I'm not entirely sure which forum this belongs in, so have put it in "General Topics".

I've recently become more convinced of the importance of the Coalbiters, the group that Tolkien formed in 1926 to get members of the English faculty (particularly) of the University of Oxford more interested in the language side of the subject, by reading Old Norse-Icelandic literature in the original language. It surprised me that there was no Wikipedia article on the subject, so I took it upon myself to put one together.

Information is relatively sparse, but a coherent story is achievable. We can piece together at least parts of the history of the group and its timeline. We know, for instance, from several sources including Lewis' letters that they started with the Younger (Prose) Edda of Snorri Sturluson, then followed on with the sagas of the Volsungs and then the Laxdale saga, and finished with the Elder (Poetic) Edda.

The group ran from 1926 to 1933 (probably). Lewis refers to the poem Hávamál, from the Elder Edda, in a letter to Arthur Greaves in 1931, which makes some sense, given the timeline. The previous poem in the Elder Edda, Völuspá, is generally known to Tolkien readers for the section Dvergatal, which gives the list of Dwarf names that Tolkien borrowed for the company in The Hobbit.

Now, this obviously wasn't Tolkien's first encounter with the Elder Edda, but the fact that the Coalbiters would have been tackling Völuspá at the same time that Tolkien was putting The Hobbit down on paper for the first time had me thinking...

I've not found any published reference that makes that link, but surely someone has mentioned it before? As it stands, I'm skirting around a Wikipedia policy at the moment, which is that you are not allowed to present "original research" and this includes synthesis of two separate referenced sources to come to a conclusion that is not already in the literature.

The article is at Coalbiters. It is still a work in progress and needs some tidying up (including reference pages... I need to check that I've taken the page numbers from the editions I've placed in the bibliography).