‘Hardly gear for woman to meddle with’: Kriemhild’s Violence in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Versions of the ‘Nibelungenlied.’

This article examines the depiction of violence in early female-authored English-language translations and adaptations of the ‘Nibelungenlied’. For sixty years, anglophone reception of the so-called German national epic was the preserve of male writers, but between 1877 and 1905, five women in Britain and America published versions of the narrative. These ranged from close translations to free rewriting to children’s adaptations. Each took a different approach to the violence of the female protagonist, Kriemhild and the rationale for each approach is anchored in contemporary understandings of violent women.