The Nibelungenlied

Siegfried, the hero who killed a dragon, bathed in its blood and won the treasure of the Nibelungs, comes to the Burgundian court at Worms to win the beautiful Kriemhild, and by trickery helps her brother, King Gunther, to win the warrior queen Brunhild of Iceland. Years later a quarrel between the two queens leads to Siegfried's murder by the grim vassal Hagen, who sinks the treasure in the Rhine, and Kriemhild, now married to Etzel, king of the Huns, plans a revenge that ends in a massacre.

Composed in Middle High German around 1200 by an unknown poet, the epic draws on memories of the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom by the Huns in the fifth century. It became Germany's national epic and, in other forms, inspired Wagner's Ring cycle. This is the prose translation by Daniel Bussier Shumway. Compare The Song of Roland and Beowulf.