagen's treatment of suitors.
Never am I happier / than when with knights most daring, Wherever that may happen, / upon the stormy field the fight I am sharing.”
Wate's answer to the ladies: he prefers the battlefield to their company.
Tale 6: Horant's Song
Tale VI, st. 372–439
Summary
One evening Horant sings, and his singing is so beautiful that the birds fall silent and neither church bells nor the priests' choir can match it. The young Hilde has him brought to her secretly. He reveals that he comes on behalf of Hetel and refuses any reward but a girdle. Hilde agrees to be carried off if her father allows her to visit the strangers' ships. The Hegelings take formal leave and invite the court to view their wares.
Analysis
Horant's song is the poem's most famous scene. It links the German poem to the older North Sea legend: the Old English Deor names Heorrenda as the singer of the Heodeningas, the people of Heoden (Hetel) (Malone 1933). In Kudrun the song is not only a marvel but a means of wooing: art opens the closed chamber that the father's violence has sealed.
Whatever he might sing to them, / to no one seemed it long; Ill vied with his song the choral / which by priests is sung. Even the bells no longer / rang as of yore so sweetly; Every one who heard him / was moved by Horant’s song, and saddened greatly.
The power of Horant's song outdoes the music of the Church itself.
Tale 7: The Abduction of Hilde
Tale VII, st. 440–486
Summary
Hagen, his queen and young Hilde ride to the shore with a thousand knights. While the king looks at the wares, Hilde and her maidens are taken on board; the hidden warriors spring up, throw the Irish into the sea and set sail, leaving Hagen raging on the shore. The Hegelings land in Hetel's country, at Waleis, and Hetel rides to meet his bride.
Analysis
The abduction is planned and consensual on Hilde's side, which separates it sharply from the violent seizure of her daughter later in the poem. The poet balances the trick's success against the cost to come: the closing stanza already forecasts new sorrow on the morrow.
Hilda, the queenly mother, / was sundered from her daughter; The men, in the ship long hidden, / up-sprang and sorrow made for Hagen on the water.
The ruse succeeds: mother and daughter are parted and the hidden warriors rise.
Tale 8: Hagen's Pursuit and Reconciliation
Tale VIII, st. 487–562
Summary
Hagen pursues with a fleet and attacks the Hegelings on the shore. He wounds Hetel, and he and Wate fight fiercely until Hetel steps between them and the fighting stops. At Hilde's entreaty Wate, who is skilled in healing, treats the wounded of both sides with herbs and salve. Hagen, impressed by Hetel's wealth and power, accepts him as son-in-law and returns home content, entrusting his daughter to Hildeburg, her companion.
Analysis
In the Norse versions of the Hilde legend the battle between father and abductor never ends: Hildr wakes the dead each night so that they fight again until the world's end (Faulkes 1987). The German poet turns this endless battle into a reconciliation brought about by the bride herself, a change that anticipates the poem's whole moral design (Campbell 1978).
That none to win his daughter / more fitly could have pleaded; And if he had yet others, / he fain to the Hegeling land would send them to be wedded.
Hagen, at home, admits that Hetel has proved a worthy son-in-law.
Tale 9: Siegfried of Moorland
Tale IX, st. 563–586
Summary
Hetel and Hilde have a son, Ortwin, and a daughter, Kudrun (Nichols's 'Gudrun'), fostered in Denmark. Kudrun grows up more beautiful even than her mother. The first suitor is Siegfried, king of Moorland, a heathen ruler of seven kingdoms. Hetel refuses him, and Siegfried swears lasting enmity.
Analysis
The third generation begins with the bride-quest pattern repeated, but now there will be several suitors and several refusals. The heathen king is not a villain; he will later fight on the Hegeling side and receive a Christian bride at the end, one of the poem's many acts of integration.
Then swore the Moor that never / he his hate would slacken, And that the grudge he bore him, / whate’er befell, should never be forsaken.
Siegfried's oath of enmity after his refusal.
Tale 10: Hartmut's Embassy
Tale X, st. 587–616
Summary
Hartmut, son of King Ludwig and Queen Gerlind of Normandy (Ormanie), hears of Kudrun's beauty and, with his father's help, sends envoys with rich gifts. Hilde rejects the suit with contempt, because Ludwig's father once held his lands in fief from Hagen; a Hegeling princess cannot marry the son of a vassal.
Analysis
The question of birth and rank is now made explicit. Hilde's pride is the cause of the poem's central disaster, and Kudrun will later repeat her mother's argument when she refuses Hartmut in captivity. The poem leaves open whether the objection is just: Hartmut is in every other respect an admirable knight.
A hundred and three of his castles / his father held in fief, Within the land of Cardigan, / from Hagen, my noble sire; It ill becomes my kinsmen / to be King Ludwig’s vassals, or owe him hire.
Hilde's reason for refusing Hartmut: his family were once vassals of hers.
Tale 11: Hartmut at Hetel's Court
Tale XI, st. 617–629
Summary
Hartmut waits, and meanwhile Herwig, the young king of Zeeland, also woos Kudrun and is refused. Hartmut then comes in person, unrecognised, to Hetel's court. He makes himself known to Kudrun privately. She treats him kindly but warns him to leave, since her father would kill him.
Analysis
The brief tale shows Kudrun as courteous, prudent and not indifferent to Hartmut. The poem never makes Hartmut a mere villain; his later abduction of her is the act of a rejected lover with a genuine claim to merit.
Of her his heart had longed for / he now had gained the sight; There oft were stolen glances / between Gu-drun and the knight.
Kudrun and the disguised Hartmut exchange glances at court.
