Author: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Crossover: LotR/Silmarillion
Disclaimer: All belongs to Whedon & Tolkien. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.
Summary: Meanwhile, in Gondolin...
Word Count: 575
( Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? )
📢 TRSB Needs Pitch Hit Authors! 📢
We have two gorgeous art pieces in need of a writer to bring them to life for Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang! Whether you’re already signed up or just want to help out, you can volunteer as a Pitch Hitter by emailing the mods (tolkienrsb@gmail.com). 💛 Pitch Hitters will get extra time to give these pieces the love they deserve.
1. A Messenger Comes to Rómenna
A story set in Númenor just before the Fall, showing the tensions in numenorean society at large escalating, and the political and social conflicts between the faithful and the king's men, under the shadow of Sauron's manipulation. It's up to the author if the story is dramatic palace intrigue or a contained story about OC's in Rómenna, etc. (Silmarillion/Fall of Numenor, fic rating Any)
2. The Wedding of Aegnor and Andreth
An AU where Aegnor and Andreth defy fate, marry, and live happily ever after. (Silmarillion/HoME, any rating)
That's a wrap on the promo posts! In case you missed one, there is a full list below in the order they were posted.
Nominations will open Sunday, 03 August 2025, 8:00 PM UTC. Information on nominations may be found here. If you have questions for the mods about nominations, you can reach us here, on Tumblr, on Discord, or via email.
(written by zdenka )
Summary The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a set of two narrative poems by Tolkien based on stories from Norse mythology: Völsungakviða en nýja (The New Lay of the Völsungs) and Guðrúnarkviða en nýja (The New Lay of Gudrún). Despite their Norse titles, these poems are in English, composed in alliterative verse.
Like The Silmarillion, "The New Lay of the Völsungs" begins with the creation of the world. It then follows the descent of the legendary Völsung family, ending with Sigurd the Dragonslayer. The poem recounts Sigurd's heroic deeds and the complicated entanglements of oaths, love, and betrayal that develop between Sigurd, the former Valkyrie Brynhild, the warrior lord Gunnar, and Gunnar's sister Gudrún.
"The New Lay of Gudrún" continues the story of Gudrún after Sigurd's murder: her grief for Sigurd, her second marriage to Atli (a mythologized version of Attila the Hun), the trap Atli lays for Gudrún's brothers, and the terrible fate of Atli and Gudrún's children.
Why Should I Check Out This Canon? It's a dramatic story of heroism, torn loyalties, fate, love, and hatred! If you enjoy those themes in Tolkien's other works, you'll find them here too.
If you've enjoyed Norse myths or other versions of the Sigurd story, you might also like this one.
If you liked Tolkien's poetry in The Lord of the Rings or the Lays of Beleriand, here's another hoard of it. He makes writing alliterative verse look easy.
You also get a look at some of the sources for Tolkien's Middle-earth works. I don't mean only the plot elements that have been noted by many literary critics, such as the similarities of Túrin's dragon-slaying adventure to Sigurd's. Having these legends in Tolkien's own words can help show the connections he made in his own mind between Norse legend and his Legendarium. Taking just one stanza as an example:
The Gods gathered on golden thrones, of doom and death deeply pondered, how fate should be fended, their foes vanquished, their labour healed, light rekindled.
That sounds a lot like the Valar in the Silmarillion, doesn't it? And there are plenty more resemblances to find.
Where Can I Get This? Your local bookstore or library, or the Internet Archive.
What Fanworks Already Exist? There is one work in Russian on AO3, a fic cross-tagged with the Silmarillion; I don't know Russian, but it seems to be a darker take on the Beren and Lúthien story. (The AO3 tag is here.)
One work from b2mem here, a recording of four stanzas from "The New Lay of the Völsungs" set to music and sung. Full Disclosure: This one is by me.
In other words, if you want to create fanworks for this, the field is wide open!
The general guideline we've gone by when selecting which are eligible in this fandom and which aren't is essentially: is the full text readily available in another book? For this, we have excluded publication in obscure or non-English sources, literary magazines, or in books that were published, generally speaking, more than forty years ago and are out of print.
If the full text of the poem can be found in another book, it should be nominated under that book. For instance, Princess Mee appears in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and so it should not be nominated under Collected Poems, but under The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
A number of poems appear in The History of Middle-earth series, and should be nominated under The Book of Lost Tales or The Silmarillion, as appropriate. And of course any poem that appears in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings should be nominated in that fandom.
When nominating characters, character groups, or worldbuilding tags for Collected Poems, please try to ensure that you make clear which poem you are nominating for, as characters can appear across many different poems and so can worldbuilding concepts. For example, if you wanted to nominate the dragon from The Dragon's Visit, you should format the nomination like this: Dragon - The Dragon's Visit (Poems), with a dash between the character or character group and the name of the poem, followed by the fandom disambiguation in parentheses. If the poem is obvious from the character name or group, there's no need to add in the name of the poem, but please always disambiguate the fandom.
You can nominate real people in this fandom, for instance: Rosalind Ramage (Poems) or Group: JRR Tolkien & GB Smith - G.B.S (Poems).
You can also nominate characters and worldbuilding concepts that might appear in other fandoms in this fandom, for example: Worldbuilding: Earendel guiding ships to Valinor - Bilbo's Last Song (Poems) or Bilbo Baggins - Bilbo's Last Song (Poems).
If you have any questions, please ask and we will do our best to clarify. As this is the first year Collected Poems has been a fandom and it's a very complex one, we might not have all the kinks ironed out yet!
What follows is a list of all the poems in Collected Poems with a note of whether they are eligible or not, and if not, what fandom(s) they should be nominated under. This information can also be accessed in table format (thanks grundyscribbling) on Google Docs.
( All poems in Collected Poems... )