Atli (Attila the Hun)

Atli is the Hunnish king of the Volsung legend — the legendary reflex of the historical Attila the Hun — and the tyrant whose greed for the cursed gold brings the saga to its bloody climax. He marries Gudrun after Sigurd's death, but what he truly wants is the Niflung hoard her brothers guard; so he lures Gunnar and Hogni to his hall under a false truce, and when they will not reveal where the gold lies, he has them killed — Hogni's heart cut out, Gunnar cast into the snake-pit. But he has murdered Gudrun's brothers, and her vengeance is the most terrible in the corpus: she kills the two sons she bore him, serves Atli their hearts and their blood at the feast, tells him what he has eaten, and then burns his hall over him as he sleeps. Atli is the saga's image of greed as doom — the king who killed for gold and was repaid with the annihilation of his whole house.