The tale of Gudrun’s vengeance begins in the shadow of great loss and the glimmer of cursed gold. After the death of her beloved husband Sigurd the Dragon-slayer—a tragedy orchestrated by her own kin and the valkyrie Brynhild—Gudrun was a woman hollowed by grief. Her mother, Grimhild, seeking to forge political alliances and perhaps bury the bloody past, gave Gudrun a potion of forgetfulness and forced her into a marriage with Atli, the powerful and formidable King of the Huns. Atli, known in history as Attila, ruled from the magnificent city of Gran, situated on the banks of the Danube. Though the marriage was intended to bring peace between the Huns and the Burgundians (the Niflungs), it was rooted in the soil of Atli’s insatiable greed. He did not covet Gudrun’s heart; he coveted the legendary treasure of the Niflungs, the gold hoard that her brothers, Gunnar and Hogni, had inherited after Sigurd’s demise.
Atli’s desire for the gold manifested as a false gesture of hospitality. He dispatched Vingi, a messenger of dubious character, to the Burgundian court with an invitation for Gunnar and Hogni to visit Gran. The promise was one of shared power and gifts, but Gudrun, sensing the darkness in her husband’s heart, saw through the ruse. She attempted to warn her brothers by sending them a ring wrapped in wolf’s hair—a traditional Norse sign of betrayal—and runes carved with desperate warnings. However, Vingi altered the runes during the journey, making the message appear to be a welcoming summons. Despite the warnings of their wives and the ill omens that plagued their dreams, Gunnar and Hogni, driven by a code of honor and perhaps a touch of fatalism, decided to accept the invitation. They hid the gold in the Rhine River, swearing that no one, not even their heirs, would find it if they did not return, and set out for the land of the Huns.
Upon their arrival at Gran, the atmosphere was thick with impending doom. The Niflungs were not met with the fanfares of a peaceful welcome but with the cold steel of Atli’s warriors. Gudrun rushed to meet them, her heart heavy with the realization that her warnings had failed. She pleaded with her brothers to flee, but they refused to turn back from a challenge. A titanic battle erupted within the court of the Huns. For days, the Burgundians fought with the ferocity of cornered wolves, Gudrun herself even arming herself to fight alongside her brothers, temporarily discarding her role as Atli’s queen to reclaim her identity as a Gjuki’s daughter. Yet, weight of numbers eventually told. Hogni was captured, and Gunnar was bound in chains. Atli demanded the location of the Rhine gold as the price for their lives.
Gunnar, demonstrating the legendary stubbornness of his line, played a psychological game with the Hunnish king. He claimed he would never reveal the secret so long as his brother Hogni lived, believing that Hogni might escape if Gunnar took the focus. In a move of staggering cruelty, Atli ordered Hogni’s heart to be cut out. The executioners first tried to trick Gunnar by presenting him with the heart of a coward, Hjalli, but Gunnar recognized the trembling heart immediately, saying it was not his brother’s. When they finally brought him Hogni’s true heart, it was still and firm, even in death. Gunnar laughed, knowing that now he was the only living soul who knew the location of the hoard, and he vowed that the Rhine would keep the gold forever. Enraged, Atli ordered Gunnar to be thrown into a pit of venomous serpents. Even there, Gunnar’s spirit remained unbroken; Gudrun managed to smuggle a harp to him, and he played so beautifully with his toes (as his hands were bound) that he charmed all the snakes but one. That final adder, perhaps an agent of fate or Atli’s mother in disguise, bit him through the heart, ending the line of the Burgundian kings.
Gudrun’s grief now transformed into a cold, diamond-hard resolve for vengeance. She did not weep openly; instead, she donned a mask of reconciliation. She told Atli that since her brothers were dead, she would remain his loyal queen and proposed a funeral feast to honor the fallen. Atli, believing he had finally broken her spirit and secured his rule, agreed to the banquet. It was here that the story takes its most macabre turn. Gudrun took her two young sons by Atli, Erp and Eitil, and slew them in secret. She took their blood and mixed it with wine, and roasted their hearts to serve to their father. At the height of the feast, as Atli drank and ate, he asked for his sons to be brought to him. Gudrun stood before the assembled Hunnish nobility and declared with chilling clarity that he was eating the flesh of his own children and drinking from their skulls. The hall fell into a horrified silence, and Atli was struck with a grief so profound it paralyzed him.
That night, as the court lay in a stuporous sleep—some from wine, others from the sheer psychological shock of the queen’s revelation—Gudrun moved to finalize her retribution. She sought out Hogni’s son, Niflung, who had survived the earlier slaughter and remained hidden in the palace. Together, they crept into Atli’s bedchamber. Atli, exhausted by his own cruelty and the weight of his losses, woke only to feel the cold bite of a sword. Gudrun herself delivered the fatal blow, or according to some versions, guided the hand of her nephew. As Atli lay dying, he reproached her for the end of his glorious reign and the loss of his sons, but Gudrun reminded him of the deaths of Sigurd, Gunnar, and Hogni, asserting that blood must pay for blood. She did not stop with the king's death. She knew that the entire Hunnish power structure was centered in that hall.