'The Earthly Paradise.' Shortly after this he became especially interested in Icelandic literature and published versions of some of its stories; notably one of the Siegfried tale, 'Sigurd the
Volsung.' In the decade from
The collection's title is at once a reference to Millay's poem and to the various traditions--from the
Volsung Cycle through Gaelic banshee lore, to North and South American folktales--that feature a witch wife archetype noted for a variety of behaviors: shape shifting, cannibalism, and the ability to leave her skin.
And finally, the William Morris Archive continues apace, as this year, among other items, we have added Peter Wright's comprehensive historical and critical introduction to Sigurd the
Volsung, "From Edda to Epic: How Morris Refashioned the
Volsung Story, and the Manner of Its Telling," as well as new Morris socialist essays, links to relevant materials in the Socialist League Archive in Amsterdam, and images of Morris's drafts of The Story of the Glittering Plain, The Well at the World's End, and News from Nowhere.
The Saga of the
Volsungs is the most coherent account of the ill-fated romances, tragic murders, and epic wars of the
Volsung family that medieval Scandinavian poems, sagas, and works of art allude to and celebrate.
After this Tolkien went on discuss "the greatest of all the old northern dragon stories," the account of the killing of the dragon Fafnir by the
Volsung Sigurd.
Chapter 9, "The
Volsung Riddle: Character in Tolkien," contains an interesting discussion of static characterization in narratives before the eighteenth century, and analyzes this problem in terms of motivation in the story of the
Volsungs: Why does Sigurd leave Brynhild behind her wall of fire after first encountering her, then return disguised as Gunnar to win Brynhild for him?
Members of Rhondda club Odyssey SAC sailed out of Dale on the charter boat
Volsung and when they returned, Andrew Tucker, from Gilfach Goch, had done best by boating 37lb of pollack and bull huss.
“After a long time of retirement,
Volsung has decided to come back to defeat the power of darkness.
The boy answers that a
Volsung is not troubled by such a trifle'.
Dentith returns to the epic's fast link to geography in his discussion of Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Morris's Sigurd the
Volsung. While Tennyson and Morris look to different sources, geographies, and verse-forms in their different approaches to national epic and come to different conclusions, both look to create a mythic national past to situate a national present.
When Signy's father (King
Volsung) and his sons come to visit, she urges them to go home and muster forces.