Anonymous (19)

This was great! Sometimes the old Icelandic sagas can be a bit dry with all the pedigrees and various relationships.

I don't know how much the translator helped, but there were some seriously badass action scenes in this saga - heroes sliding on ice, catching spears and throwing them back, limbs flying everywhere. I wonder if it also counts as one of the earliest courtroom dramas, because legal intrigue is what we get in between the episodes of violence.

Characters' personalities and motives are typically understated as usual in such sagas. However you get intriguing glimpses of their natures, such as with Skarp-Hedin's enigmatic smiles.

Definitely one of my favourites of the genre, with action, intrigue, and drama in spades.… (lisätietoja)

The heroic section is like an expanded universe for my favourite saga of all time - the Volsung Saga. I'd been wondering what happened to Helgi and this book of traditional poems tells me that, plus a bunch of other tantalising details not contained in the saga. Despite being translated from old Norse poetry it is surprisingly readable.

From the mythological section I've developed a theory: I'm utterly convinced that Odin and Loki were lovers! Sounds bizarre but I swear the text supports it - they were actually blood brothers (not father and adopted son), when accusations of homosexuality are flying around neither of them denies it, Loki enjoys cross-dressing and switching genders, and they both practise traditionally-feminine types of magic. Case closed.

On a more serious note, it's somewhat surprising to see how accepting of disabilities the Vikings apparently were. There's a whole passage about how everyone is useful regardless of disability and most of the gods are maimed in some way or another. Tyr is one-handed, Odin lost an eye, Hod is blind, and at one point it's suggested that Heimdall traded his hearing for better vision (although at another point it's stated he has super-human hearing, so who knows).

Absolutely recommended for any lover of Viking mythology, as it's one of the extremely few original sources.… (lisätietoja)

[This rating and review refers to the Bellows translation, volume 1.]
I was so pleasantly surprised by this book - I think I had overlooked it heretofore because I obtained it late and it's a Dover edition, split into two volumes. But of all the translations of the Edda that I have (and I've comparatively read all six over the last couple of weeks) this is my new favorite. It reads easiest of all, scans wonderfully in mostly modern English and is wonderfully annotated. If you really want to understand the Poetic Edda, start here.… (lisätietoja)