100 books like The Poetic Edda

The way these stories are phrased here makes this my favourite set of retellings. Crossley-Holland’s choice of words evokes the original Norse. He uses alliteration, mainly when describing land and sea, and he is very careful to use words that come from Old English, a sister language to Old Norse, in preference to words from Latin, Greek, and post-Latin languages. There are plenty of other retellings that cover similar ground, but none with quite this joy in the energy of the original.

Translated and edited by Anthony Faulkes. It too comes from the thirteenth century. The author was an Icelandic law-speaker, a chief, and a deeply involved scholar interested in the retention of the old forms of pre-Christian poetry. Why should you look at this if you have done the Elder Edda? A good question, especially since in many ways Snorri’s version is longer. And that is the reason. If you noticed that the Tree churches (stave churches) have snakes on the roof, that is something Snorri notes about the Tree Yggdrasil, that the snakes in the branches will forever gnaw away at them. It is Snorri who related that the underworld agreed to release the good Balder from Hel if every creature wept. All did but one, Loki, the god of deceit and trickery. And so Balder remains dead till Ragnarok. This makes all the more poignant the phrase found in… show more.

The ninth-century author is unknown. I am the translator and commentator. If you know the Gospel story but have never heard it expressed in another world’s words and values, you are in for a treat. When I was translating it, I found every day brought a chuckle or a smile as the world of Palestine and Near East became the shores of the North Sea. Christ becomes a “chieftain” with his twelve “thanes/men” around him, “faith” becomes “loyalty,” Judas is described as a “loyalty liar,” and Jesus changes water into wine at Cana so that all the guests can continue having a merry time on the benches. Though we are a thousand years away, we still speak Saxon in a way. It still hits home.

The author is one of the most renowned scholars of the ancient Northern world. This book is here because I find it a gold mine of artifacts and all are accompanied by the most extensive illustrations possible on every page. There are burial ships for journeying to Valhalla, pictures of ax men on the rampage in England, a solar disc on wheels being pulled by a bronze horse, elaborately carved prows of Viking ships, Christ crucified carved as being held prisoner entangled in the tree Yggdrasil. If you can’t make the journey, but are intrigued by the artifacts of the pagan-Christian world, this is the book to settle down with by the fireplace on a cold winter’s eve.

Snorri did not write his Edda in a vacuum, and the mythological and heroic poems collected in the thirteenth century Codex Regius (and a handful of other manuscripts) provide a snapshot of the sort of raw material from which his book was constructed. The apparent antiquity of these poems (quite how old remains a matter of debate) led to them being labelled the ‘Elder’ Edda and, although in their preserved form they are products of the Middle Ages, they powerfully evoke the strange and esoteric world of northern antiquity. In content the mythological poems encompass, amongst much else, Völuspá (the prophetic vision of a sorceress revealing the breaking and rebirth of the world at Ragnarök and the events that will precipitate it), Hávamál (the gnomic wisdom of Odin, including an account of his self-mortifying pursuit of occult knowledge) and Lokasenna (in which the god Loki provides a definitive example of… show more.

While Snorri wrote in his native Old Norse in Iceland, unbeknownst to him, a Danish writer remembered as Saxo the Grammarian ('Grammaticus') was writing a monumental history of the Danish kingdom in Latin. Since the old gods were held to be the ancestors of the royal families of medieval Scandinavia, Saxo spends quite a bit of time in the first nine books of 'The History of the Danes' retelling their stories. Many fans of Norse mythology who read the Eddas still never approach Saxo's work, which in fact has been mined in recent centuries for many rich details that are preserved nowhere else. Like Snorri, Saxo tries to "rationalize" the old gods into becoming misguided or deceitful human beings from the distant past, and he does a more thorough job of it, but even through this veneer, it is hard not to recognize the same characters that we know from… show more.

When it comes to learning about Norse mythology, you can’t beat the original source material. If you are a bit of a history nerd like me, it’s fascinating to read a translation of the original Old Norse poems. These poems can be found in a text called the Poetic Edda, which has several different translations. I like the Henry Adams Bellows translation, as well as Dr. Jackson Crawford’s. Crawford has YouTube videos that taught me a lot while I was writing my book, so that’s worth checking out, if you’re interested.

The most compelling original source material for the Norse myths is a collection of anonymous poems known as the Poetic Edda. Based on a 13th-century Icelandic transcription of ancient oral legends, the Poetic Edda includes the creation myths of the Ash Tree and the Frost Giants, the adventures of Thor and Loki, and many other lesser-known Norse tales. Jackson Crawford’s translation manages the difficult task of making the stories understandable while capturing the rhythm and beauty of the original poems.

This book I love purely for the photographs of archeological treasures and historical paintings. It’s in the format often referred to as a “coffee table book.” However, even though you may be tempted to page through it only to look at its impressive graphics and illustrations, the content is very much researched and informative. I especially like the sections on magical creatures and how Norse mythology has influenced our modern world and more current fiction.

Poetry remains very important for Icelanders, also as an everyday practise. There are farmers in the country today who compose poetry based on the landscape of their home and the sagas that played here hundreds of years ago, and about 40% of all published books in Iceland each year are poetry collections. Gerður is a highly successful poet and playwright, and her long poem Bloodhoof is an outstanding example of how contemporary Icelandic writing is still firmly rooted in the literary heritage of the country. The poem retells the classic Norse tale of the abduction of beautiful giantess Gerdur by the god Freyr, but from the perspective of the giantess in a distinctly feminist voice.