The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún presents two fictional, medieval poems by J.R.R. Tolkien written likely in the 1930s. They were edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, long later, into a publication by HarperCollins released in May 2009, with his own extensive commentary.
The poems are in an alliterative verse inspired by that of the Old Norse collection Poetic Edda, and were for Tolkien a project in learning "the art of writing alliterative poetry"[1]. The first tells a tale of the Völsungs, including the dragon-slayer Sigurd along with many familiar figures of Norse mythology. The second tells of Gudrún, daughter of an evil queen of the Niflungs, Grímhild, and Gudrún's interactions with Sigurd. These poems, about which Christopher Tolkien rarely heard his father speak, incorporate matters and stories from the German Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Völsunga saga, and the Norse Poetic Edda, overlapping with the speculated Elder Edda.
"In Old English [poetry], breadth, fullness, reflection, [and] elegiac effect were aimed at. Old Norse poetry aims at seizing a situation, striking a blow that will be remembered, illuminating a moment with a flash of lightning - and tends [toward conciseness], weighty packing of the language in sense and form..."
—J.R.R. Tolkien on the distinction between Old English and Old Norse, quoted by his son in the Foreword
