Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. A Handbook to Eddic Poetry
  • Cited by 9
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2016
Print publication year:
2016
Online ISBN:
9781316471685
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316471685
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, European Literature, European Studies
Information

Book description

This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society. Dramatically recreating the voices of the legendary past, eddic poems distil moments of high emotion as human heroes and supernatural beings alike grapple with betrayal, loyalty, mortality and love. These poems relate the most famous deeds of gods such as Óðinn and Þórr with their adversaries the giants; they bring to life the often fraught interactions between kings, queens and heroes as well as their encounters with valkyries, elves, dragons and dwarfs. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters in this volume showcase the poetic riches of the eddic corpus, and reveal its relevance to the history of poetics, gender studies, pre-Christian religions, art history and archaeology.

Reviews

'Once again, Larrington has stepped up to the plate, with her co-editors Judy Quinn and Brittany Schorn, to provide this very welcome compendium of scholarly commentary, not on the whole of the mythology, but on the medieval Icelandic poetry in which it is recorded - poetry of the kind that was used by Snorri as the basis for his first in the line of many prose retellings … The volume as a whole will encourage many readers in a renewed engagement with these wonderful poems, preferably in the original language, and make them realize how much deeper and richer these 'sources' are than even the best modern retelling.'

Judith Jesch Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'… a skillfully edited book that will serve the intended purpose to present a wide range of contemporary eddic studies to researchers and students. It is interesting to read such diverse approaches to a single area of Old Norse studies, and it is fascinating to see proponents of oral theory juxtaposed with advocates of New Philology in a single book.'

Lukas Rösli Source: Scandinavian Studies

'Calling into question previously established categorizations, including the binary classification system of Old Norse poems into either skaldic or Eddic, the book provides the opportunity to discuss poems that have rarely been thought of as Eddic alongside those that are standard exemplars.'

J. Sundquist Source: Choice

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.