Books: The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

[stolen_tea]

In preparation for seeing the Ring cycle, mimerki and I read (to each other) one of J.R.R. Tolkien's "newer" posthumous works, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. It's kind of his translation into modern English of what the Anglo-Saxon version of the Volsung saga might have been, had there been an Anglo-Saxon version of the Volsung saga. And it deserves

Comments

[thewronghands]

Ask vatine, whom you met yesterday, too -- he might know.

[woodwindy]

That last verse is gorgeous, and makes me want to find music for it. I'll have to go find a copy of the book -- thanks for sharing this!

[mimerki]

The poetry is unfinished, in the sense of not being polished, so parts of it are absolutely lovely and parts fall a little flat. Even so, I obviously recommend it enough to suggest it as pre-reading for viewing Wagner's Ring.

[mimerki]

I have an okay translation of the Poetic Edda, which contains lays of both Gudrun and Atli (and Helgi, having mostly unrelated adventures with Atli), and a translation of the Prose Edda on my Kindle, the which may or may not contain anything of interest on the subject. (I haven't read the Prose Edda since high school, when I recall being charmed by lovely lists of kennings. We'll see what I think as an adult.)