Reviews for Scaldic poetry

The average rating for Scaldic poetry based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-09 00:00:00 Gregory Rowell A very nice edition of Snorri's Edda (or at least of its first part). The introduction is great and it's nice to have kennings explained!

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-29 00:00:00 Richard Krumreich When I finished the two volumes of Jesse Byock's "Viking Language" textbooks, I wanted to find a good book in Old Norse to continue my progress in the language. Anthony Faulkes's edition of the first part of Snorri Sturluson's Edda was a perfect fit. First of all, the second volume of "Viking Language" includes numerous excerpts from the Gylfaginning, so parts of the text and narrative were familiar already. And Faulkes includes excellent notes and a full glossary, making it very friendly to a novice Old Norseman like me. After a few pages I was able to read a paragraph or more at a time fairly fluently, with a few word checks in the glossary. From the extracts in "Viking Language," my concept of Snorri's Edda was that he retold all the Norse myths to help explain the references in Norse poetry. That's somewhat true, but I hadn't realized how he used such an ironic frame to the overall narrative. In the Prologue, he tells us that the Aesir, the main Norse gods, were actually Trojan refugees who became so powerful in Scandinavia that they became regarded as Gods. Those Trojans certainly were a prolific bunch. By my count, they sired the Romans (according to Vergil), the British (according to Geoffrey of Monmouth), and now the Norse as well. Thus Snorri, a Christian, both preserves the old tradition and derides it at the same time. It's all very interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this first volume of the Edda. On to the Skaldskaparmal!