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).

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.

François-Xavier Dillmann has written to inform us that the latest issue of the excellent French-language journal of Medieval Scandinavian Studies, Proxima Thulé, has now been published. Here is the list of contents, followed by details of how to order a copy:

Éditée depuis 1994 par le professeur François-Xavier Dillmann, corres­pondant de l’Institut, directeur d’études à l’École pratique des Hautes Études, la revue Proxima Thulé est le seul périodique de langue française entièrement consacré à la Scandinavie ancienne et médiévale.

Le volume VI de Proxima Thulé (automne 2009, 192 pages, une trentaine d’illustrations) vient d’être publié en ce début du mois de mars 2010. Il comprend les études suivantes :

Anders Hultgård, Fimbulvetr ou le Grand Hiver. Étude comparative d’un aspect du mythe eschatologique des anciens Scandinaves.

François-Xavier Dillmann, « Brûler ses vaisseaux ». Remarques compa­ratives sur un épisode de l’Histoire des rois de Norvège de Snorri Sturlu­son.

Jan Ragnar Hagland, Les inscriptions runiques d’Irlande.

Lennart Elmevik, « Il était hospitalier et éloquent ». Sur les épithètes laudatives dans les inscriptions runiques de Suède à l’époque viking.

Elena Balzamo, Olaus Magnus savait-il dessiner ? Quelques réflexions et hypothèses au sujet des vignettes de l’Historia de gentibus septen­trionalibus.

Marie-Christine Skuncke, Gustave III de Suède et l’Opéra.

Les commandes du volume VI (et des volumes antérieurs) de Proxima Thulé (au prix de 30 euros l’exemplaire) sont à adresser — directement ou par l’intermédiaire d’un libraire — à De Boccard Édition-Diffusion

11, rue Médicis. 75006 Paris

Téléphone : 01 43 26 00 37  Télécopie : 01 43 54 85 83

Adresse de messagerie électronique : deboccard@wanadoo.fr

Site Internet : www.deboccard.com

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.

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!

Without wishing to be greedy, I just hope that they’ll also decide to digitize the first fifty-two volumes in the series as well!

Details from the jacket blurb:

Many years ago, J.R.R. Tolkien composed his own version, now published for the first time, of the great legend of Northern antiquity, in two closely related poems to which he gave the titles The New Lay of the Völsungs and The New Lay of Gudrún.

In the Lay of the Völsungs is told the ancestry of the great hero Sigurd, the slayer of Fáfnir most celebrated of dragons, whose treasure he took for his own; of his awakening of the Valkyrie Brynhild who slept surrounded by a wall of fire, and of their betrothal; and of his coming to the court of the great princes who were named the Niflungs (or Nibelungs), with whom he entered into blood-brotherhood. In that court there sprang great love but also great hate, brought about by the power of the enchantress, mother of the Niflungs, skilled in the arts of magic, of shape-changing and potions of forgetfulness.

In scenes of dramatic intensity, of confusion of identity, thwarted passion, jealousy and bitter strife, the tragedy of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Gunnar the Niflung and Gudrún his sister, mounts to its end in the murder of Sigurd at the hands of his blood-brothers, the suicide of Brynhild, and the despair of Gudrún. In the Lay of Gudrún her fate after the death of Sigurd is told, her marriage against her will to the mighty Atli, ruler of the Huns (the Attila of history), his murder of her brothers the Niflung lords, and her hideous revenge.

Deriving his version primarily from his close study of the ancient poetry of Norway and Iceland known as the Poetic Edda (and where no old poetry exists, from the later prose work the Völsunga Saga), J.R.R. Tolkien employed a verse-form of short stanzas whose lines embody in English the exacting alliterative rhythms and the concentrated energy of the poems of the Edda.

It will be fascinating to see the Great Man’s take on the legend (though I have to confess to finding his poetry only bearable in small doses!)