Tale 12: Herwig Wins Kudrun
Tale XII, st. 630–667
Summary
Herwig attacks Hetel's castle with an army. Kudrun watches the fight from the walls and is moved by Herwig's courage. She calls on her father to stop the bloodshed, and a truce is made. Herwig is received at court, and Kudrun accepts him; they are betrothed, but the wedding is postponed.
Analysis
Herwig wins Kudrun by fighting her father, a reversal of Hagen's defeat by Hetel's ruse. Kudrun's consent is stated clearly: she chooses Herwig, and her faithfulness to that choice will be the core of her endurance. The simile of a figure painted on a white wall is one of the poem's rare comparisons from the visual arts.
In shape as fair and comely / as if the hand of a master On a white wall had drawn him: / while there he stood her love but grew the faster.
Herwig as Kudrun sees him: like a figure painted by a master on a white wall.
Tale 13: War in Zeeland
Tale XIII, st. 668–724
Summary
The rejected Siegfried of Moorland invades Herwig's lands with eighty thousand men. Herwig asks Hetel for help, and Kudrun herself urges her father to go. Hetel gathers his vassals, Wate, Fruote, Horant, Morung and Irolt, and sails to Zeeland. After heavy fighting Siegfried is besieged in a castle by a river.
Analysis
The suitors' rivalry turns into a war that empties Hetel's land of its fighting men, a weakness Hartmut will exploit. The episode also shows Kudrun acting politically as a betrothed bride, mobilising her father's power on behalf of her chosen husband.
He made the land the richer / with the dead there lying: The old in fight grew youthful: / the strong were slain, who recked not yet of dying.
The poet's grim irony about the wealth that battle brings to the land.
Tale 14: Hartmut's Opportunity
Tale XIV, st. 725–752
Summary
Hetel sends good news home. Hartmut's spies report that the Hegeling land is undefended while its king is at war in Zeeland. Hartmut and Ludwig gather an army and sail at once, and their fleet comes in sight of Hilde's castle at Matelane.
Analysis
A short tale of preparation that shows Hartmut as a calculating strategist as well as a lover. His speech sets love and politics side by side: he would rather have Kudrun than a princedom.
If they are now beleaguered, / then are we well befriended; We must to Hegeling hasten, / ere Hettel’s fight with Siegfried shall be ended.”
Hartmut sees his chance in Hetel's absence.
Tale 15: The Abduction of Kudrun
Tale XV, st. 753–809
Summary
Hartmut sends envoys to offer Kudrun a last chance to accept him peacefully. She refuses, saying she is betrothed to Herwig. The Normans storm Matelane, plunder it and carry off Kudrun with her maidens, among them Hildeburg. Hilde sends messengers to Hetel.
Analysis
The violent seizure contrasts directly with the consenting flight of Hilde. Kudrun's words of refusal state the principle she will keep through thirteen years: she has chosen her husband, and no force will make her take another (Loerzer 1971).
“To him I am betrothed; / me he chose for a wife, And him for myself I have taken. / Ever, throughout his life,
Kudrun's reply to Hartmut's envoys: she is already betrothed.
Tale 16: The Pilgrims' Ships
Tale XVI, st. 810–846
Summary
The news reaches Hetel in Zeeland. He makes peace with Siegfried, who joins the pursuit. Lacking ships, Hetel and Wate seize seventy vessels from a band of pilgrims on the shore and force five hundred of the pilgrims to serve with them. The Hegelings set out after the Normans.
Analysis
The narrator openly condemns Hetel's treatment of the pilgrims and hints that God's anger will follow. It is a rare moment in heroic poetry where the poet judges his own side, and it prepares for Hetel's death in the next battle.
I know not whether Hettel / atoned for his evil deed Done to these poor pilgrims, / that made their hearts to bleed,
The narrator doubts whether Hetel ever atoned for robbing the pilgrims.
Tale 17: The Battle on the Wülpensand
Tale XVII, st. 847–879
Summary
The Normans have landed on the Wülpensand, an island, to rest. The Hegelings attack from the sea. The battle lasts all day, and the losses on both sides are enormous; Siegfried, Wate and Fruote fight with great distinction.
Analysis
The battle on the Wülpensand (Wülpenwert) is the oldest fixed point of the story: the twelfth-century Alexander poem of the priest Lamprecht already alludes to a great battle on the 'Wolfenwerde', between Hagen and Wate, in which Hilde's father fell. This suggests that the abduction battle of the Hilde legend was once set on this island and ended in the father's death (Wisniewski 1963). Kudrun has moved it to the next generation.
Heavier toil and losses / heroes never found, And never so many warriors / lay trampled on the ground:
The poet stresses the unprecedented losses on the Wülpensand.
Tale 18: Hetel's Death and the Night Escape
Tale XVIII, st. 880–918
Summary
Ludwig kills Hetel in single combat. Ortwin and Horant try to avenge him, but night falls. The Normans escape silently in the dark, threatening to drown any captive woman who cries out. In the morning the Hegelings find only abandoned ships, clothing and weapons. Too weakened to follow, they bury the dead on the shore, have masses sung for them, and give the dead men's horses and clothing to the poor.
Analysis
Hetel's death turns the poem from bride-quest into a story of captivity. The silence imposed on the weeping women is a powerful image of their helplessness, and the decision not to pursue opens the long time-gap that defines Kudrun's ordeal.
Ludwig slew King Hettel; / and out of this our mournful tale is growing.
Hetel's death, announced as the turning point of the tale.
But wailing from the maidens / was not allowed to rise: All who would not stop it / were threatened death by drowning,— To be sunk beneath the waters,— / if they were sobbing heard, or loudly moaning.
The Normans silence the captive women during the night escape.
Tale 19: Return to Hegelingen
Tale XIX, st. 919–950
Summary
Wate brings Hilde the news of Hetel's death and the loss of her daughter. Revenge is impossible until a new generation of fighters has grown up. Hilde has ships built and founds a monastery and hospital at the Wülpensand in memory of the dead.
