authors place the Kudrun saga here since it contains townscape and landscape names such as "Wulpe Tenenbaums" (Tenemarke, Tenelant). According to this interpretation, Hagen of the Nibelungenlied could be identical with the Hagen of the Kudrun. Similarly, the name of the small village of Castle Dhronecken in the Hunsrück Mountains sounds like "Tronje"; in the Middle Ages its name was "Troneck" and it lay in the historic Kingdom of the Burgundians. Not too far away, there are place names that hint at further figures from the Nibelungenlied, especially Hagen's relative Ortwin of Metz and his colleagues Hunold and Volker von Alzey. Based on the castles around Dhronecken, Ortwin can be assigned to Metz, Hagen to Dhronecken, Hunold to Hunoldispetra (now Hunolstein in Morbach), and Volker to Alzey. These are places that travelers coming from Xanten and over Metz and Worms to Passau, would pass along the way. Nibelungenlied In the Nibelungenlied, he is called Hagen of Tronje. Some versions indicate that Hagen is the "Oheim" of the three kings, i.e. their mother Ute's brother (or brother-in-law, following a now outdated German dual model of indicating and differing between matrilineal and patrilineal kinship). Some count him as Gunter's, Gernot's and Giselher's "uncle" (originally a father's brother or brother-in-law, as opposed to "Oheim"), so this may more likely hint to an old custom - nearly, but not yet completely outdated - where people close to a family take over the role of a fatherly / motherly friend and acquire the "honorary title" of an uncle or aunt (see the German expression 'Nennonkel/-tante' - 'termed uncle / -aunt'). In the German traditions, Hagen is especially grim, implacable, and violent, and in two accounts, one-eyed. According to the Thidreks saga, Hagen was Gunnar's (senior?) half-brother. Not fully human, though, as being fathered by an elf, on the king's wife while the king was away. The Thidreks saga tells that it was Walter of Waskensten (Walter of Aquitaine) who put out Hagen's eye in a fight. In these forementioned accounts, it is Hagen who kills the hero Siegfried during a hunt, wounding him on the only part of his body which was not invulnerable. This version of the character is the most widely known and appears in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. In Norse tradition, Hagen's counterpart Högni is less extreme and the actual slayer of Sigurd (the Norse counterpart to Siegfried) is Gutthorm, a