Svanhildr

Svanhild is the last bloom of the doomed Volsung-Niflung line — daughter of Gudrun and Sigurd, and the occasion of its final, exhausted tragedy. So beautiful that her fame spreads far, she is married to the mighty Gothic king Jörmunrekk; but slander (that she has betrayed him with his own son) poisons the old king's mind, and in his rage he has her trampled to death under horses' hooves. Her death is the last wound the cursed gold deals the line: it sends her aged mother Gudrun to dispatch her remaining sons, Hamðir and Sörli, on the final, fatal vengeance against Jörmunrekk — a vengeance that kills them too, and so spends the last of the Volsung blood. Svanhild is the legend's closing image of innocence destroyed — the beautiful daughter killed on a slander, whose death summons the last avengers of a line that the gold has been destroying for three generations.