Hamðir

Hamðir is one of the last of the Volsung-Niflung line, and his story is the legend's grim final note. When his half-sister Svanhild — daughter of Gudrun and Sigurd — is trampled to death under horses by the order of the Gothic king Jörmunrekk, the aging, broken Gudrun sends her two surviving sons, Hamðir and Sörli, to avenge her, arming them with byrnies no iron can bite. The brothers ride to Jörmunrekk's hall and fall on the king, cutting off his hands and feet — but a third companion has been killed on the way for a careless word, and so they cannot finish the deed, and the maimed king cries out that since iron will not bite them, they must be stoned. And so the last avengers of the cursed line are stoned to death in the hall, the only way they can be killed. Hamðir is the exhausted end of the whole tragic saga — the last blood spent, the curse running out at last in a hall full of stones.