The epic falls into three easily distinguishable 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 lastly, 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 Willpensand 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.
The epic of Gudrun is not unworthy to stand beside the greater Nibelungenlied, and it has been aptly compared with it as the Odyssey to the Iliad.
Like the Odyssey, Gudrun is an epic of the sea, a story of adventure; it does not turn solely round the conflict of human passions; nor is it built up round one all-absorbing, all-dominating idea like the Nibelungenlied.