1. The Orchard Edda

First, there is the new Penguin Classics translation by Professor Lord Andy Orchard, who now is mainly famous for running Canada. Andy’s translation of the ‘Elder’ Edda was forthcoming and allegedly pretty much finished when I first met him in 1996, so it’s fair to say that the gestation period on this one has been long. And naturally, it’s well worth the wait. I’ve always been happy recommending Carolyne Larrington’s OUP translation, whose merits more than outweigh the faults that some people have perceived in it; but Orchard’s may pip it for useability, simply because its notes and explanatory material are much more copious than in the Larrington.

As anybody who’s heard a conference paper by Andy over the years will not be terribly surprised to hear, the most notable feature of the translation is a predilection for alliteration, although this never becomes overweening. Some will dislike the translation of proper-names, which is always a fraught process, but overall I find Orchard’s version fluent, accurate and idiomatic without resorting to archaism. The only real problem, I have with it, in fact, is its subtitle–’A Book of Viking Lore’, with every word of which one could take issue, but I can’t really be bothered here and now. Unfortunately, this terminology is used inside the book as well.

So, I certainly am happier with this translation than some people have been. (I don’t really approve of anonymous/pseudonymous reviews, but the commenter raises some valid points.) There’s another early notice of the book on Carl Olsen’s blog, which I’m ashamed to say I’ve only just discovered.

I shall be adding it to the reading lists, happy in the knowledge that the translation is as good as is available, and the notes are extremely useful. I guess no translation will ever satisfy every reader; that’s why we should all translate the Edda for ourselves!

2. Dronke Part III

The second of this year’s new Eddas is the third part of Ursula Dronke’s monumental edition for Oxford University Press. Paratextually, volume three conforms to the standards set by its two predecessors (lest we forget, volume one came out in 1969 and two in 1997: I hope she’s not rushed over this one!), in that it has the distinctive salmon-pink cover and it is exceptionally expensive.

Volume III of Dronke’s Edda is the second of the mythological selections: it comprises Hávamál, Hymiskviða, Grímnismál, and Gróttasöngr. I must confess that I’ve yet to see this book in the flesh, but I’m sure it will contain all of Dr Dronke’s remarkable erudition and her often peerless flashes of insight. Sometimes her readings can be a little adventurous for my timid taste, which makes me chary of using her translation. But alongside the exceptionally valuable commentary that she provides, the singular advantage of the Dronke edition is that has a parallel-text format, so the reader can compare original with the translation with ease.

Has anybody out there seen the Dronke already? Or do you have any thoughts about the Orchard?

I can recommend The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, by Karen Bek Pedersen personally, since I’ve already had a chance to read it–and it’s excellent. If you want to know anything about the Norns, frankly, you’d be crazy to look elsewhere for your information. Here’s what the publishers say about it:

Nornir or norns were a group of female supernatural beings closely related to ideas about fate in Old Norse tradition. Karen Bek-Pedersen provides a thorough understanding of the role played by norns and other beings like them in the relevant sources. Although they are well known, even to people who have only a superficial knowledge of Old Norse mythology, this is the first detailed discussion of the norns to be published amongst the literature dealing with Old Norse beliefs. Surprisingly little has been written specifically about the norns. Although often mentioned in scholarship treating Old Norse culture, the norns are all too often dealt with in overly superficial ways. The research presented in this book goes much deeper in order to properly understand the nature and role of the norns in the Old Norse world view. The conclusions reached by the author overturn a number of stereotypical conceptions that have long dominated our understanding of these beings. The book has a natural focus on Old Norse culture and is especially relevant to those interested in or studying Old Norse culture and tradition. However, comparative material from Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Classical traditions is also employed and the book is therefore of interest also to those with a broader interest in European mythologies.

