The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

One idea that I have for how to proceed with this blog is to provide commentary for various things that I read. This will likely tend to fall into one of the following categories:

1. Fantasy/mythology (as is the case with this post). Generally this will mean Tolkien or occasionally something fairly unique (such as the His Dark Materials trilogy), but overall I actually don't read much fantasy. Basically I can't stand the plethora of Tolkien clones, and the fact that a lot of authors write fantasy because they're interested in it, and not because they're actually any good at it.
   
2. Science/environment. This is really broad, and may encompass anything from academic material (textbooks, primary literature, etc.) to articles in Sierra (the Sierra Club's magazine, which I happen to be subscribed to).
3. Miscellaneous. Ok, this isn't really a category but I thought I would get more specific in the above two, and now I can't think of much else that I read about with the same regularity. Some oddballs may show up every now and then, though.

Alright, enough description, and on to the meat of the post.

Recently I read Tolkien's version of the Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, which is a re-telling of The Volsunga Saga. Tolkien drew upon various sources on the same legend, including the prose Edda of the Icelandic Snorri Sturluson, as well as the poems of the Norse Elder Edda. This was not a translation, but rather an original work which, while largely adhering to the source material, also contained a few creative alterations and interpretations of Tolkien's own invention. Indeed it was probably inevitable, since sometimes different sources on the same story contradict each other. But I'm not expert on the subject so I'll leave it at that; besides, it's explained very well in the book.

The book is comprised of two main parts, both in verse: The Lay of the Volsungs which tells the tale of Sigmund, and his son Sigurd, and The Lay of Gudrun, which occurs after Sigurd's death and follows his widow, Gudrun, and the conflict of the Niflungs (her brothers, Gunnar and Hogni) with Atli (historically, this is Attila the Hun). Tolkien follows the style of Norse eddaic poetry which, as the Foreword to the book points out, differs from that of the Old English epic poetry that I was more familiar with. In one of his lectures, Tolkien himself noted that "in Old English breadth, fullness, reflection, elegiac effect, were aimed at. Old Norse poetry aims at seizing a situation, striking a blow that will be remembered, illuminating a moment with a flash of lightning-and tends to concision, weighty packing of the language in sense and form..."

Reading it was a bit of an adjustment, as scenes would change with little in the way of contextual transition. The beginning in particular was difficult, as it dealt with the actions of gods (namely Odin and Loki), and I'm not terribly familiar with Norse mythology. It's definitely a subject that I'd like to read up on more. Fortunately, I still have the books from my Middle Ages and Middle Earth class (yes, I got to take a class on Tolkien in college), including The Volsunga Saga and Poems of the Elder Edda. It's strange how, in a way, I've come full circle with my reading of Norse poetry. In the class we looked at a few of the poems (Otr's Ransom comes to mind) with respect to the influence they had on Tolkien's writing (specifically The Hobbit and LotR, as Tolkien's Lays on the Sigurd legend hadn't yet been published). Essentially, they shed light on our source material, which was Tolkien's Middle Earth. Now I've read Tolkien's own version of the Norse legend, and I look back at that ancient, original source material to see how Tolkien has influenced it ("it" being the legend, in the sense that he's now contributed to it).

References

Tolkien, J.R.R. 2009. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. ed. Tolkien, C. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, New York, NY.