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The Sound of the Bard
Dec 2012
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun - J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien - HarperCollins, 2009
* * * *
Thanks to the efforts of his executors, J.R.R. Tolkien has been a much more prolific author since his death than he was before it. On the whole, I do not approve. With the possible exceptions of The Children of Hurin (which I haven't read) and The Silmarillion (which I have, but found so dull that I remember nothing of it), there is little in his posthumous publications that is of interest to people who are not Lord of the Rings obsessives.
For this one, however, I think an exception can be made, for it is a genuine work of scholarship. Tolkien was known as a professor of Anglo-Saxon rather than Old Norse but this book shows that his talents extended beyond his speciality. It is a telling of the tale of Sigurd the Dragonslayer, the Valkyrie Brynhild, the Niflung Gunnar and his sister Gudrun, and their tragic interaction caused by a ring cursed by the dwarf Andvari when his treasure is taken by Loki to pay a ransom. This story would become better known in its Germanic form as the plot of Wagner's Ring Cycle. One rather pleasing addition is the tale of what happens to Gudrun after Sigurd's passing. She is forcibly married to Atli (Attila the Hun) and takes horrible revenge when he murders members of her family.
Tolkien's telling is pieced together from fragments of the Norwegian poetry known as the Elder Edda, the Icelandic Völsunga Saga and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. It follows none of the original texts exactly but is the better for it. His strengths as a storyteller are much in evidence - character motivations are more consistent and the order of events now makes logical sense. I agree with all his artistic decisions.
The attempt to capture the foursquare rhythmns and booming alliteration of the Norse Edda in English are perhaps less successful. There are some painfully twisted constructions and the extreme narrative compression, with often very little hint of who is doing what to whom, can make the narrative difficult to follow. For example:
Still, it just about makes sense, and one definitely gets the feel of the rhythms of the original.
There is plenty of commentary, including some of Tolkien's lecture notes, but information on the conditions in which the original sagas would have been performed would have been useful. Were they sung, or spoken? Were they accompanied by music? Were they only told in the courts of lords or were they part of common folklore? An introduction by a respected scholar rather than Christopher Tolkien's rather peculiar combination of notes and reminiscences would have been welcome. I'm glad that this book exists, however - Tolkien's reconstruction makes sense of the fragments, and his English rendition at least allows us to imagine what the bard by the fire, declaiming his tale to the warriors listening in the darkness of the mead hall, might have sounded like.
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun - J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien - HarperCollins, 2009
* * * *
Thanks to the efforts of his executors, J.R.R. Tolkien has been a much more prolific author since his death than he was before it. On the whole, I do not approve. With the possible exceptions of The Children of Hurin (which I haven't read) and The Silmarillion (which I have, but found so dull that I remember nothing of it), there is little in his posthumous publications that is of interest to people who are not Lord of the Rings obsessives.
For this one, however, I think an exception can be made, for it is a genuine work of scholarship. Tolkien was known as a professor of Anglo-Saxon rather than Old Norse but this book shows that his talents extended beyond his speciality. It is a telling of the tale of Sigurd the Dragonslayer, the Valkyrie Brynhild, the Niflung Gunnar and his sister Gudrun, and their tragic interaction caused by a ring cursed by the dwarf Andvari when his treasure is taken by Loki to pay a ransom. This story would become better known in its Germanic form as the plot of Wagner's Ring Cycle. One rather pleasing addition is the tale of what happens to Gudrun after Sigurd's passing. She is forcibly married to Atli (Attila the Hun) and takes horrible revenge when he murders members of her family.
Tolkien's telling is pieced together from fragments of the Norwegian poetry known as the Elder Edda, the Icelandic Völsunga Saga and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. It follows none of the original texts exactly but is the better for it. His strengths as a storyteller are much in evidence - character motivations are more consistent and the order of events now makes logical sense. I agree with all his artistic decisions.
The attempt to capture the foursquare rhythmns and booming alliteration of the Norse Edda in English are perhaps less successful. There are some painfully twisted constructions and the extreme narrative compression, with often very little hint of who is doing what to whom, can make the narrative difficult to follow. For example:
With stone struck him,
Stripped him naked,
Loki lighthanded,
Loosing evil.
The fell they flayed,
Fared then onward,
In Hreidmar's Halls
Housing sought they.
Still, it just about makes sense, and one definitely gets the feel of the rhythms of the original.
There is plenty of commentary, including some of Tolkien's lecture notes, but information on the conditions in which the original sagas would have been performed would have been useful. Were they sung, or spoken? Were they accompanied by music? Were they only told in the courts of lords or were they part of common folklore? An introduction by a respected scholar rather than Christopher Tolkien's rather peculiar combination of notes and reminiscences would have been welcome. I'm glad that this book exists, however - Tolkien's reconstruction makes sense of the fragments, and his English rendition at least allows us to imagine what the bard by the fire, declaiming his tale to the warriors listening in the darkness of the mead hall, might have sounded like.