Old Norse News

First, apologies for the very long gap between posts. I can only plead pressure of (other)  work! I hope that regular posting will now resume. Apologies also to anybody who sent me an announcement that I’ve missed during my time away from the site.

To get things going again, here are a few new books that have come to my attention over the past couple of months.

First, we have the festschrift for Marianne Kalinke, Romance and Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland, edited by Kirsten Wolf and Johanna Denzin, Islandica 54 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2008) ISBN 978-0-935995-15-2.

In line with Islandica’s new policy, this book is being published online, free of charge, as well as in hard cover. It contains fourteen essays by many Official Big Names of our discipline, mainly Icelanders and North American scholars. Appropriately, bearing in mind Professor Kalinke’s important work in these fields, the contributions centre on Norse Romance and on the theme of love in Medieval and Early Modern Icelandic literature.

Novus forlag in Oslo were kind enough to send me a copy of a collection of essays on the legends of Barlaam and Josaphat in Old Norse literature, which is the first volume in a new series, Bibliotheca Nordica. Barlaam i nord, ed. Karl G. Johansson and Maria Arvidsson (ISBN 978-82-7099-519-6), contains seven essays on this important but under-studied cluster of narratives, covering topics from the expected (Barlaams saga ok Josaphats) to the novel and intriguing (the treatment of the narrative in Scandinavian medieval iconography and in Old Swedish legends). It looks like being a really welcome contribution to the study of Old Norse Christian literature. I’ll also look out with interest for future volumes in the Bibliotheca Nordica series.

The Viking Society for Northern Research has published a new edition of the eddic poem Grottasöngr (ISBN 978-0-903521-78-9), by Clive Tolley. Tolley’s edition is designed to serve as a supplement to Ursula Dronke’s monumental Poetic Edda, in which no place for Grottasöngr could be found. Not only does this Grottasöngr resemble the Dronke edition in its attractive salmon-pink cover, it also meets the exacting standards of textual criticism and detailed annotation that we’ve come to expect from this project. At a cost of £8 (or a mere £4 to members of the Viking Society), there’s not much excuse not to own a copy!

The Viking Society has also reissued Matthew Driscoll’s edition (with facing page translation) of Ágrip af Nóregskonungasögum (ISBN 978-0-903521-75-8). This second edition contains revised readings and some corrections  to the text first published in 1995. See The Society’s Website for more details.

Finally for now, I’m pleased to report that Lena Rohrbach’s book, Der tierische Blick: Mensch-Tier-Relationen in der Sagaliteratur (ISBN 978-3-7720-8307-5) has been published by Gunter Narr Verlag. Based on Lena’s doctoral dissertation, it offers a unique conspectus of the place of animals in the sagas — I heard Lena give talks deriving from this work on several occasions, and it’s fascinating stuff.

As ever, I’d be very pleased to hear of any other new books in the field — it’s very difficult to keep track of publishing in so many languages and countries on one’s own!