The influence of at least three additional Germanic sources, the
Volsunga Saga, which also features the killing of a fierce dragon guarding a rich, cursed treasure, Fafnir, by a brave hero, Sigurd, (2) the Voluspa in the Elder Edda, (3) and the Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda, providing Gandalf and the Dwarves with their names, (4) strongly contribute in drawing a picture of Tolkien's substantial indebtedness toward Germanic legends and folklore.
There are occasional references to bodily dirt in such literature (Egil's Saga 71), but Tolkien's particular hobbyhorses, Beowulf and
Volsunga Saga, contain no such discussion.
Borges read Wiliam Morris's and Eirikur Magmisson's translation of
Volsunga Saga at a young age, wrote a short treatise on kenningar ("Las kenningar") in 1933 and at the end of his life visited Iceland twice, in 1971 and 1976, accompanied by his assistant and later wife, Maria Kodama, and together Kodama and Borges translated Gylfaginning from Snorri Sturluson's Edda (1984).
In this gory, gripping reworking of the Icelandic
Volsunga Saga, set in a future world where genetic engineering has blurred the lines between men, beasts, and machines, 15-year-old Sigurd is the last surviving member of the Volson clan.
Muller gives full accounts of the Scandinavian and Germanic sources for the Ring cycle with generous extracts from the Eddas, Thidreks Saga,
Volsunga Saga, and the Nibelungenlied, and appends good explanatory material.
Brunhild or Brunhild or Brynhild also called Brunhilda or BrunhildeA beautiful Amazonlike princess in ancient Germanic heroic literature, known from Old Norse sources (the Eddic poems and the
Volsunga saga) and from the Nibelungenlied in German.
In
Volsunga saga, when he hears of the approach of an enemy army under Alf, Sigmundr konungr ...
Although based on Scandinavian legends as told in the poetic Edda and the
Volsunga Saga, it draws further on German legend and omits much of the supernatural material; Siegfried, for instance, is no longer a descendant of the Scandinavian god Odin but rather the son of the king of the Netherlands and a typical hero of medieval romance.
As in her previous volume, she draws examples from a wide variety of cultures, here including the Rig Veda and Indo-European myth, Greek traditions such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Arthurian legend, the Norse
Volsunga Saga, Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and African, Native American, Inuit, and Slav myth (among others).
This is a grim and brutal British fantasy, based on the first part of the Icelandic
Volsunga Saga. Ancient gods like Odin and Loki appear, and there are echoes of The Sword in the Stone as well.
Although the codex is missing several pages, some of the lost poems were preserved in prose form in the
Volsunga saga.