THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN
BY
J.R.R. Tolkien
Edited by Christopher Tolkien
Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION TO THE ‘ELDER EDDA’
VOLSUNGAKVI?A EN NYJA (‘The New Lay of the Volsungs’)
UPPHAF
I: ANDVARA-GULL
II: SIGNY
III: DAU?I SINFJOTLA
IV: F?DDR SIGUR?R
V: REGIN
VI: BRYNHILDR
VII: GU?RUN
VIII: SVIKIN BRYNHILDR
IX: DEILD
COMMENTARY on VOLSUNGAKVI?A EN NYJA
GU?RUNARKVI?A EN NYJA e?a DRAP NIFLUNGA
GU?RUNARKVI?A EN NYJA (‘The New Lay of Gudrun’)
COMMENTARY on GU?RUNARKVI?A EN NYJA
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A A short account of the ORIGINS OF THE LEGEND
APPENDIX B THE PROPHECY OF THE SIBYL
APPENDIX C FRAGMENTS OF A HEROIC POEM OF ATTILA IN OLD ENGLISH
WORKS BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN
COPYRIGHT PAGE
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
In his essay On Fairy-Stories (1947) my father wrote of books that he read in his childhood, and in the course of this he said:
I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur were better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd and the Volsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable.
That the ancient poetry in the Old Norse language known by the names of the Elder Edda or the Poetic Edda remained a deep if submerged force in his later life’s work is no doubt recognised. It is at any rate well-known that he derived the names of the dwarves in The Hobbit from the first of the poems in the Edda, the Voluspa, ‘the Prophecy of the Sibyl’ – remarking in a lightly sardonic but not uncharacteristic tone to a friend in December 1937:
I don’t much approve of The Hobbit myself, preferring my own mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent nomenclature . . . to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.
