Anonymous · 1200 · overland

The Middle High German epic, written about 1200 and sometimes called the Iliad of Germany. Siegfried of Xanten wins Kriemhild at Worms by helping Gunther cheat his way to Brunhild, is murdered on a hunt for it, and thirteen years later his widow marries Attila and invites her brothers down the Danube to a feast from which none of them come back.

1. 1
   Xanten

   Siegfried is a prince on the lower Rhine who has already killed a dragon, bathed in its blood and taken the Nibelung hoard and a cloak of invisibility - and hears of Kriemhild of Burgundy and rides south to marry her sight unseen.

2. 2
   Worms

   The Burgundian court, where Gunther will only give up his sister if Siegfried helps him win Brunhild - so Siegfried does it invisibly, throwing the spear and the stone for him, which is the lie the whole poem is built on.

3. 3
   Isenstein

   Brunhild's fortress across the sea, reached in twelve days: three contests against a queen who kills her suitors, all three won by a man in a cloak nobody can see - and she is taken to Worms believing she has been beaten fairly.

4. 4
   The Odenwald

   The queens quarrel on the cathedral steps and Kriemhild produces the ring. Hagen learns where Siegfried is vulnerable, and on a hunt in the forest spears him in the back as he stoops to drink at a spring.

5. 5
   Passau

   Thirteen years later Kriemhild is queen to Etzel, and the Burgundians ride east to visit her. At Passau the Inn joins the Danube and the bishop, their uncle, feasts them - and everyone who warns them is ignored.

6. 6
   Poechlarn

   Ruediger of Bechelaren gives them hospitality, a daughter in marriage and a shield - and at the end will have to choose between the oath he swore to Kriemhild and the guests he has just entertained, and dies of it.

7. 7
   Vienna

   Down the Danube through Melk, Mautern and Tulln, the itinerary given town by town like a real road - which is why the second half reads less like myth than like a journey somebody had actually made.

8. 8
   Etzelburg

   At Attila's hall the feast becomes a massacre that consumes almost everyone in the poem: Hagen and Gunther killed by Kriemhild's own order, and Kriemhild cut down for it a moment later, and the poem simply stops.