Völsunga saga
Tolkien was influenced by Germanic heroic legend, especially its Norse and Old English forms. During his education at King Edward's School in Birmingham, he read and translated from the Old Norse in his free time. One of his first Norse purchases was the "Völsunga saga". While a student, Tolkien read the only available English translation of the "Völsunga saga", the 1870 rendering by William Morris of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement and Icelandic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon. The Old Norse "Völsunga saga" and the Old High German "Nibelungenlied" were coeval texts made with the use of the same ancient sources. Both of them provided some of the basis for Richard Wagner's opera series, "Der Ring des Nibelungen", featuring in particular a magical but cursed golden ring and a broken sword reforged. In the "Völsunga saga", these items are respectively Andvaranaut and Gram, and they correspond broadly to the One Ring and the sword Narsil (reforged as Andúril). The "Völsunga saga" also gives various names found in Tolkien. Tolkien's "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún" discusses the saga in relation to the myth of Sigurd and Gudrún.