Analysis
Hilde emerges as a ruling queen, planning revenge and caring for the dead. The foundation of the church, with its pious work for the fallen, gives the battlefield a Christian memorial and suggests the poem's concern with mourning as well as vengeance.
Near where the slain were buried. / In many a land one heareth Its name, and of those there fallen: / ‘The church of Wulpensand’ is the name it beareth.
The church built at the Wülpensand, known far and wide.
Tale 20: Kudrun in Normandy
Tale XX, st. 951–1040
Summary
As they approach Normandy, Ludwig urges Kudrun to accept Hartmut; when she refuses, saying he is not her equal by birth, Ludwig throws her into the sea by the hair, and Hartmut saves her. In Normandy Queen Gerlind receives her with apparent kindness but soon begins to mistreat her. Hartmut leaves her in his mother's charge while he goes to war. Kudrun is made to heat rooms, sweep, and live among servants; her maidens are separated and set to spinning. Ortrun, Hartmut's sister, treats her kindly.
Analysis
Gerlind now becomes the antagonist of the poem: the 'wolfish' mother whose cruelty is meant to break Kudrun's will. Kudrun's refusals combine fidelity to Herwig with pride of birth, and when Hartmut's friends urge him to take her by force she answers that a kinswoman of Hagen will never be called a harlot in his land. Her endurance here is active refusal, not passive suffering (Nolte 1985).
Rather than wed with Hartmut / death would I dread far less. That he should be my lover / by birth he is not fitted; To lose my life were better / than take his love and as his bride be greeted.”
Kudrun's reply to Ludwig: she would rather die than marry Hartmut.
When this was heard by Ludwig, / filled with wrath was he; Quick by the hair he seized her, / and flung her into the sea.
Ludwig's answer is to throw her into the sea.
Tale 21: The Washerwoman
Tale XXI, st. 1041–1070
Summary
When Hartmut returns in the ninth year, after three wars, he finds Kudrun still unwilling. Gerlind now gives her the most degrading work: she must wash clothes on the sea-shore every day, in all weathers. Kudrun accepts it calmly, saying she will earn her bread. Hildeburg asks to share the work, and the two wash together for five and a half years.
Analysis
The washing on the shore is the central image of the poem. A king's daughter performs a servant's labour, but the work does not lower her; it becomes the visible form of her constancy. The ballad tradition later remembered the motif of a captive princess found washing by the sea, and some scholars have traced the Kudrun story to such ballad patterns (Nolte 1988).
The wicked Gerlind answered: / “Now daily to the beach You my clothes must carry, / there on the sands to bleach.
Gerlind's order: Kudrun must wash on the shore.
Thus shall I be earning / the food I here am eating; Nought I say against it.” / The poor Gu-drun her lot was wisely meeting.
Kudrun's response: she will earn her food by her work.
Tale 22: Hilde's Expedition
Tale XXII, st. 1071–1141
Summary
Thirteen years after the abduction Hilde summons her allies: Ortwin, Herwig, Wate, Fruote, Horant, Morung, Irolt and Siegfried of Moorland. The fleet sets sail. Driven off course by a south wind, the ships are held fast by the magnetic mountain Givers until a land wind frees them. At last Horant sees the coast of Normandy from the masthead.
Analysis
Hilde, who was once the bride carried off, is now the organiser of a war of rescue, and her role mirrors Gerlind's: two queens direct the fortunes of the next generation. The magnetic mountain is borrowed from the marvels of travellers' tales and links the ending of the poem to the fantastic beginning.
“Back to her home will we bring her. / Thirteen years ago, We swore the land of the Normans / should with war be wasted;
Thirteen years of waiting are recalled as the expedition begins.
“Wait you now, unfearing; / I see that we the Norman land are nearing!”
Horant sights the Norman coast.
Tale 23: Landing in Normandy
Tale XXIII, st. 1142–1164
Summary
The Hegelings land in secret and rest. Ortwin and Herwig decide to go ahead as scouts to find news of Kudrun, declaring that they will risk their lives for her.
Analysis
The brief tale sets up the recognition scene. Herwig's statement of loyalty pairs his faithfulness with Kudrun's: both partners of the betrothal have kept their word through the long separation.
To you she is a sister, / but to me for a wife they gave her; To her am I ever faithful, / nor for a day uncared-for will I leave her.”
Herwig's declaration of faithfulness to Kudrun.
Tale 24: The Angel Swan
Tale XXIV, st. 1165–1206
Summary
Kudrun and Hildeburg are washing on the beach during Lent when a swan comes swimming to them and speaks with a human voice. It is an angel sent by God, and it tells Kudrun that her mother's army is near and that two messengers will come the next morning. That night the women sleep badly on hard benches; snow falls, and in the morning they must go down to the shore to wash as usual.
Analysis
The angel in the form of a swan unites the Christian and the folkloric: a messenger of God in the shape of a magical bird. The scene introduces the season of Lent, which gives Kudrun's suffering the character of a penance before Easter joy (McConnell 1988).
’Twas the time of spring-tide fasting, / and at the noon of day. To them a swan came floating; / thereat Gu-drun ’gan say:
The swan appears during the Lenten fast.
She saw that snow had fallen, / and hope the heart-sick maid was wellnigh losing.
Hildeburg sees fresh snow on the morning of the recognition.
Tale 25: The Recognition
Tale XXV, st. 1207–1334
Summary
Two men in a boat approach the shore: Herwig and Ortwin. Kudrun is ashamed to be found barefoot and in a wet shift in the snow. She at first tells them that Kudrun is dead, and watches their grief. Herwig recognises her by the ring on her hand, and the two are made known to each other. Ortwin refuses to take her away secretly: he will not steal what was stolen, but win it back openly. Left behind, Kudrun throws Gerlind's linen into the sea. Threatened with a beating, she pretends to agree at last to marry Hartmut, and obtains a bath, good clothes and the return of her maidens. That night she laughs for the first time in years, which Gerlind notices with alarm.
