Tolkien keeps churning them out
Tolkien fans will hardly need Old Norse News to make them aware of this, but J.R.R. Tolkien’s previously unpublished Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún comes out next week.
Details from the jacket blurb:
Many years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien composed his own version, now published for the first time, of the great legend of Northern antiquity, in two closely related poems to which he gave the titles The New Lay of the Völsungs and The New Lay of Gudrún.
In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir most celebrated of dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also great hate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions of forgetfulness.
In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún his sister, mounts to its end in the murder of Sigurd at the hands of his blood-brothers, the suicide of Brynhild, and the despair of Gudrún. In the Lay of Gudrún her fate after the death of Sigurd is told, her marriage against her will to the mighty Atli, ruler of the Huns (the Attila of history), his murder of her brothers the Niflung lords, and her hideous revenge.
Deriving his version primarily from his close study of the ancient poetry of Norway and Iceland known as the Poetic Edda (and where no old poetry exists, from the later prose work the Völsunga Saga), J.R.R. Tolkien employed a verse-form of short stanzas whose lines embody in English the exacting alliterative rhythms and the concentrated energy of the poems of the Edda.
It will be fascinating to see the Great Man’s take on the legend (though I have to confess to finding his poetry only bearable in small doses!)
Administered by
It will inded be fascinating to see what appears, though it is a bit worrying that the work is being published not only thirty-six years after Tolkien’s death, but in the wake of a large volume of other posthumous publications, some of them nor particulary inspired. Given the remarkable strength of ‘Tolkien-mania’ during much of the second half of the twentieth century, it is hard to believe anything very readable or significant has remained unpublished until now. But perhaps there was a manuscript that had, as it were, slipped down behind the back of a bookcase.
John Kennedy
I have to agree with the previous comment. Certainly we are getting this NOW on the back of the Tolkien revival and not because of any immense literary value of the work itself. I would prefer it to be otherwise but can’t shake the feeling that we will meet with something mediocre… and maybe a little kitsch.
Mind you, that didn’t stop me from putting it on order several months ago!
I was certainly surprised to see yet more posthumous Tolkien; how much more can there be? – BUT no hobbits etc and a complete foray into one of the scholar’s lifelong specialities and therefore a must-read!
It sent me back to the Volsunga Saga and poems from the Elder Edda which I can read only in translation alas, although I have collected a few Norse texts online and am currently searching for a simple guide to the rudiments of the language, with some previous experience of Anglo-Saxon.
Richard,
If you flick back through the March 2009 posts you will find one called ‘Learn Old Norse — The Alaric Way’. Follow the link for some very useful Old Norse resources.
Happy learning!