Old Norse

Abstract

Tolkien's academic interest in Old Norse is well documented, and the language, literature and mythology of medieval Scandinavia also left a deep imprint on his fiction. This chapter outlines his scholarly relationship to Old Norse-Icelandic sources as a professor of medieval language and literature, and traces a development in his use of the Eddas and sagas, from the learned reconstruction of the Völsung cycle in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, to his borrowing of names and episodes from Old Norse mythology in The Hobbit and his response to heroic martial values in The Lord of the Rings. In bringing these “submerged forces” to light, it is important to remain aware of the layers of reconstruction and response, as well as Tolkien's reaction to the nationalistic appropriation of Old Norse heroic legend by Wagner, both serving to further problematize the notion of direct influence.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.