Analysis
This is the emotional centre of the poem. The recognition by rings belongs to the Return-of-the-husband pattern, but here the betrothed couple meet on equal terms of suffering. Kudrun's throwing of the linen into the sea is her first act of open defiance; her feigned consent shows that endurance can be combined with intelligence and even guile (Schmitt 2002). Ortwin's refusal to steal his sister back is the poem's insistence that wrong must be undone by honourable means.
Pale were now their bodies, / e’en as the snow around them, By their scanty clothes scarce hidden. / Sad was the lot in which the knights had found them.
Kudrun and Hildeburg in the snow, as Herwig and Ortwin find them.
Queen Hilda’s daughter answered: / “Too proud I am, I ween, That for the wicked Gerlind / I e’er should wash again. Henceforth a toil so lowly / in scorn shall I be holding, For two young kings have kissed me, / they in kindness me in their arms enfolding.”
Kudrun refuses to wash again: two kings have kissed her.
Nought am I but a washer; / in scorn would they be holding You, a king so mighty, / if in your arms Gu-drun you should be folding.”
Kudrun keeps Hartmut at a distance by recalling her humiliation.
Tale 26: The Hegelings Land by Night
Tale XXVI, st. 1335–1365
Summary
Ortwin and Herwig return to the army, and Wate orders the landing at once. The fleet moves under cover of night to the Norman castle. At dawn one of Kudrun's maidens, watching from a window, sees the fleet, and the watchman wakes Hartmut and Ludwig.
Analysis
Wate's horn, which is to summon the army at daybreak, is the old warrior's signature. The tale also lets the captives watch for liberation, which gives the women a share in the poem's battle scenes.
“Further I give you warning: / whoe’er my horn shall hear Along the seashore sounded, / soon as it meets his ear,
Wate's warning about the sound of his horn.
Tale 27: The Battle Before the Castle
Tale XXVII, st. 1366–1440
Summary
Hartmut identifies the banners of the Hegeling lords and resolves to fight in the open rather than wait behind the walls. He mocks his mother for the treatment of Kudrun, whose kinsmen have now come to repay it. The armies clash. Ortwin is wounded by Hartmut, and Herwig fights Ludwig, who strikes him down; Herwig rises unhurt and looks to see whether Kudrun saw his fall.
Analysis
Hartmut's reproach to Gerlind shows him distancing himself from her cruelty, which prepares for his later rehabilitation. Herwig's glance at the window, from where the ladies watch the battle, is a courtly gesture in the middle of slaughter: the knight fights under the eyes of his lady.
“Now, mother, let us see you / send Gu-drun to wash, As you did before, with her maidens, / where the billows dash.
Hartmut's bitter words to his mother.
Tale 28: Herwig Kills Ludwig
Tale XXVIII, st. 1441–1493
Summary
Herwig kills Ludwig, avenging Hetel. Hartmut withdraws toward the castle, but Wate has blocked the gates. Gerlind promises a reward to anyone who will kill Kudrun, and a man runs at her with a sword; Hartmut stops him with a threat. Ortrun begs Kudrun to save her brother, and Kudrun asks Herwig to part Hartmut and Wate.
Analysis
The tale is built on a pattern of saving: Hartmut saves Kudrun from Gerlind's assassin, and Kudrun repays him by intervening to save his life. Gratitude, not revenge, governs her actions at the climax of the fighting.
She said she would reward him / who felt his death past bearing, And would Gu-drun be slaying, / with all the maids who there her lot were sharing.
Gerlind offers a reward for Kudrun's death.
“Sore has been the fighting; / him will I thank, indeed, Who now cuts short the struggle. / Me will he be cheering
Kudrun promises to thank anyone who will end the fight.
Tale 29: The Fall of the Castle
Tale XXIX, st. 1494–1560
Summary
Hartmut is taken prisoner with eighty of his men. Wate storms the castle and kills without mercy, including children in their cradles. Kudrun shelters Ortrun and her women. Gerlind throws herself at Kudrun's feet, but Kudrun rejects her. Wate, guided by a maiden's glance, finds Gerlind, drags her out by the hair and beheads her, and also beheads Hergart, one of Kudrun's maids who had married a Norman lord, though the women cry out for her life. The Hegelings burn and plunder the land.
Analysis
Wate's massacre and the killing of Gerlind are the poem's most disturbing passages. The poet does not disguise the horror: Irold begs Wate to spare the children, and Wate answers that they could never be trusted once grown. Critics disagree on whether the poem endorses the punishment as justice or presents it as the last eruption of an old heroic violence that the ending must overcome (Campbell 1978) (Hoffmann 1967).
Nought that e’er I wished for / to grant me were you willing: To me you showed but hatred; / and now my heart with hate for you is swelling.”
Kudrun refuses mercy to Gerlind.
Said Wâ-te, wild to madness: / “Most lofty queen, I warn you, Never again, at your bidding, / shall my ladies wash for you; they now can scorn you.”
Wate's sentence on Gerlind, before he beheads her.
Tale 30: Kudrun's Peacemaking
Tale XXX, st. 1561–1666
Summary
The Hegelings return to Matelane with Kudrun, the captives and Ortrun. Hilde welcomes her daughter, Hildeburg and the others, but at first refuses to greet Ortrun. Kudrun persuades her mother to forgive Hartmut and the Norman prisoners, and they are freed on oath. Kudrun then arranges marriages: Ortwin is to marry Ortrun, Hartmut is to marry Hildeburg, and Herwig's sister is given to Siegfried of Moorland. Her proposals are accepted.
