The story as contained in the Old Norse poems is by no means identical with the "Nibelungenlied." First and foremost, it is infinitely older in its whole conception, and much more nearly approaches original conditions as they existed in the mode of thought and in the manner of living of the early Germanic people. It is a story, here, of the days when the world was young; when the gods still walked the earth and mixed themselves in with human affairs in which they had an active interest; when motives were clearer and action was more direct; when human passions burned even fiercer than in the "Nibelungenlied," and love and hate together knew no boundaries until they had worked themselves out in the utter destruction of their object. Of the first of these conditions, the "Nibelungenlied" in its character of an epic of the Middle Ages has not kept a trace. In the Eddic poems it is the ring cursed by the gods to all its possessors that motives the entire action; that leads with the certainty of fate to the death of Sigurd, the Siegfried of the "Edda," to all the woes that follow, and to the ultimate utter destruction of the entire race of the Nibelungs. As most critics have pointed out, the fundamental difference in the treatment of the story consists in the fact that the principal epic interest in the Eddic poems is the relation of Sigurd to Brynhild, the Valkyrie, who is here a heroic figure, who rises immeasurably not only above the other women of the tale, but above most of the other characters in importance of personality. In the "Nibelungenlied" it is Kriemhild, Gudrun in the "Edda," and Hagen who are the principal figures in the action. In the Northern version, Gudrun does not avenge herself upon her brothers as does Kriemhild in the "Nibelungenlied," but Atli, her husband after Sigurd, slays them, and Gudrun then takes vengeance upon him. In the "Edda," too, other saga cycles are brought into connection with this, viz., the Northern legend of Helgi, at the beginning, and the Gothic legend of Ermanrich, at the end. The Eddic poems are not the only versions in Old Norse literature. An epitome of the story based upon the poems is contained in the "Snorra Edda," a work written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, who lived from 1178 to 1241, to serve as a handbook for poets and which contains in this way the myths and legends of the North.