Daughter of the Gjukungar, wife of Sigurðr, and one of the most tragic figures in Eddic poetry, driven by grief and vengeance through three marriages.
Guðrún Gjúkadóttir is the central female figure of the Völsunga cycle. She married Sigurðr and loved him deeply, though she had ominous dreams before his arrival. After Sigurðr's murder by her brothers, she grieved so intensely that she could not weep until Gullrönd persuaded her to look upon his face one final time.
Guðrún was then forced to marry Atli, who slew her brothers Gunnarr and Högni to seize the gold hoard. In revenge, Guðrún killed Atli's sons, served them to him as food, and burned the entire hall. Her fate is told across Guðrúnarkviða I, II, and III, Atlakviða, Atlamál, and Guðrúnarhvöt, and she appears as a woman whose life was shaped by the treachery and violence of others.
Sources in the Eddas
- Guðrúnarkviða I
- Guðrún's grief after Sigurðr's death. Own translation.
- Atlakviða
- Guðrún's revenge against Atli. Own translation.
- Atlamál
- The longer Greenlandic version of the same sequence of events. Own translation.
Interpretive traditions
A What we know
Guðrún is documented across one of the most extensive poem-complexes in the Poetic Edda and constitutes one of its most fully drawn portraits of a woman.
B What we think we know
Scholars have identified in Guðrún a historical substrate in fifth-century Burgundian queens, though the figure has been substantially reshaped by poetic tradition.