Okay, I promise this time it's for real (and a different Web site). If you want to take a 10-week online course in Tolkien Studies, Dr. Dimitra Fimi is now accepting signups for Exploring Tolkien: There and Back Again.

The course will cover Tolkien's northern mythological influences and his languages.

Class starts on January 19, 2009.

As an aside, you might be interested in watching several Tolkien videos I shared in the Tolkien Forum on SF-Fandom. The videos have been uploaded to YouTube over the past year or so. Some of them have been widely viewed but many of them appear to have been overlooked by most fans.

You must register in order to download the episodes but registration is free and you are not added to any marketing lists.

With this release Hawke has now caught up on all the episodes we have recorded so far. We expect to record the next episode on Sunday, January 11. If all goes according to plan that episode should be available within a few days after that.

Chris Seeman will be a guest on the show for Episode 10. I'm not yet sure when that episode will be recorded.

Episode 8
Recorded December 28th, 2008.
Duration: 23 minutes, 23 seconds.
File size: 20.6 MB.

Ainur - Children of Hurin (2007) Album Cover www.ainur.it

Opening Music: "Turin's Madness" by Ainur from their album "Children of Hurin" (2007).

Topics covered:

• IGN's Review of "The Hobbit" game for nintendo.
• The Tolkien-inspired Italian music group from Italy, working on their third album.
• Local theater productions of The Hobbit
• The Hobbit Tour registry is now open.
• Rumours continue to be argued about "The Hobbit" movie being pushed back to 2012
• Dirk Vander Ploeg Explores Middle-earth, archaeological "evidence" that hobbits, dragons, etc. once existed. ;-)
• "The Hobbit" species debate.
• A recording of Tolkien talking about Middle-earth, that much of the tragedy of Middle-earth is the fault of the Valar.
• Some Video Plugs from Michael Martinez, including Tolkien videos.
• Howard Shore symphony in Malaysia, a reviewer there compared Tolkien to Wagner (yet another one).

Closing Music: "Shuddering Water" by Ainur from their album "Children of Hurin" (2007)

Full information is available here, including the download link (remember, you must be logged in to download the file).

Hawke has now released the 7th episode. By the way -- in the show I mentioned that Xenite.Org email is not working. The majority of issues have since been resolved.

Originally recorded December 14th, 2008.
Duration: 36 minutes 10 seconds.
File size: 33.2 MB

The Tolkien Ensemble: A Night in Rivendell
Opening music: Orkrist - The Ode: The Fall of Gil-galad - Grond

Topics covered:

• Tolkien Fan movie focusing on the hunt for Gollum, done for only 3,000 British Pounds.
• Map with etymology of place names - "The Atlas of True Names".
• Raise a toast to Tolkien on January 3rd, 9:00 pm local time.
• Tolkien auction, Mostly Star Wars, but last two sentences about first edition "original" Lord of the Rings set, signed by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Tolkien and the Welsh language influence on Sindarin.
• Lengthy doctoral thesis on management techniques demonstrated by Tolkien using Gandalf, Sauron, Saruman, Denethor and others.
• DelToro, "Sleepless Nights".
• LOTRO screen pics of 21st Hall of Khazad-dum.
• More info on the upcoming Hobbit movie.
• The longest movie "The Cure for Insomnia"
• Tangent, "Cthulu Lives" Movie
• Movie Hawke couldn't remember: "Wallace and Gromit".
• Another appeal to continue the quest for Gil-galad's car.

Closing music: The Tolkien Ensemble: A Night in Rivendell (2000) - The Fall of Gil-galad (http://tolkienensemble.net/)

You can read the full announcement here:
http://www.middle-earthradio.com/Members/middleearthradio/middle-earth-talk-radio-show-7-2008-12-14

It includes the links for the sites we discussed. I've decided that reformatting them for this blog is too much trouble. Sorry.

Back in the 1920s J.R.R. Tolkien wrote an English-language version of the Norse saga of Sigurd the Volsung and the Niflungs.

That book is now being brought to publication by HarperCollins, according to The Bookseller.

You can read a little bit about the work in Michael Drout's J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia.

OLD NORSE TRANSLATIONS

Little is known about Tolkien's unpublished Norse poem cycle, Volsungakvii a en Nyja / New Lay of the Volsungs. The cycle is briefly cited by Humphrey Carpenter, and Tolkien mentioned it in a letter to W.H. Auden, explaining that the poems were his attempt to organize the Eddaic songs about Sigurd and Gunnar, written in fornyrdisig 8-line stanza, a medieval Icelandic verse form. A note to his letter places composition at some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The "attempt to organize" probably refers to the fact that the primary texts are corrupt and incomplete and must be supplemented by other sources to make a coherent story.

The legend that the texts recount is as follows. Sigurd, the legendary "prince of heroes of the North", slew the dragon Fafnir. Carrying off the dragon's gold, Sigurd then plighted troth with Brynhild, one of Odin's Valkyries (or a mortal woman -- here the sources disagree), whom he found sleeping on a rock, surrounded by magic flames. He rescued her, but for unspecified reasons he left her and married Gudrun, the daughter of Gjuki, later returning to Brynhild's rock disguised as Gudrun's brother Gunnar to win her for Gunnar as his bride. The resultant rivalry between the two women led to the killing of Sigurd, leaving the hapless Gudrun to be married again. Her second husband was Atli (Atilla) the Hun, who, coveting their dragon's gold, lured her brothers to his stronghold and murdered them. Gudrun in turn killed Atli and set fire to his hall.

A definite Norse/Icelandic influence is recognizable in Tolkien's work, most explicitly in his Dwarf names and characteristics but also in his reuse of Sigurd's dragon-slaying in the story of Turin Turambar. In his essay, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," he makes specific mention of Sigurd's killing of Fafnir. It is to be hoped that the Volsung poems, his most direct use of Norse material, will at some future date be published to round out our understanding of his debt to Northern literature.
Verlyn Flieger

So it seems that will finally happen. I will post more information here when I find it. I'll also post updates at SF-Fandom's Tolkien forum and on the Endor discussion list.