The Nibelungenlied

I was really digging some of the earlier plot points of this story, and then I felt bummed out that it didn’t quite go where I wished it would have. Like, ending in an all-out bloody massacre of nearly everyone involved in the story is cool and all; I just really wish Brünhild had been the one who got to carry out the revenge.

Allow me to summarize the best section of the story. Siegfried wants to marry Kriemhild, Gunther’s sister, who has so far refused to accept any suitors. Meanwhile, Gunther wants to marry Brünhild. Brünhild is a supernaturally strong, badass woman who will only marry a man who can defeat her in a series of athletic competitions. Gunther knows he cannot accomplish this on his own. Siegfried is extraordinarily strong and possesses an invisibility cloak. Gunther agrees that Siegfried can marry his sister Kriemhild if Siegfried will help him marry Brünhild. Siegfried successfully uses trickery to win the contests for Gunther. Brünhild agrees to marry Gunther, and Kriemhild agrees to marry Siegfried.

But then Gunther and Brünhild come to their wedding night, and Brünhild is super turned off by Gunther’s inability to subdue her in bed. In a show of her contempt, Brünhild literally binds him hand and foot and hangs him from a hook on the wall until morning. As a result, Gunther is forced to recruit Siegfried once again to secretly subdue his wife so that he can consummate the marriage himself afterward (has there ever been a bigger cuck on planet Earth?). Once Gunther takes her virginity, Brünhild loses her supernatural strength.

If all of that deceit isn’t bad enough, Kriemhild later brags to Brünhild that it was actually her husband Siegfried who dominated Brünhild, not Gunther. She even produces items Siegfried took from Brünhild as proof, publicly humiliating her.

We get all that backstory in the first third or so of the book. Doesn’t that just make you want to see Brünhild go wild getting revenge on all the people who have humiliated her? Nope. Instead, Brünhild is all but forgotten in the second half of the book. Gunther’s right-hand man, Hagen, kills Siegfried in an attempt to restore Gunther’s honor. The focus then shifts back to Kriemhild, who is actually the one who gets the revenge journey. It’s still cool. But it could have been better.

Book author: Anonymous