Old Norse News

The seventeenth book in the estimable Viking Collection from the University Press of Southern Denmark is Jens Peter Schjødt’s Initiation Between Two Worlds. Structure and Symbolism in Pre-Christian Scandinavia (Odense, 2008). Jens Peter’s book has been in the works for quite a long time, and I’m very excited to see it in its finished form. As he describes it in the Preface, his purpose

…is to apply theories and perspectives from the Study of Religion, or Comparative Religion as some would prefer, to the study of pre-Christian culture in the North … This means that the book deals with problems within the Study of Religion as well as within Scandinavian Studies … As an historian of religion, occupied with Old Norse myth, religion and ideology, the application mentioned seems to be an undertaking that is all the more relevant because much research done from the point of view of so-called modern philology or from the point of view of traditional historical studies argues that our access to this field is severely limited by the situation surrounding the source material. I hope to show that the situation is not all bad and that studies into the Old Norse world do not have to be critical in only a negative way.

I’m pretty sure this is going to be a really important book in the field of Scandinavian religious history. I’m not sure whether I’ll agree with it, but I can’t wait to give it a try…

The ISBN is 978 87 7674 327 7 and the book costs 405DKR. I’ve not managed to find it outside Denmark yet, but it’s available online from booksellers like Harders.

Less directly relevant to Old Norse, but still likely to be of interest to many readers, is Indo-European Poetry and Myth by M. L. West (new in paperback from OUP, 2008):

The Indo-Europeans, speakers of the prehistoric parent language from which most European and some Asiatic languages are descended, most probably lived on the Eurasian steppes some five or six thousand years ago. Martin West investigates their traditional mythologies, religions, and poetries, and points to elements of common heritage. In The East Face of Helicon (1997), West showed the extent to which Homeric and other early Greek poetry was influenced by Near Eastern traditions, mainly non-Indo-European. His new book presents a foil to that work by identifying elements of more ancient, Indo-European heritage in the Greek material. Topics covered include the status of poets and poetry in Indo-European societies; metre, style, and diction; gods and other supernatural beings, from Father Sky and Mother Earth to the Sun-god and his beautiful daughter, the Thunder-god and other elemental deities, and earthly orders such as Nymphs and Elves; the forms of hymns, prayers, and incantations; conceptions about the world, its origin, mankind, death, and fate; the ideology of fame and of immortalization through poetry; the typology of the king and the hero; the hero as warrior, and the conventions of battle narrative. (From the publisher’s blurb)

West’s book certainly looks like it will become essential reading for those who want to look at Old Norse from a comparative perspective. (And now it’s out in paperback a few of us will be able to afford it!)

Finally, there’s now a welcome reissue of Tim William Machan’s edition of Vafþrúðnismál. Originally published by the University of Durham in 1989, the new edition is (I think) the first book to come out of a new collaboration between Durham and the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies in Toronto. I’m not sure about its distribution status in Europe, but North American readers can order it from amazon.com (and doubtless other book stores and websites). The ISBN is 978-0888445612.

[NOTE: David Ashurst has informed me that the volumes published under the Durham/PIMS partnership will be distributed in Europe by Brepols. You should be able to order Vafþrúðnismál directly from them.]