The Lay of the Nibelung Men

The greatest epic of the German Middle Ages, now in a translation that preserves the muscular rhythms of the original. Arthur S. Way renders the Nibelungenlied in verse that still crackles with violence and passion after a century. The story begins in the Rhine kingdom of Burgundy, where the fair Kriemhild dreams of love, and the dragon-slayer Siegfried arrives bearing incomparable treasure and imperishable fame. Their union should be a triumph, but envy and old wrongs curdle into betrayal, and Siegfried falls by treachery. What follows is one of literature's most terrifying revenges: Kriemhild's marriage to the hunnic king Etzel, the great hall burned with her enemies inside, and death on a scale that echoes across generations. This is a world where oaths bind like iron, where a woman's grief reshapes empires, where the price of glory is always more blood. Way's introduction situates the poem in its medieval context while illuminating its enduring power.