Heeeeello guys! I've been meaning to post on here for a while, but haven't got around to it till now...
Anyway, I don't have the deck (though I think it's absolutely gorgeous), but for those of you who mentioned not knowing anything about the mythos associated with this deck, there are actually a lot of fairly accessible versions of this story aside from Wagner's
Ring and the book that comes with the deck. (In fact, Wanger's
Ring is quite different in some aspects from the stories of Sigurd the Dragonslayer it was based on.)
The
Volsungasaga (
Saga of the Volsungs) is, in my opinion, the most accessible and closest to the heart of the story in terms of Sigurd and his journeys. (Penguin Classics has a paperback version that's pretty cheap.) However, the
Volsungasaga doesn't go into Gudrun (Krimhild's) revenge, which is a large part of Wagner's
Ring and the most complete (again, in my opinion) telling of Krimhild's revenge,
Das Nibelungenlied (
The Song of the Nibelungs) (which was the inspiration for Wagner's opera). The
Nibelungenlied is a poetic telling of Sigurd's (or Sifried's, in this case) death and Krimhild's revenge, and is generally fairly easy to read, though it gets a little slow in places. (The version I have was translated by Burton Raffel and published by Yale University Press.)
There is also a version of this story (titled
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun) written by J.R.R. Tolkien, though I haven't read that version yet. (It's sitting on my desk currently waiting for me to finish the
Poetic Edda, which, by the way, also mentions Sigurd briefly. As does the
Prose Edda.)
So ah...there you have it! (I may have nerded out a little there...) They may not be for everyone, but these books are a great way to learn these famous stories in their original (mostly) forms, examine the evolution of a story passed down over literally thousands of years, and explore the transformation of literature as a whole. Great stuff!
And to get back on topic a little, I'm actually pretty sure I'll get this deck. I'm obviously pretty invested in the story as a whole, though not necessarily Wagner's version, and the artwork is just too good to pass up! I'd be excited to use my intuition and knowledge of the stories to interpret the cards. That'd be so much fun!