Who edited J. R. R. Tolkien’s posthumous book The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún?

Christopher Tolkien edited J. R. R. Tolkien’s posthumous book The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún.

The volume was published in 2009 and presents two narrative poems that Tolkien composed in the 1920s and 1930s. They retell material from the Völsung legends and the Nibelung tradition, including Sigurd’s battle with Fafnir and the tragic relationships surrounding Gudrún and Brynhild.

Christopher Tolkien supplied an introduction, notes, and commentary explaining the poems’ sources and Tolkien’s methods. He had previously edited much of his father’s unpublished literary work, including The Silmarillion and several volumes of The History of Middle-earth.

The book is not a translation of the medieval sources. Tolkien wrote new English poems in forms influenced by Old Norse and Old English verse, while drawing on texts such as the Poetic Edda and the Völsunga saga. Its publication made this lesser-known part of Tolkien’s scholarship available to a broad readership.