242 Kriemhild is a main belt asteroid that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa on 22 September 1884 in Vienna and was named after Kriemhild, a mythological Germanic princess, by Moriz von Kuffner, a Viennese industrialist and sponsor of astronomy. Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Oakley Observatory in Terre Haute, Indiana, during 2006 gave a light curve with a period of 4.558 ± 0.003 hours and a brightness variation of 0.15 ± 0.02 in magnitude.