Analysis
Here the poem's design becomes clear. The widow and orphaned daughter who could have demanded vengeance instead turn the war into a web of alliances. Kudrun is the contrary of Kriemhild: where Kriemhild's grief leads to the destruction of her kin, Kudrun's suffering leads to peace through marriage (Wisniewski 1963) (McConnell 1988).
She said: “My dearest mother, / never this forget,— We must not reward with evil / him who a wrong is doing. Of your worthy name bethink you; / you should on Hartmut smile, forgiveness showing.”
Kudrun asks her mother to forgive Hartmut.
To keep both land and honor / you may thus be seeking, And of the hate we bore you / none shall evermore a word be speaking.”
Kudrun promises that the old hatred will be forgotten.
Tale 31: The Four Weddings
Tale XXXI, st. 1667–1695
Summary
Four couples are married at Hilde's court: Kudrun and Herwig, Ortwin and Ortrun, Hartmut and Hildeburg, and Siegfried and Herwig's sister. The feast is generous, with Wate and Hilde rivalling one another in gifts.
Analysis
The four weddings answer the four bride-quests of the poem. Kudrun's care for Hildeburg, her fellow washerwoman, rewards loyalty and closes the circle of the women's suffering.
Gu-drun, the lovely maiden, / a friendly will e’er bore To Hildeburg of Ireland, / with whom, in days of yore, To wash upon the sea-sands / the clothes she oft was bearing.
Kudrun remembers the shared washing on the shore.
Tale 32: Departures
Tale XXXII, st. 1696–1705
Summary
The guests take leave. Kudrun departs for Herwig's land, leaving her mother with tears and smiles. Ortwin and Herwig swear lasting friendship and mutual defence.
Analysis
The poem ends not with a funeral, like the Nibelungenlied, but with a treaty. The final stanza's oath of friendship between kings sums up the political ideal of the work: rule with right and honour, and stand together against wrongdoers.
Ortwin then and Herwic / each to the other swore, With strong and steady friendship, / that they forevermore Would sway with right and honor / the lands to them belonging, And ever would be earnest / to seize and slay whoe’er was either wronging.
The final stanza: the kings' oath of friendship.
Characters
Hegelings
- Kudrun
- Daughter of Hetel and Hilde, betrothed to Herwig. Carried off by Hartmut, she refuses for thirteen years to marry him, though she is humiliated and made to wash clothes on the shore. Her endurance is not mere patience: she argues, defies, and finally deceives her captors. After her rescue she makes peace between the families through a series of marriages. Nichols calls her 'Gudrun' or 'Gu-drun'.
- Hilde
- Daughter of Hagen, carried off by Hetel's men with her consent, and later queen of the Hegelings. After Hetel's death she rules alone, founds the church at the Wülpensand, and organises the expedition to rescue Kudrun. Her pride of rank causes the rejection of Hartmut, and she is slow to forgive him. Nichols calls her 'Hilda'; Hagen's wife, Hilde of India, has the same name.
- Hetel
- King of the Hegelings, lord of Denmark, Friesland and other lands; husband of Hilde and father of Kudrun and Ortwin. He wins his wife by a ruse and is killed by Ludwig on the Wülpensand while pursuing his abducted daughter. Nichols calls him 'Hettel'.
- Wate
- Lord of Sturmland, Hetel's kinsman and vassal. Grey-bearded, brave and quick-tempered, he is both comic among ladies and terrifying in battle. He knows the art of healing, commands the army with his horn, and at the end slaughters without mercy and beheads Gerlind. A figure called Wade was also known in medieval English and Norse legend.
- Horant
- A Danish lord and kinsman of Wate, whose singing wins Hilde for Hetel. He bears Hilde's banner in the final battle. He corresponds to Heorrenda, the singer of the Heodeningas in the Old English Deor.
- Fruote
- A Danish lord who acts as the merchant in the wooing of Hilde and as a wise counsellor; he is the voice of prudence beside Wate's ferocity.
- Ortwin
- Son of Hetel and Hilde, brother of Kudrun. With Herwig he scouts the Norman coast and finds his sister washing on the shore, but refuses to take her away in secret. He marries Ortrun.
- Hildeburg
- One of the three princesses Hagen found in the griffins' wilderness, later the companion of Hilde and then of Kudrun. She shares Kudrun's captivity and asks to wash beside her. At the end Kudrun gives her in marriage to Hartmut. Her impossibly long life across three generations is one of the poem's inconsistencies.
- Hergart
- One of Kudrun's maidens, who abandons her mistress to marry a Norman lord. Wate beheads her after the fall of the castle.
- Morung and Irolt
- Hetel's vassals, lords of Nifland (or Waleis) and Ortland, who take part in the wooing of Hilde and the rescue of Kudrun.
Ireland
- Hagen
- Son of Sigebant, carried off by a griffin as a child. He survives in the wilderness, returns home and becomes a violent and feared king, the 'Devil of all kings'. As father of Hilde he is the obstacle of the bride-quest, but he is reconciled with his son-in-law Hetel.
- Sigebant and Uote
- King and queen of Ireland, Hagen's parents. The queen's demand for courtly display leads to the festival at which the griffin carries off their son.
Zeeland
- Herwig
- King of Zeeland, Kudrun's betrothed. He wins her by attacking her father's castle and impressing her by his courage. He remains faithful through the years of separation, recognises her by her ring, and kills Ludwig in the final battle. Nichols calls him 'Herwic'.
Moorland
- Siegfried of Moorland
- A heathen king and rejected suitor of Kudrun, who makes war on Herwig. Reconciled with Hetel, he joins the Hegelings against the Normans and at the end receives Herwig's sister as his bride.
