JRR Tolkien Takes Us to a Place We Would Not Have Visited

On this date in 2009, Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún was published, thanks to the untiring work of his son, Christopher. I thought today would be a good day to share my review of the book as it was published on Examiner.com in July of 2015. The Examiner article was based on a review I did for Hollywood Jesus in June of 2009. On the day the book came out, I posted a brief announcement in HJ's "Bagshot Row Bulletin." I commented: "Reading poetry is certainly not one of my strong points, but I look forward to trying to tackle the book. I hope to publish a review in the near future." I am thankful I both tackled and reviewed it; it was a profitable exercise.

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.