is the linguistic equivalent of the German Kriemhilt and who takes on the latter's more villainous role. Most likely these two poems only date to the thirteenth century. Thidrekssaga The Scandinavian Þiðreks saga (also Þiðrekssaga, Thidreksaga, Thidrekssaga, Niflunga saga or Vilkina saga) is a thirteenth-century Old Norse chivalric saga about Dietrich von Bern. The earliest manuscript dates from the late 13th century. It contains many narratives found in the known poems about Dietrich, but also supplements them with other narratives and provides many additional details. The text is either a translation of a lost Middle Low German prose narrative of Dietrich's life, or a compilation by a Norwegian author of German material. It is not clear how much of the source material might have been orally transmitted and how much the author may have had access to written poems. The preface of the text itself says that it was written according to "tales of German men" and "old German poetry", possibly transmitted by Hanseatic merchants in Bergen. It is known that the author of the "Heldenbuch-Prosa" did not have access to the Þiðreks saga. At the center of the Thidrekssaga is a complete life of Dietrich. In addition to the life of Dietrich, various other heroes' lives are recounted as well in various parts of the story, including Attila, Wayland the Smith, Sigurd, the Nibelungen, and Walter of Aquitaine. The section recounting Dietrich's avenging of Hertnit seems to have resulted from a confusion between Dietrich and the similarly named Wolfdietrich. Most of the action of the saga has been relocated to Northern Germany, with Attila's capital at Susat (Soest in Westphalia) and the battle described in the Rabenschlacht taking place at the (nonexistent) mouth of the Moselle to the sea. Ballads Numerous ballads about Dietrich are attested in Scandinavia, primarily in Denmark, but also in Sweden and the Faroes. These texts seem to derive primarily from the Thidrekssaga, but there are signs of the use of German texts, such as the Laurin, which was translated into Danish, probably in the 1400s. One of the most notable of the Danish ballads is Kong Diderik og hans Kæmper (King Dietrich and his Warriors, DgF 7) which is attested from the 16th century onwards, and is one of the most common ballads to be recorded in Danish songbooks. This is actually most often found in both Danish and Swedish sources as two separate