J R R Tolkien's Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun: A retrospective

Описание: J R R Tolkien is best known for his works set in Middle-Earth, namely the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Thanks to his son and editor, Christopher Tolkien, many more lesser known works by the Good Professor are published practically annually some 45 years or so (without looking it up) after his death.

The story of Sigurd and Gudrun is one of these works. It belongs to the Volsung or Volsunga cycle dating back to multiple Norse sagas of at least the 12th century, more likely older, most notably a collection of which known as the Poetic Edda. It entered modern conversation via the bold and ambitious print edition by William Morris in 1876.

And yet a lesser known version exists, written by JRR Tolkien himself, though not published until 2009, well after the good professor’s death.

The volume collects, and rather, connects two of these Nordic lays, the Lay of the Volsungs, and the Lay of Gudrun.

The protagonist of the first story, I hesitate to say hero, is the Volsung Sigurd, known in German legend as Siegfried. As a Volsung, Sigurd is of noble lineage descending from gods. He is son to the king, Sigmund, but is owed no inheritance as he is believed to be a bastard product of an unfaithful mother.