Of related interest, but with a focus well beyond Scandinavia, I see that Philip Shaw has published Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons:

This book considers evidence for Germanic goddesses in England and on the Continent, and argues on the basis of linguistic and onomastic evidence that modern scholarship has tended to focus too heavily on the notion of divine functions or spheres of activity, such as fertility or warfare, rather than considering the extent to which goddesses are rooted in localities and social structures. Such local religious manifestations are, it is suggested, more important to Germanic paganisms than is often supposed, and should caution us against assumptions of pan-Germanic traditional beliefs. Linguistic and onomastic evidence is not always well integrated into discussions of historical developments in the early Middle Ages, and this book provides both an introduction to the models and methods employed throughout, and a model for further research into the linguistic evidence for traditional beliefs among the Germanic-speaking communities of early medieval Europe.

Lots more book announcements to come, so watch this space: one really gets the feeling that this might go down as a bumper, and probably vintage, year for books in our field. Please let me know via the comments or contact page if you know of any other recent publications that readers should know about.

It’s been a very interesting project: my brief was to write an up-to-date and informed new introduction to Norse mythology, something along the lines of Hilda Ellis Davidson’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, perhaps. Davidson’s book is still going strong, in print and on the shelves of your local store after some fifty years, and it’s a fine work in its own way. But methodologically, it’s absolutely of its time, much beholden to Jan de Vries, and unaffected by the waves that structuralism was beginning to make in the calm waters of myth criticism. What surprised me when I started work on the book was how little competition there was from the last twenty years or so of publication in English. There are plenty of translations and re-tellings of the myths, of course, and there have been some good books that focus on the religious aspect of Norse paganism (Thomas Dubois’ book being perhaps my favourite): but surprisingly few books for the general reader or student who wants an overview of the topic that is (I hope) readable and reliable in equal measure.

In Myths of the Pagan North, I’ve tried to take an essentially chronological approach to the myths themselves, attempting to find a place for them in religious, social and cultural history. Because the texts are so difficult to date, this was a challenge. But I think that skaldic–as opposed to eddic–poetry can offer us a way back into the pagan period that offers at least some hope of identifying the context that produced it. So, after the usual boring* (but essential) survey of the sources, and a brief discussion of what pagan religion was like (not really the point of the book, but you can’t ignore it), I trace the references to myths in skaldic poetry from the ninth to eleventh centuries and compare them, where possible, to the fuller forms of myths that are found in the much later eddas. Then I look at the effects of the conversion of Norway and Iceland to Christianity on the production and preservation of pagan myth, and the ways that the new religion had a transformative effect on the old traditions, culminating, of course, in Snorra Edda.

If I have a central thesis, I suppose it’s that the Norse myths are not just useful sources for reconstructing Norse paganism (whatever we mean by that term) in some sort of ‘pure’ form, uncontaminated by Christianity. Rather, they are constantly changing and being reinvented in response to different social and religious challenges, of which the arrival of Christianity was by far the most significant. By looking at the myths, where possible, on their own terms and in their own time, as historically situated texts, we might hope to understand what they meant to the people that produced them, whether that was in 900 or 1225. Also, I think it’s interesting to think about Norse mythology growing and even improving as we move further away from the pagan period. Some of Snorri’s tales are rejected as being the fabrications of a Christian scholar, for example: but they’re also the best and fullest versions of the myths that we have. Rather than condemning Snorri for lack of fidelity to traditions that he couldn’t believe in, it seems worthwhile to emphasise the newness and originality of his work and to try to assess how the Edda acquired meaning for a thirteenth-century audience thereby.

Anyway, it was a fun book to write, and I hope people enjoy it. The first review is already out. There’s a small discount if you order it at Amazon.co.uk; it won’t be out in North America until April, unfortunately. If you’re around London, there will be a modest launch party next week, on 3 March, at which all are welcome.

* My publisher would like me to emphasise that the first chapter of my book is not boring. Apologies for any confusion.