Normandy
- Hartmut
- Son of Ludwig and Gerlind, prince of Normandy (Ormanie). Rejected because his father's family had been vassals of Hagen, he abducts Kudrun. He loves her sincerely, saves her from drowning and from assassination, and condemns his mother's cruelty, but never gives up his claim. Captured by the Hegelings, he is pardoned at Kudrun's request and marries Hildeburg.
- Ludwig
- King of Normandy, Hartmut's father. He kills Hetel on the Wülpensand, throws Kudrun into the sea when she refuses his son, and is killed by Herwig.
- Gerlind
- Queen of Normandy, Hartmut's mother. She tries to break Kudrun's resistance by forcing her into servile labour and finally the washing on the shore, and she offers a reward for Kudrun's murder during the battle. The poem calls her a 'she-devil' (vâlandinne) and Nichols's translation a 'wolfish' mother. Wate beheads her.
- Ortrun
- Hartmut's sister, the only member of the Norman royal family who treats Kudrun kindly. Kudrun protects her when the castle falls and gives her in marriage to Ortwin.
Themes
Constancy and endurance
The virtue at the centre of the poem is stæte, constancy: the steadfast keeping of a commitment through adversity. Kudrun keeps her betrothal to Herwig through thirteen years of captivity, and Herwig keeps his to her. Her endurance is a form of resistance, and her washing on the shore, intended to humiliate her, becomes the image of a will that cannot be broken (Nolte 1985).
Endurance in the poem is not passivity. Kudrun argues with her captors, refuses their offers, throws away their linen, and in the end deceives them with a feigned consent. The poem's heroine wins by patience, but patience combined with intelligence.
Reconciliation instead of revenge
Each generation of the poem ends in a reconciliation: Hagen with the men of Garadie, Hagen with Hetel, and finally Kudrun with the Normans. Kudrun's peacemaking at the end, by persuading Hilde to forgive Hartmut and arranging marriages between the former enemies, inverts the Nibelungenlied, where a wronged woman's grief leads to the destruction of her kin (Hoffmann 1967) (Wisniewski 1963).
The reconciliation is not achieved without blood. Wate's massacre and the execution of Gerlind remain part of the story, and the peace follows the war rather than replacing it. The poem may be read as showing how a new order of marriage alliance replaces the old order of the blood-feud, but it does not pretend that the old order disappears painlessly.
The bride-quest and consent
The bride-quest (Brautwerbung) is the poem's structural pattern: the hero or his envoys must win a bride from a guarded court. Kudrun repeats it with variations: Hilde consents to her abduction, Kudrun is abducted against her will, and the suitors' rivalries lead to war. The poem distinguishes clearly between a bride who chooses and a bride who is seized (Loerzer 1971) (Hoffmann 1974).
The final marriages, arranged by Kudrun herself, are the poem's answer to the bride-quest's violence. They are made by agreement, and the women, Ortrun and Hildeburg, are given to men who have been enemies of their families in order to make peace.
Rank, birth and honour
Hilde rejects Hartmut because his family were once vassals of her father, and Kudrun repeats the argument in captivity. The poem takes rank seriously: Hagen refuses to be anyone's bondsman, and Kudrun's servile labour is a scandal because she is a king's daughter. Yet the poem also lets the audience see that Hartmut is a worthy knight, and the ending rewards him with a royal bride, so that the question of birth is left open.
Women and power
The poem gives remarkable prominence to women: Hilde rules and organises war; Gerlind directs the policy of the Norman court; Kudrun makes the peace. The two queens, Hilde and Gerlind, are mirror images, one demanding the return of her daughter, the other seeking to force a daughter-in-law into submission. Some critics have read the poem as an exploration of female authority and suffering written for a courtly audience that included women (Nolte 1985) (Schmitt 2002).
Christian frame
God guides events at decisive moments: he saves the child Hagen from the griffins, sends an angel in the form of a swan to Kudrun, and is invoked to judge Hetel's robbery of the pilgrims. The church at the Wülpensand and the timing of the recognition in Lent give the story the shape of suffering followed by deliverance.
Motifs
The repeated bride-quest
Every generation begins with a wooing: Hagen's marriage to the princess he rescued, Hetel's ruse to win Hilde, the four suitors of Kudrun, and the four weddings at the end. The repetition invites comparison between the ways women are won.
Disguise and deception
Hetel's envoys come as merchants and exiles; Hartmut comes to court in disguise; Kudrun pretends Kudrun is dead and later feigns consent to marry Hartmut. Deception is a tool of both villains and heroes.
Watching from the walls
Women repeatedly watch battles from windows and roofs: Kudrun watches Herwig fight her father, the Norman women watch the final battle, and Herwig looks up to see whether Kudrun saw him fall. The women are spectators but also judges of the men's conduct.
Sea voyages
The poem takes place around the North Sea and its coasts. Every turn of the plot involves a voyage: the griffin's flight, the pilgrims' ship, the wooing fleet, the night escape, the expedition of rescue and the magnetic mountain.
Weeping and laughing
The poem marks emotional turns by tears and smiles: the captives weep silently in the night escape, Kudrun laughs for the first time in years after the recognition, and she leaves her mother with tears and smiles.
Symbols
The washing on the shore
Kudrun's labour at the sea's edge is intended as humiliation, but it becomes the symbol of her constancy; when she throws the linen into the sea, she casts off her servitude.
The griffin
The monstrous bird that steals Hagen represents the irruption of chaos into the ordered court. Hagen's victory over it makes him a hero, but also gives him the wildness he later shows as king.
Horant's song
The song that silences birds and church bells stands for the power of art to win love where force cannot.
The rings
Herwig and Kudrun recognise each other by the rings exchanged at their betrothal, tokens of fidelity kept through the years.
