Selected Readings from A New Introduction to Old Norse
From the Chaucer Studio, produced by A. Finlay.
Select readings from A New Introduction to Old Norse. Volume II. Reader, read aloud in Modern Icelandic.
2003 / CD / $10

Texts, Editions, and Studies

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Guta Lag: The Law of the Gotlanders
Translated and edited by Christine Peel



2009 / xlv + 235 pages, paperback / ISBN 978-0-903521-79-6 / $24

Grottasongr: The Song of Grotti
Edited with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary by Clive Tolley

Grottasongr (‘The Song of Grotti’) is a poem in 24 stanzas, considered part of the Poetic Edda corpus although it occurs not in the Codex Regius manuscript but in various manuscripts of Snorra Edda. It takes the form of a work-song chanted by two giant maidens forced by the legendary Danish king Fróði to grind out, on the mill called Grotti, first riches and happiness, and then an army. The present edition was originally to be included in the fourth volume of The Poetic Edda, edited by Ursula Dronke, with the assistance of the present editor, for Oxford University Press. The poem is presented with a facing translation, textual notes, full commentary and introduction.

2008 / 64 pages, paperback / ISBN 978-0-903521-78-9 / $16

Lord and Lady — Bryti and Deigja
Some Historical and Etymological Aspects of Family, Patronage, and Slavery in Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England

By Stefan Brink

The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London 17 March 2005

2008 / 30 pages, paperback / ISBN 978-0-903521-77-2 / $10

Old Norse Made New
Edited by David Clark and Carl Phelpstead

These eight essays investigate the reinvention of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture by writers in English from the eighteenth century to the present day, from Thomas Gray to Tolkien and beyond. Earlier versions of most of the essays in this collection were delivered at the Viking Society Student Conference on the theme of "Old Norse Made New" held at the University of Oxford on 25 February 2006 (Clark, Fimi, Finlay, O'Donoghue, Phelpstead, and Townend). Following the conference it was felt that the papers could be published alongside others on medievalist topics from previous Viking Society Student Conferences (Ashurst and Larrington). We hope that the resulting volume will appeal to students and others with an interest in the ways in which Old Norse literature and the medieval culture of Iceland and Scandinavia have influenced writers, especially writers in English, after the Middle Ages. In recent years the study of medievalism, the post-medieval reception and influence of medieval literature and culture, has become an increasingly productive field of research as scholars have realized that interrogating past constructions of the medieval is a valuable way of reflecting on their own relationship to the material they study. The essays collected here cover a wide chronological span (from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first) and a range of literary genres (poetry, novel, libretto, children's literature, fantasy fiction); we very much hope that the variety of subject matter examined in this collection will inspire others to pursue further research in this rich field.

Table of Contents

Preface

Andrew Wawn, Foreword

Alison Finlay, "Thomas Gray's Translations of Old Norse Poetry"

Carolyne Larrington, "Translating the Poetic Edda into English"

David Ashurst, "William Morris and the Volsungs"

Matthew Townend, "In Search of the Lakeland Saga: Antiquarian Fiction and the Norse Settlement in Cumbria"

Dimitra Fimi, "Tolkien and Old Norse Antiquity: Real and Romantic Links in Material Culture"

Heather O'Donoghue, "From Runic Inscriptions to Runic Gymnastics"

Carl Phelpstead, A Viking Pacifist? The Life of St Magnus in Saga, Novel, and Opera

David Clark, Old Norse Made New: Past and Present in Modern Children's Literature.

2007 / xlvii + 97 pages, paperback / ISBN 978-0-903521-76-5 / $20

Íslendingabók — Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders — The Story of the Conversion
Translated by Siân Grønlie

Along with being the first work to be written in the vernacular, Ari's Íslendingabók is the earliest surviving written history of the Icelanders and is the basis for Icelandic literature as a whole. The oldest and most famous account of the moment of conversion in Iceland, it briefly describes the process of Christianization that followed and contains one of the earliest uses of the term "Icelanders". In contrast to Íslendingabók, Kristni saga is the only work in which the missions to Iceland form the main subject of the narrative and is one of the few works in the Middle Ages (along with Bede's Ecclesiastical History) that can justly be described as "missionary" history. While remaining as faithful as possible to the original Icelandic texts, Íslendingabók — Kristni saga gives an insight into different modes of historical writing in Iceland and through it we can trace the development over time of different ways of thinking about Iceland's conversion to Christianity.

