With the publication of JRR Tolkien’s 500-stanza epic poem, “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” the late author’s son worried that many readers would find the book difficult.
Christopher Tolkien told the Guardian the book follows a Norse poetic cycle that will seem foreign to most readers–the Edda collection. The 84-year-old editor said he used a manuscript his father wrote in the 1930s while teaching Old Norse at Oxford.
The author’s son also addressed rumors that he guarded his father’s work with wild animals: “In the full form of the story I keep not one, but a whole troop of wild boars, expressly in order to chase off Tolkien fans who are imagined to lurk in the woods that surround my house … I don’t think they would be at all suitable as guardians even if I wanted them.” (Via Colleen Lindsay)