Sigurd’s wife, bearer of a tragic fate
The princess of the Niflung line, Sigurd’s wife. Her mother used a magic potion to make Sigurd forget Brynhildr and marry her instead, unwittingly lighting the chain of tragedy that destroyed them all. After her husband’s death she was swept into a series of political marriages and blood-vengeance, her family broken, fate pushing her again and again toward the abyss — she is the woman who bears the heaviest suffering in the Norse sagas.
Guðrún’s mother coveted Sigurd’s renown and wealth, and brewed a potion of forgetting to make him forget Brynhildr and marry Guðrún. The deception was bound to come out, and by it the two women turned foes; Brynhildr’s vengeance took Sigurd’s life, and pushed Guðrún into the long suffering of widowhood and the ruin of her house.
Guðrún (Norse) and Kriemhild (the German Nibelungenlied) are two branches of the same figure: in the Norse version she is a tragic woman who endures suffering in silence, while in the German she becomes the driving force of vengeance — the two images differ greatly.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.