GUDRUN

heroine of several Old Norse legends whose principal theme is revenge. She is the sister of Gunnar and wife of Sigurd (Siegfried) and, after Sigurd's death, of Atli. Her sufferings as a wife, sister, and mother are the unifying elements of several poems. The counterpart of Kriemhild in the Nibelungenlied, she sometimes is erroneously confused with the heroine of the Middle High German romance Gudrun Lied, an independent Baltic-coast legend of an abduction that ends happily with a rescue and the lovers' reunion. See also Atli, Lay of; Kriemhild.