Draw closer to the fire, my friends, for the smoke tonight is thick with memory, and the wind outside moans like the ghosts of kings. Now you shall hear the last chapter of Gudrun’s saga—the woman who buried all she loved, yet lived on when death itself refused her. Her vengeance was done, her heart hollow as the halls she burned. And still the Norns wove her thread upon their loom.

After the fall of Atli, Gudrun wandered the blackened fields. No kin remained to her, no home, no comfort—only the weight of her own survival. She walked to the shore where the sea gnawed the rocks, its voice dark and endless. There she built a small boat, and cast herself upon the waves.

The sea was cold, the stars were dim,

Her soul adrift, her heart grown grim.

She sought the dark, she sought the deep,

To lay her down, and finally sleep.

But the sea did not take her—it bore her instead to a foreign shore. There she was found by King Jónakr, who took her into his hall. He gave her warmth, he gave her peace, and in time she bore him sons. Yet peace, for Gudrun, was but the stillness before another storm.

Three sons she bore, three fates she spun,

But doom will follow, never done.

For those who walk with grief and flame,

Find peace and pain are much the same.

Her daughter Svanhild, born of Sigurd’s line, grew fair and strong. Yet when King Jörmunrek desired the maiden and later cast her aside, Vengeance once more stirred in Gudrun’s heart like an ember waking. She sent her sons to avenge their sister—but they were slain, and her vengeance turned to ashes.

Now old and weary, Gudrun stood by the shore again, where her story had once begun. The sea murmured its endless runes, the waves whispering names long dead. And as the sun sank, she raised her hands and called upon the gods—Not for life, nor for glory, but for release from all the songs of sorrow.

“O sea so vast, O sky so wide,

Take back the tears the Norns provide.

Let me be gone, let me be free,

An echo lost beneath the sea.”

So ends the tale of Gudrun, daughter of Gjúki, wife of heroes, breaker of oaths and weaver of doom. A mortal woman, yet her spirit burned so fierce that even the gods would remember her name. Her saga closes not with triumph, nor with despair—but with silence, like snow falling upon a field of swords.