Like Guthrunarkvitha II, this poem takes place in a timeline in which Guthrun’s brothers Gunnar and Hogni have been killed by her husband Attila, but she has not yet avenged them. In this short poem, she has been seen talking with Thjothrek (as she does in the preceding Guthrunarkvitha II), and this leads Herkja, a concubine of Attila’s, to insinuate to Attila that Guthrun and Thjothrek are sleeping together (medieval Norse society placed a premium on the sexual fidelity of wives but not husbands). Guthrun is proven innocent by the ordeal of the boiling kettle. In this ordeal, a stone is placed at the bottom of a kettle that is full of boiling water and specially blessed for this purpose; the accused woman must stick her hand into the kettle and pull the stone out without any signs of injury. If her arm is burned in the kettle, she is presumed guilty.
Herkja was the name of one of Attila’s servingwomen; she had been his concubine. She told Attila that she had seen Guthrun and Thjothrek together, and this made Attila very unhappy. Then Guthrun said:
“WHAT IS BOTHERING YOU, Attila, son of Buthli? Are you sad in spirit? Why do you never laugh? It would seem better to your noble men, if you would speak with them, and look at me.”
Attila said, “It worries me, Guthrun, daughter of Gjuki, what Herkja said to me here in my hall: that you and Thjothrek slept together under one roof, that you played in the sheets.”
Guthrun said, “I will swear oaths to you about this, I’ll swear on that holy white stone, that Thjothrek and I have never had relations as men and women do.
“I might have embraced that lord of warriors, that fearless man, one time, but our conversation was about another matter, when the two of us whispered about our sorrows.
“Thjothrek came here with thirty men, and he is the only one of those thirty now living. And as for me, you killed my brothers, and their warriors, you took all my family away from me.
“Send for King Saxi from the south, he’ll know how to bless the kettle for the trial by ordeal.”
Seven hundred men came to Attila’s hall to see the king’s wife pass the ordeal of the kettle.
Guthrun said, “Gunnar will not come to me, I cannot call on Hogni, I’ll never see my brothers again. Hogni would have avenged this insult with his sword. But now I must prove my innocence on my own.”
She thrust her beautiful hand to the bottom of the boiling kettle, and she took the gemstones that lay at the bottom. “Now look, everyone! I am proven innocent in the holiest of ways, and look how the kettle boils!”
Then Attila laughed with a whole heart when he saw Guthrun’s hands were uninjured. “Now Herkja will have to brave the ordeal, the one who insulted Guthrun’s good name!”
No one pitied Herkja, when they saw her hands burned in the boiling kettle. And they drowned her in a stinking swamp— she got that for causing Guthrun’s trouble.