- Great Lacuna
, the original size of "Sigurðarkviða" should have been more than 250 stanzas.
The missing original narrative is preserved in the "
Völsunga saga " in prose form with four stanzas of poetry. The first two stanzas that are preserved through the saga deal with howSigurd returns toBrynhildr leaping through the flames onGrani after Gunnar had failed:Brynhild's fury would soon lead to the death of both her and Sigurd and to the end of the Gjukung clan.
J. R. R. Tolkien once tried to reconstruct the lost stanzas and produced the unpublished poems "Sigurðarkvida hin nyja" and "Guðrunarkviða hin nyja". [ [http://www.nordals.hi.is/Apps/WebObjects/HI.woa/wa/dp?detail=1004508&name=nordals_en_greinar_og_erindi Tolkien, Laxness, Undset. Tom Shippey: TOLKIEN AND ICELAND: THE PHILOLOGY OF ENVY (13.09.2002)] .]Notes
References
* [http://home.earthlink.net/~wodensharrow/lacuna.html The Great Lacuna] Stanzas from "Völsunga saga" believed to be from the lacuna, translated by Lee M. Hollander
* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe26.htm Fragment of a Sigurth Lay]Henry Adams Bellows ' translation and commentary
* [http://www.northvegr.org/lore/poetic2/028.php Fragments of the Lays of Sigurd and Brynhild]Benjamin Thorpe 's translation
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