The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ (a southern German or Austrian heroic epic). A version was also known to the Anglo-Saxons, shown by a reference in *Beowulf to Sigemund slaying a dragon guarding a hoard (in most other versions Sigemund is the father of Sigfrid, and not a dragon-slayer).

      While still at school, as part of a general interest in German *languages, including Old English and Gothic, Tolkien also began to learn Old Norse so that he could read the story of Sigurd in the original. He shared his appreciation of Icelandic literature with his fellow pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham in a paper on Norse sagas he read to the school Literary Society (*Societies and clubs) on 17 February 1911. According to a report in the King Edward’s School Chronicle, Tolkien described a saga as a

      story of things which happened indeed but so long ago that marvels and miracles of the strange old Northern brand have crept into the tale. The best sagas are those of Iceland, and for pictures of human life and character they can hardly be bettered in any literature …. They tell how brave men – of our own blood, perhaps – lived and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died.

      One of the best … is the Völsunga Saga – a strange and glorious tale. It tells of the oldest of treasure hunts: the quest of the red gold of Andvari, the dwarf. It tells of the brave Sigurd Fafnirsbane, who was cursed by the possession of this gold, who, in spite of his greatness, had no happiness from his love for Brynhild. The Saga tells of this and many another strange and thrilling thing. It shows us the highest epic genius struggling out of savagery into complete and conscious humanity. [‘Literary Society’, n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 19–20]

      Tolkien also praised the story of Burnt Njal, and thought Howard the Halt the best among shorter works. He concluded with a sketch of the Norse religion and quotations from various sagas. The Chronicle reporter thought that the passages Tolkien read aloud constituted one of the charms of the paper.

      In later years Tolkien continued to find the Völsunga Saga of interest, but did not hold its author in high regard, for it was solely from the Eddaic lays that the saga ‘derives its power and the attraction that it has for all those who come to it’ (quoted in *The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 39). He spoke of a similar attraction in his *‘Introduction to the “Elder Edda”’, saying that few who first read an Eddaic poem after a ‘preliminary struggle with Old Norse’ ‘can have missed the sudden recognition that they had unawares met something of tremendous force, something that in parts … is still endowed with an almost demonic energy, in spite of the ruin of its form …. If not felt early in the process it is unlikely to be captured by years of scholarly thraldom; once felt it can never be buried by mountains or molehills of research, and sustains long and wary labour’ (The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, p. 17).

      NORTHERN STUDIES AT OXFORD AND LEEDS

      When Tolkien transferred from Classics to the English School at Oxford in Trinity Term 1913 he chose for his Special Subject ‘Scandinavian Philology’, which included a study of the literature. In that same term he read a paper on the Norse sagas to the Exeter College Essay Club (*Societies and clubs), perhaps the same as or similar to the paper he gave in Birmingham two years earlier; the brief report in the Stapeldon Magazine (June 1913) gives no details apart from noting that the audience again enjoyed the quotations with which Tolkien ended his talk. Reports in the Stapeldon Magazine and the Essay Club minutes note a similar response to a paper on the Elder Edda which Tolkien, now Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, read to the Club on 17 November 1926: ‘The reader, after sketching the character and historical background of the Edda, described certain of the poems. He also gave a number of translations and readings from the Icelandic which demonstrated the peculiar poetic and musical qualities of the language’ (‘Essay Club’, Stapeldon Magazine 7, no. 39 (December 1926), p. 96).

      At the University of *Leeds he was concerned with the teaching of Old Icelandic, which was studied in much the same detail as Old English; and as an adjunct, he helped to form a ‘Viking Club’ (*Societies and clubs) which comprised past and present students of Old Icelandic. On his return to Oxford Tolkien established the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs), dons who met to read in the original and translate all of the major Icelandic Sagas and both Eddas.

      During most of his time as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925–45) Icelandic studies were part of Tolkien’s responsibilities. He lectured on all aspects of Old Icelandic language and literature, and often acted as a supervisor or examiner for any B.Litt. or D.Phil. thesis on the subject. This was recognized in Iceland, when in 1933 Tolkien was made a honorary member of Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literary Society; *Societies and clubs). In 1931 he served on an English Faculty Board committee which proposed, among the main needs of the faculty, ‘the endowment of a Readership or Lecturership in (medieval) Scandinavian languages’. Their justification was that ‘Norse literature and philology are of central importance in the medieval curriculum of the English School. Adequate provision for the teaching of these subjects, and for the direction of advanced studies is urgently required. No provision for Scandinavian studies has been made by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages since 1916’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3). The request was rejected by the General Board, but made again in 1939. A bequest ultimately enabled the founding of the Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, first held by Tolkien’s former B.Litt. student *E.O.G. Turville-Petre.

      With the Vigfússon Readership established Tolkien was no longer responsible for Icelandic studies, and although Turville-Petre was called to war work almost as soon as he became Reader on 1 October 1941, Tolkien was not scheduled to give any lectures or classes on Icelandic studies after Michaelmas Term 1941 for the rest of his time in the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair. See also J.S. Ryan, ‘The Work and Preferences of the Professor of Old Norse at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945’, Angerthas 27 (May 1990).

      NORTHERN INFLUENCES ON TOLKIEN’S FICTION

      Among many influences from Northern literature on Tolkien’s works, Beowulf not only provides the cup stolen from Smaug in *The Hobbit, but also contributes to the Anglo-Saxon culture of the Rohirrim in *The Lord of the Rings, in particular the reception of Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli at Edoras (Book III, Chapter 6), which is based on that of Beowulf at Heorot. It also seems likely that Unferþ in Beowulf provided a prototype which Tolkien reworked as Gríma Wormtongue (see Clive Tolley, ‘And the Word Was Made Flesh’, Mallorn 32 (September 1995)). Most of the Dwarf-names in The Hobbit, and the name Gandalf (originally that of the dwarf later called Thorin), are taken from the Völuspá in the Elder Edda. Even Middle-earth and Mirkwood are derived from early Germanic languages where they appear in various forms (see Letters, pp. 220, 369–70). The figure of Gandalf, as Tolkien himself recognized (Letters, p. 119), embodies some aspects of the god Odin in Norse mythology (see further, Marjorie Burns, Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth (2005), pp. 95–106). Verlyn Flieger comments that although ‘ljösalfar (light elves) and döckalfar (dark elves) are part of the world of the Icelandic Prose Edda and its source, the Elder or Poetic Edda, Tolkien carries the concept [of Light Elves and Dark Elves] beyond mere naming to create a context in which the differences that underlie the distinction can be explained and justified’ (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (2nd edn. 2002), p. 83).

      A dragon guarding a hoard, as in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s poem *The Hoard, appears in both Beowulf and the story of Sigurd. Tolkien also drew upon the latter for the story of Túrin Turambar in The Silmarillion (*‘Of Túrin Turambar’), who kills the dragon Glaurung as Sigurd kills Fáfnir, by striking the beast’s soft belly from below. Also in The Silmarillion, the deaths of the companions of Finrod and Beren at intervals by a werewolf echo the account in the Völsunga Saga of the slaying of nine of the ten fettered sons of King Volsung, one by one, on consecutive nights by a she-wolf, and СКАЧАТЬ