Old Norse News

October’s Journal Round-Up concludes with Saga-Book, Northern Studies, and the latest number of JEGP.

The new edition of the Viking Society’s Saga-Book has just been sent out to members. (If you’re not a member, might I urge you to consider joining?) Volume 32 contains three articles and no fewer than 17 reviews:

• Theodore M. Andersson, ‘The Oral Sources of Óláfs saga helga in Heimskringla‘
• Ármann Jakobsson, ‘The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: the Meanings of troll and ergi in Medieval Iceland’
• Conrad van Dijk, ‘Amused by Death? Humour in Tristrams saga ok Ísoddar‘
• The reviews are of the following books:
  Jón Hilmar Magnússon, Íslenzk-færeysk orðabók
  Sara M. Ponz-Sans, Norse-derived Vocabulary in Late Old English Texts. Wulfstan’s Works: a Case Study
  Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects
  Pernille Hermann et al., ed., Reflections on Old Norse Myths
  Ingunn Ásdísardóttir, Frigg og Freyja - kvenleg goðmögn í heiðnum sið
  Tom Shippey, ed., The Shadow-Walkers. Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous
  Haki Antonsson, St Magnús of Orkney. A Scandinavian Martyr-Cult in Context
  Ólafur Halldórsson, ed., Færeyinga saga. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar eptir Odd munk Snorrason
  Janet Bately and Anton Englert, ed., Ohthere’s Voyages. A Late 9^th-Century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and its Cultural Context
  Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070
  Clare Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland. The Dynasty of Ívarr to A. D. 1014
  R. Andrew McDonald, Manx Kingship in its Irish Sea Setting, 1187-1229. Rögnvaldr and the Crovan Dynasty
  Beverly Ballin Smith et al., ed., West Over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300. A Festschrift in Honour of Dr Barbara Crawford
  Judy Quinn et al., ed., Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World. Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross
  M. J. Driscoll, ed., Fjórar sögur frá hendi Jóns Oddssonar Hjaltalín. Sagan af Marroni sterka, Ágrip af Heiðarvíga sögu, sagan af Zadig, Fimmbræðra saga
  Jóna E. Hammer, Memoirs of an Icelandic Bookworm
  Robert E. Bjork, trans., A Viking Slave’s Saga. Jan Fridegård’s Trilogy of Novels about the Viking Age: Land of Wooden Gods, People of the Dawn and Sacrificial Smoke
• Northern Studies is the journal of Scotland’s equivalent to the Viking Society, the Scottish Society for Northern Studies, although its chronological scope is somewhat broader than Saga-Book’s and centres particularly on Scottish matters. In the current issue (vol. 40) there is but one medieval article: Ian Beuermann’s account of ‘King John’s Attack on Man in 1210′, and a review by David Sellar of Patricia Pires Boulhosa’s book Icelanders and the Kings of Norway.
• JEGP 107/4 has two Norse-related articles: Sara M. Pons-Sanz discusses ‘Norse-derived Terms and Structures in The Battle of Maldon‘ and Merrill Kaplan has a piece entitled ‘Out-Thoring Thor in the Longest Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason: Akkerisfrakki, Rauðr inn rammi and Hir Rauða Skegg’. I think this is an expanded version of the paper Merrill gave to the Saga Conference in 2006, and I’m particularly looking forward to reading it.
  This volume also contains reviews of:
  Odd Einar Haugen, Altnordische Philologie: Norwegen und Island
  Martin Arnold, The Vikings: Wolves of War
  Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180-1280)
  Michael Chesnutt, ed., Egils saga Skallagrímssonar III: C-Redaktionen
  John Kennedy, Translating the Sagas: Two Hundred Years of Challenge and Response