This time we have a study of contrasts: in the pagan corner, there’s Annette Lassen’s new book about Odin på kristent pergament; from the other end of the Old Norse spectrum, we have a (to me) very exciting collection of essays about the Norwegian Homily Book, Vår eldste bok, edited by Odd Einar Haugen and Åslaug Ommundsen.

If there’s such a thing as an Odinologist, Annette Lassen is one of the best, and her new book (in Danish) looks like being the most useful publication on the one-eyed god that we’ve seen for some time. It is a quite remarkably detailed critical analysis of all the Old Norse literary contexts in which Odin appears. Annette also give us a thorough history of previous Odinological research. All in all, this looks like being essential for anybody who’s seriously interested in Norse mythology–even if your Danish is no better than mine, I think there’s a lot of material in there that will be accessible.

Vår eldste bok: Skrift, miljø og biletbruk i den norske homilieboka is the third volume in the Bibliotheca Nordica series published by Novus in Oslo. I know all to well that Old Norse homilies aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, but they are mine, and a book like this is well overdue. It looks at Norwegian Homily Book both as a discrete object and as a collection of texts, and examines it in all its codicological, liturgical, homiletic (etc.) contexts.  It’s a really nicely produced volume, with lots of very clear illustrations. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that it’ll spark a major Norse homiletical revival, but who knows?

I can’t find this book in any online stores, but you can get it from the publishers (although I can’t give you a direct link to it, for some irritating reason: just scroll down on the homepage).

Next to reach the top of the pile is a volume I’m quite excited about, as there still are relatively few good general textbooks on Old Norse that are readily available for English-speaking students (Heather’s book is an honourable exception, of course). The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, from the pen of the ever-productive Margaret Clunies Ross, will no doubt find its way onto syllabuses wherever Old Norse literature is taught.

This is what the blurb says about it:

The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time. Its multiple sub-genres – including family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas and sagas of knights – are described and discussed in detail, and the world of medieval Icelanders is powerfully evoked. The first general study of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga to be written in English for some decades, the Introduction is based on up-to-date scholarship and engages with current debates in the field. With suggestions for further reading, detailed information about the Icelandic literary canon, and a map of medieval Iceland, this book is aimed at students of medieval literature and assumes no prior knowledge of Scandinavian languages.

I’ve had my copy for a few weeks now, and it is excellent, just as you’d expect. I’m requesting our library orders multiple copies and will be putting it on reading lists for all levels of classes next year.

P.S. Sorry about the inelegant picture placement–either WordPress has changed its coding or else I’ve forgotten how to do it with lack of practice!

In the run up to Christmas I shall try to tell you about as many of these new books as possible–who knows, it might not be too late to buy one for a family member or co-worker! (If you click on the links here and then subsequently purchase the volume at Amazon, a tiny percentage is returned to me, which I put towards the costs of hosting ONN.)

Anyway, the first latest book is:

Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, by Stephen A. Mitchell

Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able-and who in some instances thought themselves able-to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell’s starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book’s endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sami and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of “the milk-stealing witch,” the diabolical pact, and the witches’ journey to Blakulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.

1. Download the catalogue from the Society’s website. [It's also available as a pdf file.]

2. Choose which books you’d like to bid on, and the amount you’d be prepared to pay.

3. Send a list of your bids to Alison Finlay at a.finlay@bbk.ac.uk by 31 July.

4. In August, the people who bid the highest amount for each book (you don’t get to see what others have bid, and you can’t revise your initial bids) will be contacted and invoiced for the books and price of postage. Please bear in mind that the cost of postage may be substantial if you win several books or live overseas.

5. Wait for your books! (It may take some time for them to be delivered, owing to the sheer volume of orders to be processed.)

All proceeds from the sale will go towards the Peter Foote Memorial Fund, which has been established to support postgraduate students in the field of Medieval Scandinavian Studies through the provision of bursaries and prizes.

There are lots of really special items in the list, all of them made much more special by their association with Peter. So please do take a look at the catalogue, and happy bidding!

