Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

'A monstrous apparition strode in the door, One of the tallest creatures in the whole of the earth.' Legends from the Ancient North Beowulf The Elder Edda The Saga of the Volsungs Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles These are the great epic stories that inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Conjuring up a twilight world of quests, treachery, magic, evil and fellowship, they are the most ancient narratives from Northern Europe and bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Translated by Bernard O'Donoghue