Old Norse News

Septentrionalia is a not-for-profit re-publisher of out-of-print works on medieval northern Europe, with special emphasis on Old Norse. Their scans, which are generally of very high quality, are available to download for free, and they also make some of them available in tangible book-form, at surprisingly reasonable cost. As some of the most seminal works of Norse scholarship are now out-of-copyright (and have never been replaced), this means that it’s suddenly become much easier to track down, and even to own, Sveinbjörn Egilsson/Finnur Jónsson’s Lexicon Poeticum, or the three-volume Arnamagnæan edition of Snorra Edda, for example. It’s a really great initiative, a very accessible site, and a most impressive labour of love by its creators.

Selected highlights from the Septentrionalia library:

• The complete 4 volume series of Finnur Jónsson’s Skjaldedigtning (the standard edition of Norse skaldic poetry)
• Editions of Heimskringla, Fagrskinna, Morkinskinna and Hauksbók
• Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie
• Meissner’s Die Kenningar der Skalden
• The Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, and Bosworth and Toller’s Anglo-Saxon one

And much more … it’s an excellent resource and long may it continue.

Sagananet, meanwhile, is a major international project run by The National and University Library of Iceland in collaboration with Cornell University. Its aim is simple and grandiose. It will eventually make available as high-quality digital images all the Icelandic manuscripts and printed books up to 1900 that are held by the National Library, the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar and the Fiske Collection at Cornell.

The Sagnanet database already contains a wide range of manuscripts, and the quality of the photography is impeccable. I’m not alone in finding the navigation controls — both around the site and within each manuscript — somewhat frustrating and unintuitive, and it would be great if the project’s managers could look at changing this aspect in the future. That notwithstanding, Sagnanet is a phenomenal resource for anybody interested in Icelandic manuscripts, and when it’s completed will make us the envy of less fortunate disciplines!