The drottkvett was a form of Old Norse skaldic poetry composed to glorify a chieftain's deeds or to lament his death. Kari Ellen Gade explores the structural peculiarities of ninth- and tenth-century drottkvett poetry and suggests a solution to the mystery of the origins of the drottkvett and its eventual demise in the fourteenth century.
Wanner brings us a new account of the interests that motivated the production of the Edda, and resolves the mystery of its genesis by demonstrating the intersection of Snorri's political and cultural concerns and practices.
The Old Norse and Icelandic poets have left us vivid accounts of conflict and peace-making in the Viking Age. Russell G. Poole's editorial and critical analysis reveals much about the texts themselves, the events that they describe, and the culture from which they come. Poole attempts to put right many misunderstandings about the integrity of the texts and their narrative techniques. From a historical perspective, he weighs the poems' authenticity as contemporary documents which provide evidence bearing upon the reconstruction of Viking Age battles, peace negotiations, and other events. He traces the social roles played by violence in medieval Scandinavian society, and explores the many functions of the poet within that society. Arguing that these texts exhibit a mind-style so vastly different from our own present 'individualism, ' Poole suggests that the mind-set of the medieval Scandinavian could be termed 'non-individualist.' The poems discussed are the 'Darradarljód, ' where the speakers are Valkyries; 'Lidsmannaflokkr, ' a rank-and-file warrior's description of Canute the Great's siege of London in 1016; 'Torf-Einarr's Revenge'; 'Egil's Duel with Ljótr, ' five verses from the classic Egils saga Skallagrimssonar; 'A Battle on the Health, ' marking the culmination of a famous feud described in a very early Icelandic saga, the Heidarviga saga; and two extracts from the poem Sexstefia, one describing Haraldr of Norway's great fleet and victory over Sveinn of Denmark, and the other the peace settlement between these two kinds. The texts are presented in association with translations and commentaries as a resource not merely for medieval Scandinavian studies but also for the increasingly interwoven specialisms of literary theory and anthropology.
A multidisciplinary index covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities. It fully covers 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, and it indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals.
THE GROUP of poems offered in this volume comprises practically all the more considerable (non-Skaldic) verse material not in the Edda. Indeed, it has been subtitled "the most important non-skaldic verse not included in the poetic edda." It is a supplement to the Edda and it shows, even better than that remarkable collection, the wealth of independent poetic inventions and forms that flourished in the Scandinavian North before and immediately after the introduction of Christianity, especially when we bear in mind that much has been irretrievably lost. As to the contents of these poems, with respect to the first group of nine, range from the genuinely "heroic," realistic, dialogic-dramatic, earlier lays (such as the Biarkamol) to the more "romantic," legendary, monologic-elegiac, retrospective, later lays (like Hialmar's Death Song); though the lines of demarcation are by no means sharp and, in fact, nearly every poem represents an individual combination of these traits. A very different type of lay is seen in the three contemporary encomiastic poems which celebrate the life and deeds of the (historic) rulers of Norway-the only non-Skaldic efforts of this genre so exceedingly numerous in Old Norse literature. There is no common denominator for the four poems at the end of the volume, except possibly their arch-heathen character. As a finale the Song of the Sun marks the transition from heathen to Christian spheres of thought. Common to all of this material is its unliterary, that is, unbookish, character which is in marked contrast to virtually all of Anglo-Saxon epic literature, influenced as it is, to a greater or lesser degree, by Christian or classical models. That is to say, we deal here with the genuinely native expression of the North. 33% of the net profit will be donated to charities for educational purposes. Yesterday's Books for Tomorrow's Educations"
