Edited by Christopher Tolkien.
The
world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien,
which tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, the
dragon-slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrún, and the Fall of the
Nibelungs.
“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 theVölsunga 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.” — Christopher Tolkien.
