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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Nibelungenlied, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Idealized and Deviant Womanhood
Civilization vs. Barbarism
Honor vs. Vengeance
Hospitality, Gifts, and Exchange
Fate and Action
Summary
Analysis
As the Burgundian guests retire to bed, they are jostled by Kriemhild’s Hunnish knights. Hagen warns them that if they’re spoiling for a fight, they should come back the next morning. They are conducted into a spacious hall filled with expensive quilts. Giselher laments that, in spite of her hospitable treatment, Kriemhild means to do them harm. Hagen and Volker offer to keep watch so that the rest can sleep.
Kriemhild’s hospitality belies her violent intentions, and her guests are painfully aware of the incongruity between her simmering anger and her outward display.
Themes
The two take their stand outside the building, and Volker plays lullabies on his fiddle to help the other knights sleep. Overnight, Kriemhild tries to send some of her knights to slay the guests in their sleep, but they are intimidated by Hagen and Volker. The Queen, filled with hatred, must devise other means to carry out her revenge.
Attempting to kill the guests in their sleep is a yet more egregious distortion of the code of hospitality, which, at bare minimum, should ensure the safe lodging of guests. This suggests that there are no lows to which Kriemhild wouldn’t stoop.
Themes
