Bestselling author J.R.R. In 2009, seventy years after its composition, HarperCollins posthumously published Tolkien's verse retelling of part of the Codex Regius, which was entitled, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. In return, I hope to send you, if I can lay my hands on it , a thing I did many years ago while trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza.