The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem written around 1200 in Middle High German. Its anonymous poet was likely from the region of Passau. The Nibelungenlied is based on an oral tradition of Germanic heroic legend that has some of its origin in historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries and that spread throughout almost all of Germanic-speaking Europe. Scandinavian parallels to the German poem are found especially in the heroic lays of the Poetic Edda and in the Völsunga saga.
First page from Manuscript C (c. 1230)
The death of Siegfried. Nibelungenlied manuscript K.
Nibelungenlied Fragment, Berlin, SB, Fragm. 44
Siegfried and Kriemhild
Middle High German is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High German is defined as those varieties of German which were affected by the Second Sound Shift; the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch languages spoken to the North and North West, which did not participate in this sound change, are not part of MHG.
German territorial expansion before 1400 from F. W. Putzger
Middle High German dialect boundaries
Manuscript B of Hartmann von Aue's Iwein (Gießen, UB, Hs. 97), folio 1r
Manuscript C of the Nibelungenlied, fol. 1r