The Viking Age: A Reader

Edited by Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald

April 2010 / 450pp / 6×9 paperback / ISBN 9781442601482 / $39.95

Drawing on a wide range of original sources, and tracing the astonishing development of the Viking Age from the first foreign raids to the rise and fall of Viking empires, this comprehensive reader is essential to an understanding of Viking history.

There’s a much more detailed account of the contents available at the UTP website. To me, this looks like filling a really important gap in the market, and I’m sure Professors Somerville and McDonald’s book will find its way onto plenty of university reading lists.

It’s out now in North America and will officially be launched in the UK in June, although it seems that it’s already possible to order a copy.

Penguin have just published The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of The Vikings by the UCL alumnus Robert Ferguson. Ferguson is something of a new name in Viking Studies — although he’s published widely on more modern Scandinavian topics — so it will be very interesting to see what new spin he brings to the subject (as it’s apparently forbidden to write a non-revisionist book about the Vikings these days).

Here’s how the blurb describes it:

For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. The attack on Lindisfarne was a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090. Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls ‘the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact in Viking Age history’. His long familiarity with the literary culture of Scandinavia – the eddas, the poetry of the skalds and the sagas – is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries and the evidence of picture-stones, runes, ships and objects scattered all over northern Europe, to make the most convincing modern portrait of the Viking Age in any language. The Hammer and the Cross ranges from Scandinavia itself to Kievan Rus and Byzantium in the east, to Iceland, Greenland and the north American settlements in the west. Beyond its geographical boundaries the book takes us on a journey to a misty region inhabited by Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, Harald Bluetooth, Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Ivar the Boneless and Eyvind the Plagiarist, in which literature, history and myth dissolve into one another.

It’s certainly a handsomely-produced volume, and would I’m sure make an ideal festive gift for anybody interested in the Vikings. There are one or two things that make me initially wary about it, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve read the whole thing.

It’s substantially discounted at Amazon.co.uk right now, and if you buy it after clicking on this link, a tiny portion of the proceeds will go towards the upkeep of Old Norse News.

Of course, one learns strategies for coping with the uninterested or poorly prepared student, but it’s led me to think a bit more about how we start beginners on the path towards learning Old Norse. And one aspect of the proccess that I return to is the adequacy or otherwise of the resources at our disposal. And by this I mean the books: I use the Viking Society’s New Introduction to Old Norse (ed. Barnes, Faulkes, et al.). Or more precisely, I use the Reader and Glossary in class, strongly suggest to students that they also purchase the Grammar, and then sit back and watch as most of them never look inside the ‘red book’. Second-hand copies of the NION Grammar that float around my department always tend to be pristine, since the students who do use it would never part with it.

Perhaps it’s my own fault: I find Barnes’s Grammar incredibly useful as a reference resource, but highly frustrating to use when teaching. There’s no index, and the programmatic aspects of the work never seem to be pitched at the right level. I know plenty of people use it for independent study, but I wouldn’t like to do so myself.  So I made a simplified digest of the grammar, a Barnes-Lite perhaps, which is pinned more closely to the structure of the course as I like to teach it. And nowadays I do lots of PowerPoint alongside it, which can be a useful tool.

But what I want is a single-volume all purpose Introduction to Old Norse that students can use as grammatical reference, text reader, and progressive course book all at once. I do not think that such a thing exists. (I’m thinking along the lines of Peter Baker’s Introduction to Old English, which I think is very good and would always be my first choice for an Old English text book.) There are rumours floating around that Jesse Byock has something in the works, and I know that our colleagues at Durham are also working on such a project. But is there anything out there already that I’ve missed? Should I already be using a different text book? What do other people do?

To answer this last question, I’ve prepared a little survey, and I’d be delighted if you took the time to complete it. And then, please use the comments to, well, comment on how you see the state of the pedagogical resources in the field. In particular, I’d be glad if people could let me know of any books that I’ve missed out from the survey. And please leave your comments below!

Quick Survey: Old Norse Text Books