The saga of the Niflungs reaches its darkest and most harrowing chapter in the halls of King Atli, a ruler whose name was synonymous with the vast, sweeping power of the Huns. At the center of this tragedy lies the Rhine-gold, a cursed treasure of unimaginable wealth that had already claimed the life of the hero Sigurd the Dragonslayer. After Sigurd's death, the treasure passed into the hands of the Burgundian kings, Gunnar and Högni, who hid the gold in the secret depths of the Rhine river, vowing that no outsider would ever lay eyes upon it again. However, the lure of the gold was a siren song that reached the ears of Atli, who had married Gunnar’s sister, Gudrun. Atli’s heart was not moved by the bonds of marriage or the alliances of kings; he saw only the shimmer of the hoard that he believed belonged to him by right of his union with the Niflung princess.
Atli devised a plan of profound treachery. He sent a messenger named Vingi to the court of the Burgundians, bearing an invitation to a magnificent feast in the land of the Huns. Vingi spoke of friendship, of shared honors, and of the great wealth that Atli wished to bestow upon his brothers-in-law. But Gudrun, sensing the predatory nature of her husband, secretly carved runes of warning upon a ring and wrapped it in wolf’s hair, sending it back with the messenger as a sign of the trap that awaited them. When the message reached the Burgundian court, Gunnar and Högni debated the risks. The runes had been tampered with by Vingi to obscure their meaning, but the presence of the wolf's hair remained a chilling omen. Despite the warnings and the prophetic dreams of their wives—who saw visions of blood-soaked halls and falling towers—Gunnar, driven by a mixture of royal pride and the dictates of fate, declared that they would go. He believed that to hide from a potential threat was beneath the dignity of a king of the Niflungs.
The journey to the land of the Huns was long and foreboding. The Burgundian party traveled through the dark and ancient forest known as Myrkviðr, a place where the sunlight barely touched the forest floor and the spirits of the woods seemed to whisper of coming doom. As they crossed the borders into Atli’s domain, they saw that the landscape was bristling with armed men. When they finally arrived at the great hall in Gran, the atmosphere was thick with tension rather than the warmth of a festival. Vingi, seeing them safely within Atli's reach, finally dropped his mask of civility and taunted the brothers, revealing that the invitation was a death warrant. The gates of the fortress were slammed shut, and the feast of gold turned into a feast of iron.
A horrific battle erupted within the hall. Gunnar, Högni, and their small band of followers fought with a desperation that shook the very foundations of the timbered palace. Gudrun, caught between her husband and her brothers, eventually took up arms to defend her kin, but the sheer numbers of the Hunnish warriors began to overwhelm the Burgundians. The floor ran slick with blood, and the air was filled with the screams of the dying and the clash of steel. One by one, the Niflung warriors fell, until only Gunnar and Högni remained standing, backed against the pillars of the hall, surrounded by a forest of spears. Atli, watching from his throne, demanded they surrender the secret of the Rhine-gold in exchange for their lives. But the brothers remained silent, their faces masks of stone, even as they were bound in heavy chains.
Atli, frustrated by their silence, decided to use torture to break them. He first turned his attention to Högni, intending to use his suffering to force Gunnar to speak. In a cruel game of psychological warfare, the Huns first brought Gunnar the heart of a thrall named Hjalli, who had been killed in a panic. Gunnar looked at the trembling heart and shook his head, stating that such a fearful heart could only belong to a coward, not to his brother Högni. To prove his point, the Huns then truly cut the heart from Högni’s living breast. When they presented the heart of Högni to Gunnar, the king saw that it did not tremble at all, even in death. Gunnar laughed with a terrible, hollow sound, realizing that now he was the only living soul who knew the location of the Rhine-gold. With Högni dead, the secret was safe forever, for the Rhine would hold the treasure in its cold embrace, and Atli would never possess a single coin of it.
Enraged by this defiance, Atli ordered a punishment that was as symbolic as it was cruel. He commanded that Gunnar be thrown into a pit filled with starving, venomous vipers. This was the dreaded snake pit, a place of slow and agonizing execution. Gunnar’s hands were bound, but his spirit remained unbroken. As he lay among the writhing coils of the snakes, his sister Gudrun managed to smuggle a harp down to him. In an extraordinary display of skill and willpower, Gunnar began to play the harp with his toes. The music he produced was so ethereal and powerful that it possessed a magical quality, casting a spell over the serpents. One by one, the vipers fell into a deep slumber, charmed by the melody of the dying king. The music echoed out of the pit and through the halls of Gran, a haunting testament to the Niflung's end.