2006 / xlvii + 97 pages, paperback / ISBN 978-0-903521-71-0 / $20

Clemens Saga: The Life of St. Clement of Rome
Edited and Translated by Helen Carron

Clemens saga presents the Icelandic text with facing English translation and introduction of a Life of St. Clement of Rome (died c. 100), supposed to have been the third successor of St. Peter as Pope. The first part is derived from the Clementine Recognitions, purportedly Clement’s autobiography, which is a romance telling of the separation and eventual reconciliation after many adventures of members of Clement’s family. The second part tells how they were all converted to Christianity by St. Peter, and Clement himself finally became Pope and was martyred by the heathen Romans by having an anchor tied round his neck and being thrown into the sea, and various miracles performed as a result of his saintliness.

2005 / xxvii + 56 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-67-9 / $16

The Icelandic Language, by Stefán Karlsson
Translated by Rory McTurk

‘Tungan’, the work translated here, first appeared as a chapter in Íslensk þjóðmenning, vol. VI (Reykjavík: Þjóðsaga, 1989), 1–54, and has since been republished, with minor alterations and additions in Stafkrókar (2000), 19–75. In its original form this work was, of course, intended for Icelandic readers, in whom knowledge of the pronunciation of Modern Icelandic could easily be assumed. In this version additional information about Icelandic pronunciation has been provided, and English translations of words and phrases in languages other than English that are referred to in the text have been added; Icelandic words have been parsed where it seemed helpful to do so.

The book surveys the main developments in the history of the Icelandic language and the major changes in orthography from one period to another, covering the sound system of the earliest Icelandic, developments in the vocalic system and numerous combinative changes, major changes in inflexion and vocabulary and lexical changes.

2004 / 84 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-61-X / $10

Three Icelandic Outlaw Sagas. The Saga of Gisli, The Saga of Grettir, The Saga of Hord
Translated by G. Johnston and A. Faulkes. Edited and Introduced by A. Faulkes.

The translation of The Saga of Gisli in this volume was made by George Johnston and first published in Everyman’s University Library in 1963 with Notes and an Introductory Essay by Peter Foote. It is here reproduced with only minor changes. The Saga of Grettir was published in G. A. Hight’s translation in Everyman’s Library in 1914 and reissued with an Introduction and Notes by Peter Foote in 1965. This new translation, and that of The Saga of Hord, appeared in Everyman Paperbacks in 2001, and all three translations are now reissued by the Viking Society for Northern Research.

The three sagas translated from Old Icelandic in this volume are all about Icelanders in the Middle Ages who lived and died as outlaws in the Icelandic countryside. Like all other sagas of Icelanders, these three are anonymous, but they were certainly written by Icelanders, probably in the west or north-west of Iceland. It is likely that The Saga of Gisli was written in the first half of the thirteenth century, perhaps about 1230, and thus is part of the first flowering of ‘classical’ Icelandic sagas. The Saga of Grettir is quite a lot later, from the fourteenth century, probably from about 1320 and later than most other sagas of Icelanders. Indeed the most recent editor of the saga (Örnólfur Thorsson, 1994) suggests that it may be from as late as the end of the fourteenth century. The Saga of Hord (called Holmveria saga, ‘the Saga of the Holm-dwellers’, in the principal manuscript) is also a late saga, probably from the second half of the fourteenth century. These last two sagas were therefore written quite a long time after the Icelandic Commonwealth was ceded to the Norwegian Crown in 1262–3, possibly even as late as the time of the union of the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish crowns (1397); and also after translated Romances and Heroic Sagas (fornaldar sögur, Sagas of Ancient Time or Legendary Sagas) may be regarded as having to a large extent superseded Sagas of Icelanders as the primary expression of Icelandic identity and values.

The attitudes to outlawry in Iceland in these texts are interesting to compare with those in English outlaw traditions; the earliest surviving legends of Robin Hood are from the fifteenth century.

2004 / xxviii + 388 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-66-0 / $24

Recent Titles

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Egils Saga
Edited by Bjarni Einarsson

The present edition of Egils saga provides an annotated text of the saga for English-reading students who wish to read the saga in its original language. The volume offers a revised text of the saga based on a fresh reading of the chief manuscript, Möðruvallabok (AM 132 fol., Reykjavík), a fourteenth-century collection of Sagas of Icelanders. This text reflects the characteristic word-forms of the manuscripts and has explanatory notes in English and a vocabulary list that has been comprehensively glossed.