The swan
The angel in the form of a swan unites Christian providence with the magical bird of folk tradition, and announces deliverance.
Wate's horn
Wate's horn, whose blasts summon the army and terrify the enemy, is the voice of the old heroic world, loud, powerful and destructive.
Critical debates
Kudrun as counter-epic to the Nibelungenlied
Most critics agree that the Kudrun poet knew the Nibelungenlied and wrote with it in mind. The strophe form, the name Hagen, the abducted and wronged woman, the long time of grief and the climactic battle all invite comparison. The question is how far the poem is a deliberate response, an 'anti-Nibelungenlied' that replaces vengeance with reconciliation (Hoffmann 1967) (Wisniewski 1963).
Some readers stress the moral contrast: where Kriemhild's revenge destroys her people, Kudrun's forgiveness creates a new order. Others warn that the contrast is not absolute, since Wate's violence and Gerlind's execution show that the poem has not left heroic brutality behind (Campbell 1978).
The unity of the three-part structure
The poem's three generations were once thought to come from different sources poorly joined. The Hagen story seems to belong to the world of romance and the Hilde story to old Germanic legend, while the Kudrun story is largely the poet's own. Nineteenth-century scholars such as Müllenhoff tried to recover older 'genuine' parts (Müllenhoff 1845).
Later critics have argued that the three parts form a deliberate design, built on recurring patterns of wooing, abduction and reconciliation, and on formal correspondences (Siefken 1967) (McConnell 1988). The debate turns on whether repetition is a sign of compilation or of conscious art.
The Hilde legend and its Norse analogues
The Hilde story is attested in Old Norse and Old English sources: the everlasting battle of Heðinn and Högni in Snorri's Edda and Saxo, and the names Heoden and Heorrenda in Widsith and Deor (Faulkes 1987) (Fisher 1980) (Malone 1933). Scholars have debated how the German poem relates to these: whether it preserves an older German form or has transformed a tragic legend into one of reconciliation.
The allusion in Lamprecht's twelfth-century Alexander poem to a battle on the 'Wolfenwerde' in which Hilde's father fell suggests that the battle at the island was originally part of the Hilde story. Kudrun has transferred it to the next generation, a sign of the poet's free handling of tradition (Wisniewski 1963).
Is Kudrun a "women's poem"?
The poem's emphasis on women's suffering and authority has led some critics to ask whether it was written for, or from the perspective of, women. Theodor Nolte asked whether the Kudrun epic might be called a 'women's romance' and examined its treatment of female figures (Nolte 1985).
Others have stressed the construction of the female figures from literary models and intertextual references, especially to the Nibelungenlied and courtly romance (Schmitt 2002). The debate concerns whether the poem gives women genuine agency or only places them at the centre of a male world of war and marriage.
Wate's violence and the ending
The massacre in the Norman castle, including children, and the beheading of Gerlind and Hergart sit uneasily beside the poem's message of reconciliation. Some critics see Wate as the embodiment of an older heroic ethic that the ending surpasses; others argue that the poem presents his punishment of Gerlind as just, since she had tormented Kudrun and sought her death (Campbell 1978) (McConnell 1988).
Kudrun's own conduct is also ambiguous: she protects Ortrun but refuses mercy to Gerlind, and a maid's glance betrays the queen to Wate. The poem's reconciliation is selective, and critics differ on how far it is meant to be.
Ballads and the origins of the Kudrun story
The Kudrun story has no clear earlier source. Scholars have pointed to folk ballads, recorded much later, of a captive girl found washing by the shore by her brother or lover, and have asked whether such ballads preserve a tradition older than the epic or are themselves derived from it (Nolte 1988) (Wisniewski 1963).
The question matters because it bears on how original the poet's design was: whether he invented the heroine's ordeal or adapted an existing story-pattern of the found sister and freed bride.
Text, transmission and editing
Because the poem survives only in the Ambraser Heldenbuch, copied nearly three centuries after its composition, its text is uncertain. Editors from Müllenhoff onwards have had to emend, and some removed what they regarded as interpolations (Müllenhoff 1845).
Modern editions such as those of Symons, Bartsch and Stackmann restore the Middle High German forms more cautiously and present the poem as a whole (Symons 1964) (Bartsch 1965) (Stackmann 2000). The facsimile of the manuscript allows readers to see the single witness on which every edition depends (Unterkircher 1973).
Key passages
Rightly his name was Hagen; / but later men did own He was “of kings the Devil;” / so came he to be known
The child who survived the griffins has become a ruler of terrifying strength. The epithet 'Devil of all kings' sets up Hagen as the dangerous father whose daughter must be won by guile.
Whatever he might sing to them, / to no one seemed it long; Ill vied with his song the choral / which by priests is sung. Even the bells no longer / rang as of yore so sweetly; Every one who heard him / was moved by Horant’s song, and saddened greatly.
Horant's song surpasses the music of the Church and moves all who hear it. The scene, rooted in the old legend of the singer Heorrenda, shows art accomplishing what force could not: it opens the guarded princess's heart.
“To him I am betrothed; / me he chose for a wife, And him for myself I have taken. / Ever, throughout his life,
Kudrun's answer to Hartmut's envoys states the principle of her whole ordeal: she has chosen her husband, and she will not take another.
Rather than wed with Hartmut / death would I dread far less. That he should be my lover / by birth he is not fitted; To lose my life were better / than take his love and as his bride be greeted.”
On the voyage to Normandy Kudrun tells Ludwig she would rather die than marry Hartmut, appealing to her birth. Her refusal brings on the first act of violence against her, when Ludwig throws her into the sea.
Thus shall I be earning / the food I here am eating; Nought I say against it.” / The poor Gu-drun her lot was wisely meeting.
Kudrun meets Gerlind's humiliating order with calm acceptance. By treating the washing as honest work, she takes away its power to degrade her.
