Eckenlied

Das Eckenlied or Ecken Ausfahrt (The Song of Ecke or Ecke's Quest) is an anonymous 13th-century Middle High German poem about the legendary hero Dietrich von Bern, the counterpart of the historical Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great in Germanic heroic legend. It is one of the so-called fantastical (aventiurehaft) Dietrich poems, so called because it more closely resembles a courtly romance than a heroic epic.

The Eckenlied tells the story of Dietrich's fight against the giant Ecke, who has been sent out by three queens to fetch Dietrich. Dietrich is forced to kill Ecke, after which he must fight Ecke's family, particularly Ecke's treacherous and vengeful brother Fasold. The poem exists in at least three separate but closely related versions, which offer different endings to the tale. A fragmentary text known as Dietrich und Fasold may represent another version of the Eckenlied, but differences in meter and content make this uncertain. Fasold and the three queens may have originally been figures of Tyrolean folklore, while Ecke may have been invented to explain the name of Dietrich's sword, Eckesachs (sharp sword).

The Eckenlied is the earliest poem about Dietrich attested (c. 1230) after his appearance in the Nibelungenlied.^[1] It was one of the most popular narratives about Dietrich throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. It was first printed in 1490 and continued to be printed until the end of the 1500s.