2003 / 312 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-54-7 / $30

Wagner and the Volsungs: Icelandic Sources of Der Ring des Nibelungen
by Árni Björnsson

This book is a translation of a revised edition, edited by Anthony Faulkes, of Árni Björnsson's Wagner og Volsungar, published in Icelandic in 2000. In it the sources Wagner used in compiling the libretti of his great work, Der Ring des Nibelungen, are detailed scene by scene through all four operas of the cycle. Many will be surprised to learn than no more than five percent of his material is derived solely from medieval German books such as Das Nibelungenlied, while at least eighty percent is from Old Icelandic writings: the Prose Edda, Eddic poems, and various sagas. The concept of Götterdämmerung, for example, in which the world is consumed by fire, as well as the flickering flame surrounding Brünnhilde's mountain fastness, were known to Wagner from Icelandic sources alone, since they do not appear in any German text, and may well have been inspired originally by the volcanic eruptions that occur so frequently in Iceland. About fifteen percent of Wagner's literary motifs in the Ring are common to both German and Icelandic texts.

The book also contains a brief account of Wagner's life, and tells how he came to know Icelandic literature through the spread of knowledge of Old Icelandic texts in the German-speaking world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines the reasons why Germanic mythology was almost exclusively preserved in Iceland in the Middle Ages, but became so popular in Germany in the nineteenth century and later. The long process of composition of words and music for the Ring cycle is related to details of Wagner's life, and mention is made of the reception of Wagner's works in modern Iceland, when his debt to Icelandic literature was finally repaid.

2003 / 296 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-55-5 / $24

The Folk-Stories of Iceland
by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson

In Iceland, people do not compose verse just to comfort themselves; they worship poetry and believe in it. In poetry is a power which rules men's lives and health, governs wind and sea. Icelanders have faith in hymns and sacred poems too, because of their content. They also have faith in secular poetry composed by themselves, believing it to be no less able to move mountains than religious faith is. By this belief in their own culture, they transfer it into the realm of mythology, and the glow of the super-human is shed over it.

Whatever may have been their origin, the folk-stories of Iceland come to mirror the people's life and character, and in the period when the idea gained ground that all power comes from the people, their poetry and lore became sacred things that were revered and looked to as a potential source of strength. Icelandic folk-stories were similarly an important element in the Icelanders' struggle for national and cultural integrity in the nineteenth century. They were more truly Icelandic than anything else worthy of the name.

2003 / 320 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-53-9 / $24

Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Verse on the Virgin Mary, Drápa af Maríugrát, Vitnisvísur af Maríu, Maríuvísur I-III
Edited by Kellinde Wrightson

The five skaldic poems in this volume are among the finest examples of medieval literature composed in the vernacular in honour of the Virgin Mary. They are part of an extensive corpus of Old Icelandic Marian texts which is significant not merely for its size, but, more importantly, for its contribution to our understanding of the cult of the Virgin in Western Europe. Dated to the late fourteenth century, the lamentation poem Drápa of Maríugrát and the miracle poems Vitnisvísur of Maríu and Maríuvísur I-III are among the earliest extant evidence of Old Icelandic Marian poetry.

2001 / xxvi + 146 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-46-6 / $16

Text by Snorri Sturluson in Óláfs Saga Tryggvasonar en mesta
By Ólafur Halldórsson

Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta has been compiled from numerous sources, in all likelihood during the second quarter of the fourteenth century. The person who constructed the saga, the compiler, gathered by far the greatest part of the text from written works, sometimes copying them word for word, apart from common copyist's errors, sometimes changing the wording, sometimes adding to it, sometimes shortening or merely summarising it, but there is precious little which appears to have been original writing. His model would have been the separate Óláfs saga helga by Snorri Sturluson and it is not unlikely that his objective in writing the saga was to honour Óláfr Tryggvason with a saga as long as the one composed by Snorri about Óláfr helgi.

2001 / lxii + 162 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-49-0 / $20

Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image
By Richard Perkins

This study takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the wind god Thor and looks at his various images, such as amulets, figurines, and especially the Eyrarland image.

2001 / xii + 177 pages, paperback / ISBN 0-903521-52-0 / $24

Snorri Sturluson Edda Set (Four Volumes)

Special price for the four-volume set is $64.