It portrays the existential struggles and downfall of an entire people, the Burgundians, in a military conflict with the Huns and their king."--Jacket.

Filled with portrayals of deception, love, murder, and revenge—yet defying traditional medieval epic conventions for representing character—the Nibelungenlied is the greatest and most unique epic in Middle High German. The Klage, its consistent companion text in the manuscript tradition, continues the story, detailing the devastating aftermath of the Burgundians' bloody slaughter. William Whobrey's new volume offers both—together for the first time in English—in a prose version informed by recent scholarship that brilliantly conveys to modern readers not only the sense but also the tenor of the originals.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. Ownership of bronze, gold, and iron, which requires much labour (in the smithying or smelting), appears regularly in the recurrent epic formula for describing a man of wealth. Footnote: Iliad, VI. 48; IX. 365-366; X. 379; XI. 133; Odyssey, XIV. 324; XXI. 10.] Iron, bronze, slaves, and hides are bartered for sea-borne wine at the siege of Troy?

Written by an unknown author in the twelfth century, this powerful tale of murder and revenge reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, transforming centuries-old legend into a masterpiece of chivalric drama. Siegfried, a great prince of the Netherlands, wins the hand of the beautiful princess Kriemhild of Burgundy, by aiding her brother Gunther in his struggle to seduce a powerful Icelandic Queen. But the two women quarrel, and Siegfried is ultimately destroyed by those he trusts the most. Comparable in scope to the Iliad, this skilfully crafted work combines the fragments of half-forgotten myths to create one of the greatest epic poems - the principal version of the heroic legends used by Richard Wagner, in The Ring.