GUDRUN (KUDRUN), a Middle High German epic, written probably in the early 13th century, not long after the Nibelungen lied, the influence of which may be traced upon it. It is preserved in a single ms. which was prepared for Maximilian I., and was discovered in 182o in the castle of Ambras in Tirol. The author was an unnamed Austrian poet, but the story itself belongs to the cycle of Scandinavian sagas. The epic falls into three parts—the adventures of King Hagen of Ireland, the romance of Hettel, king of the Hegelingen, who woos and wins Hagen's daughter Hilde, and the more or less parallel story of how Herwig, king of Seeland, wins, in opposition to her father's wishes, Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel and Hilde. Gudrun is carried off by a king of Normandy, and her kinsfolk, who are in pursuit, are defeated in a great battle on the island of Wiilpensand off the Dutch coast. The finest parts of the epic are those in which Gudrun, a prisoner in the Norman castle, refuses to become the wife of her captor, and is condemned to do the most menial work of the household. Here, 13 years later, Herwig and her brother Ortwin find her washing clothes by the sea ; on the following day they attack the Norman castle and carry out the long-delayed retribution.
Gudrun is composed in stanzas similar to those of the Nibelun genlied, except that the last line of each stanza does not contain the extra accented syllable characteristic of the Nibelungen metre.
The best editions are by K. Bartsch (4th ed., 18$o), B. Symons (1883), and E. Martin (end ed., 1900. A translation into Eng lish by M. P. Nichols appeared at Boston, U.S.A., in 1889.