Brunhild is a powerful female figure from Germanic heroic legend. She may have her origins in the Visigothic princess Brunhilda of Austrasia. In the Norse tradition, Brunhild is a shieldmaiden or valkyrie, who appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. In the continental Germanic tradition, where she is a central character in the Nibelungenlied, she is a powerful Amazon-like queen. In both traditions, she is instrumental in bringing about the death of the hero Sigurd or Siegfried after he deceives her into marrying the Burgundian king Gunther or Gunnar. In both traditions, the immediate cause for her desire to have Sigurd murdered is a quarrel with the hero’s wife, Gudrun/Kriemhild. In the Scandinavian tradition, but not in the continental tradition, Brunhild kills herself after Sigurd’s death. Brunhild has been called “the paramount figure of Germanic legend.”
Alias Brunhild
Real Names/Alt Names Brunhild/Brunhilda/Brynhild/Brynhildr/Brünhilt/Brünhild/Brünhilde
Appearance List Literary: Nibelungenlied (c. 1200), Prose Edda (c. 1220 CE), Poetic Edda (c. 1270 CE), Völsunga saga (13th century), et. al., Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848-1874), William Morris’s Sigurd the Volsung (1876), The Story of Siegfried by James Baldwin and Howard Pyle (1899), The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology by Keary and Keary (1909), In the Days of Giants: A Book of Norse Tales by Abbie Farwell Brown (1902), J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (1930), et. al.
Description Brunhild is a powerful female figure from Germanic heroic legend. She may have her origins in the Visigothic princess Brunhilda of Austrasia. In the Norse tradition, Brunhild is a shieldmaiden or valkyrie, who appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. In the continental Germanic tradition, where she is a central character in the Nibelungenlied, she is a powerful Amazon-like queen. In both traditions, she is instrumental in bringing about the death of the hero Sigurd or Siegfried after he deceives her into marrying the Burgundian king Gunther or Gunnar. In both traditions, the immediate cause for her desire to have Sigurd murdered is a quarrel with the hero’s wife, Gudrun/Kriemhild. In the Scandinavian tradition, but not in the continental tradition, Brunhild kills herself after Sigurd’s death. Brunhild has been called “the paramount figure of Germanic legend.”
