Guðrún Gjúkadóttir

Gudrun Gjúkadóttir is the great suffering woman of the Volsung legend — wife to Sigurd by her family's scheming, and the vessel of grief and vengeance after his murder. The love-potion that made Sigurd forget Brynhild was her mother's work, binding the hero to Gudrun; and when Brynhild's fury brings about Sigurd's killing, it is Gudrun who wakes beside her murdered husband in his blood. Her grief is famous — she cannot weep until the dead man's wounds are shown to her, and then it breaks. Married off again to the tyrant Atli, she watches him murder her brothers for the cursed gold, and takes a revenge more terrible than anything the men of the legend manage: she kills her own sons by Atli, feeds him their hearts, and burns his hall over him. Grief turned to absolute, annihilating vengeance — the woman the cursed gold wounds most deeply and who repays it most completely.