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Poetic Edda

14. Brynhild awoke,  the daughter of Buthli,The warrior's daughter,  ere dawn of day:"Love me or hate me,  the harm is done,And my grief cries out,  or else I die."
15. Silent were all  who heard her speak,And nought of the heart  of the queen they knew,Who wept such tears  the thing to tellThat laughing once  of the men she had won.
  Brynhild spake:16.[1] "Gunnar, I dreamed  a dream full grim:In the hall were corpses;  cold was my bed;And, ruler, thou  didst joyless ride,With fetters bound  in the foemen's throng.
17.[2] "............................Utterly now  your Niflung raceAll shall die;  your oaths ye have broken.
  1. ↑ Mogk regards stanzas 16 and 17 as interpolated, but on not very satisfactory grounds. On the death of Gunnar cf. Drap Niflunga.
  2. ↑ No gap is indicated in the manuscript, and some editions attach these two lines to stanza 16. Niflungs: this name (German Nibelungen), meaning "sons of the mist," seems to have belonged originally to the race of supernatural beings to which the treasure belonged in the German version. It was subsequently extended to include the Gjukungs and their Burgundians. This question, of minor importance in the Norse poems, has evoked an enormous amount of learned discussion in connection with the Nibelungenlied.

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