SOURCE: Byock, Jesse L. “Introduction.” In The “Saga of the Volsungs”: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragonslayer, pp. 1-29. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Byock traces the historical antecedents for the characters in the Volsunga Saga and examines its influence on the works of Richard Wagner and J. R. R. Tolkien.

The unknown Icelandic author who wrote The Saga of the Volsungs in the thirteenth century based his prose epic on stories found in far older Norse poetry. His sources, which may have included a lost earlier prose saga, were rich in traditional lore. The Saga of the Volsungs recounts runic knowledge, princely jealousies, betrayals, unrequited love, the vengeance of a barbarian queen, greedy schemes of Attila the Hun, and the mythic deeds of the dragon slayer, Sigurd the Volsung. It describes events from the ancient wars among the kings of the Burgundians...