THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN

The world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R.Tolkien, which tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, thedragon-slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrun, and the Fall of theNibelungs. "Many years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien composed his own version, nowpublished 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 ofthe Volsungs and The New Lay of Gudrun. In the Lay of the Volsungs is toldthe ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fafnir most celebratedof dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of theValkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of theirbetrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who werenamed the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered intoblood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also greathate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of theNiflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions offorgetfulness. In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity,thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd andBrynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrun his sister, mounts to its endin the murder of Sigurd at the hands of his blood-brothers, the suicide ofBrynhild, and the despair of Gudrun. In the Lay of Gudrun her fate afterthe death of Sigurd is told, her marriage against her will to the mightyAtli, ruler of the Huns (the Attila of history), his murder of herbrothers the Niflung lords, and her hideous revenge. Deriving his versionprimarily from his close study of the ancient poetry of Norway and Icelandknown as the Poetic Edda (and where no old poetry exists, from the laterprose work the Volsunga Saga), J.R.R. Tolkien employed a verse-form ofshort stanzas whose lines embody in English the exacting alliterativerhythms and the concentrated energy of the poems of the Edda." --Christopher Tolkien