Publication and Content Overview

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.

The Lay of the Völsungs

In this poem, the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd is told, the slayer of Fáfnir—most celebrated of dragons—whose treasure he took for his own; his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild, who slept surrounded by a wall of fire; their betrothal; and his coming to the court of the great princes called the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood.

In that court, great love and great hate arose, brought about by the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in magic, shape-changing, and potions of forgetfulness.

Scenes of dramatic intensity—confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy, and bitter strife—culminate in the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún his sister. The story ends with Sigurd's murder by his blood-brothers, Brynhild's suicide, and Gudrún's despair.

The Lay of Gudrún

Her fate after Sigurd's death is recounted: 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.

Sources and Verse-Form

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 the Völsunga 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