The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún
Almost eighty years ago, a strange
children’s book from a then unknown author hit a few bookstore shelves in
England. JRR
Tolkien soon secured a small but loyal
following, and readers were clamoring for more. Little did Professor Tolkien
understand what he had started.
In 2009, legendary director
Guillermo del Toro was part of the team working on the pre-production
preliminaries for the
Hobbit movies. In June of that year,
del Toro gave an interview for
the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and described his view of Tolkien's The
Hobbit.
…it’s all going to be a beautiful tale of a guy
with an incredibly beautiful spirit, which all Hobbits have, who is confronted
with a very vast much darker world than he knew. And he comes back to his point
of origin completely changed and yet very sure of his own nature.
That’s what Tolkien has done to many
of his fans. Through the eyes of his Hobbits, he has taken us to places we
would have never thought to visit. If it weren’t for Bilbo and Frodo, many
would have never developed an interest in fantasy literature. And certainly
only a very few specialists would have ever picked up a book written in verse
by some obscure philologist.
Without The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings, that is all The Legend of
Sigurd and Gudrún would be to Tolkien’s fans. Undoubtedly, as was the
case with The Silmarillion, many more copies of this book have been
sold than have been read. A few devoted fans might even begin to attempt the
read, but, undoubtedly, no more than a small fraction will ever finish the epic
poems, let alone the commentaries.
If you are one of those readers who
skips over the poems when you read Tolkien, because you just can’t “get into”
poetry, this book is definitely not for you. On the other hand, for those of
you who enjoy poetry, but find Tolkien somewhat lacking in skill, you will find
these much better than anything in The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings. Tolkien was at the top of his game when he created these
“lays.” And he was quite adept at using the alliterative style and meter of
Norse poetry. It is impressive how much he could convey in a short stanza. Here
is a sample passage from "The Lay of Gudrún."
Horns they sounded -
strode the stairway;
stern their onslaught.
The stones they stained
with streaming blood;
snaketonguéd arrows
sang about them.
Doors clanged backward,
din resounded:
Hunland’s champions
hurled upon them.
Hard were handstrokes,
hewn were corslets,
as on hundred anvils
were hammers ringing.
Tolkien’s vivid imagery is not just
limited to his prose. If providence had not found a publisher for The
Hobbit, I doubt the world would have ever seen these lines, and we would be
a little less rich. Like Bilbo in his hole, we would have been just fine
without adventures in Middle-earth or Norse poetry, but there is a part of us
that is changed because we have been there. And that just may be a good thing.
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún was not
published until 2009, but was written by JRR Tolkien probably in the 1930’s.
Tolkien at one time feared the poems had been lost. Besides the poems
themselves and a few notes by the author, the book also contains commentary by
Tolkien’s son and literary executor, Christopher.