’Twas the time of spring-tide fasting, / and at the noon of day. To them a swan came floating; / thereat Gu-drun ’gan say:
The swan who comes to Kudrun in Lent is an angel sent by God. The timing gives her suffering the shape of a penitential season before deliverance.
Pale were now their bodies, / e’en as the snow around them, By their scanty clothes scarce hidden. / Sad was the lot in which the knights had found them.
Kudrun and Hildeburg, barefoot and pale in the snow, are found by Herwig and Ortwin. The poet makes the moment of recognition also the moment of deepest physical misery.
Queen Hilda’s daughter answered: / “Too proud I am, I ween, That for the wicked Gerlind / I e’er should wash again. Henceforth a toil so lowly / in scorn shall I be holding, For two young kings have kissed me, / they in kindness me in their arms enfolding.”
After the recognition Kudrun refuses to wash again and throws the linen into the sea. Her pride, long held in check, returns: the kiss of two kings restores her royal dignity.
Said Wâ-te, wild to madness: / “Most lofty queen, I warn you, Never again, at your bidding, / shall my ladies wash for you; they now can scorn you.”
Wate's words to Gerlind before he beheads her turn the washing into the charge on which she is condemned. The justice is grim, and the poem leaves its reader to judge whether it is also excessive.
She said: “My dearest mother, / never this forget,— We must not reward with evil / him who a wrong is doing. Of your worthy name bethink you; / you should on Hartmut smile, forgiveness showing.”
Kudrun asks her mother to forgive Hartmut. The heroine who suffered most chooses mercy, and with this plea the poem turns from revenge to reconciliation, the opposite of Kriemhild's course in the Nibelungenlied.
Questions for study
How does the poem vary the bride-quest pattern across the three generations?
Compare Hagen's marriage, Hetel's ruse to win Hilde, and the suitors of Kudrun; consider the role of the bride's consent.
In what ways is Kudrun a counter-epic to the Nibelungenlied?
Think about the strophe form, the name Hagen, the wronged woman, revenge and reconciliation.
What does the washing on the shore mean in the poem?
Consider Gerlind's intention, Kudrun's response, and the moment she throws the linen into the sea.
Is Kudrun a passive heroine?
Look at her refusals, her defiance, her deception of Gerlind and Hartmut, and her peacemaking at the end.
How does the poem treat Hartmut?
Consider his reasons for abducting Kudrun, his rescue of her from the sea and the assassin, and his pardon.
What is the role of Gerlind, and why is she punished as she is?
Compare her with Hilde; consider the epithets the poem uses for her and Wate's justification.
How does the German poem transform the Norse Hilde legend?
Compare the everlasting battle of Heðinn and Högni with the reconciliation of Hagen and Hetel.
What is the significance of Wate in the poem?
Consider his comic scenes, his healing, his horn, and his violence at the end.
How do Christian elements shape the story?
Consider the griffin episode, the robbery of the pilgrims, the church at the Wülpensand, the angel swan and Lent.
How does the ending of the poem create a new political order?
Look at the four weddings, the pardon of the Normans, and the oath of friendship in the last stanza.
Further reading
- Bartsch, Karl, ed. Kudrun. 5th ed., revised by Karl Stackmann. Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1965.
- Bumke, Joachim. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im hohen Mittelalter. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990.
- Campbell, Ian R. Kudrun: A Critical Appreciation. Anglica Germanica Series 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
- Faulkes, Anthony, trans. Snorri Sturluson: Edda. Everyman's Library. London: Dent, 1987.
- Fisher, Peter, trans., and Hilda Ellis Davidson, ed. Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, Books I–IX. 2 vols. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979–1980.
- Gibbs, Marion E., and Sidney M. Johnson, trans. Kudrun. Garland Library of Medieval Literature. New York: Garland, 1992.
- Hoffmann, Werner. Kudrun: Ein Beitrag zur Deutung der nachnibelungischen Heldendichtung. Germanistische Abhandlungen 17. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967.
- Hoffmann, Werner. Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Grundlagen der Germanistik 14. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974.
- Loerzer, Eckart. Eheschließung und Werbung in der 'Kudrun'. Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Munich: Beck, 1971.
- Malone, Kemp, ed. Deor. Methuen's Old English Library. London: Methuen, 1933.
- McConnell, Winder. The Epic of Kudrun: A Critical Commentary. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988.
- McConnell, Winder, trans. Kudrun. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992.
- Müllenhoff, Karl. Kudrun: Die echten Theile des Gedichtes, mit einer kritischen Einleitung. Kiel: Schwers, 1845.
- Murdoch, Brian, trans. Kudrun. Everyman's Library. London: Dent, 1987.
- Nichols, Mary Pickering, trans. Gudrun: A Mediaeval Epic. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889.
- Nolte, Theodor. Das Kudrunepos – ein Frauenroman? Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985.
- Nolte, Theodor. Wiedergefundene Schwester und befreite Braut. Stuttgart: Helfant Edition, 1988.
- Schmitt, Kerstin. Poetik der Montage: Figurenkonzeption und Intertextualität in der 'Kudrun'. Philologische Studien und Quellen. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2002.
- Siefken, Hinrich. Überindividuelle Formen und der Aufbau des Kudrunepos. Medium Aevum. Munich: Fink, 1967.
- Stackmann, Karl, ed. Kudrun. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000.
- Symons, Barend, ed. Kudrun. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 5. Halle: Niemeyer, 1883. 4th ed., revised by Bruno Boesch. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1964.
- Unterkircher, Franz, commentary. Ambraser Heldenbuch: Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat des Codex Vindobonensis Series Nova 2663 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Codices Selecti 43. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1973.
- Wisniewski, Roswitha. Kudrun. Sammlung Metzler 32. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1963.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.