Tolkien and Sigurd, “The World's Chosen,” Part 1

What happens when a creative genius like J.R.R. Tolkien encounters an old story filled with frustrating gaps and unanswered questions? He makes the story his own. He expands it, plugs its holes, answers its questions, and gives it a deeper, richer meaning. This is exactly what happened when Tolkien met the legend of Sigurd; he embraced the story and imposed order and meaning on it by introducing a new narrative theme: Sigurd as the World's chosen.

The original story of Sigurd developed over centuries and in various places throughout Europe. The sources of the legend that have passed down to modern readers are primarily poems and sagas written in Old Norse or German, and they were composed by mostly unknown authors who collected them from generations of oral poets and storytellers. As the tales traveled along this circuitous path, they experienced many changes in details great and small. Various interpreters added or deleted sections as they saw fit, and scribes and editors contributed their own opinions about what should and should not be included. A large portion of the story as told in the Poetic Edda was even lost to history when part of the Edda's manuscript was pilfered at some point (Bellows 85-88; Tolkien 38-39). 

As a result, the texts that exist today are replete with gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions, and they leave unanswered questions in readers' minds. How does Sigurd end up tied into the stories of Fafnir and Regin? Why is he the one who has to slay the dragon? Why are there two different Brynhilds, the Valkyrie and the human princess? How and why do Sigurd and Brynhild end up an engaged couple? Why do Sigurd and Brynhild part, and why does Sigurd break his faith (and his character), forget Brynhild, and marry Gudrún? How does the curse of Andvari's ring affect Sigurd and his fate? Is there any hope at all for a world seemingly destined for the destruction of Ragnarök? 

The original sources fail to address these questions, and all the loose ends must have irritated Tolkien because he sets about fixing them in his own version of the Sigurd story, The Lay of the Völsungs. He does so by tying the tale of Sigurd together with a brand new narrative theme: Sigurd as the World's chosen. Tolkien introduces the theme in the first section of the Lay, which retells the Eddaic creation story. The seer speaks of Ragnarök, the “day of Doom,” just as she does in the original poem, but in Tolkien's version, she adds a contingent element (63). 

If in day of Doom

one deathless stands,

who death hath tasted

and dies no more,

the serpent-slayer,

seed of Ódin,

then all shall not end,

nor Earth perish. (63)

Already Tolkien has cleared up one unanswered question: Is there any hope at all for a world seemingly destined for the destruction of Ragnarök? He responds with a resounding “Yes!” If a person arrives who is descended from Ódin, has slain a serpent, and has died but will die no more, then there is hope for the world. This one Tolkien calls “the World's chosen,” and readers soon discover that this long-awaited, much-expected figure is Sigurd himself (65).