Song of the Vikings : Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths

by Brown, Nancy Marie

• ISBN13: 9780230338845
• ISBN10: 0230338844
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-10-30
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Trade

Summary

Much like Greek and Roman mythology, Norse myths are read, reread, and treasured. Famous storytellers such as JRR Tolkien and Neil Gaiman have drawn their inspiration from the long-haired, mead-drinking, marauding and pillaging Vikings. The author who gave us Nordic mythology is a twelfth-century Icelandic chieftain by the name of Snorri Sturluson. Like Homer, Snorri was a bard, writing down and embellishing the folklore and pagan legends of medieval Scandinavia. While his stories make great reading for children, the amazing world of medieval Scandinavia has been omitted from narrative history. In Song of the Vikings, award-winning author Nancy Marie Brown brings to life the intrigue and power struggles at the court of medieval Reykjav'k that Snorri inhabited. Drawing on new and original research, her deep knowledge of Icelandic history, and first-hand reading of the original medieval sources, Brown produces a richly textured narrative of a world that continues to fascinate.

Author Biography

Nancy Marie Brown is the author of highly-praised books of nonfiction, including The Abacus and the Cross and The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman. She has studied Icelandic literature and culture since 1978. Formerly the editor of the award-winning magazine Research/Penn State, Brown lives in Vermont, where she keeps four Icelandic horses and an Icelandic sheepdog. She blogs at nancymariebrown.blogspot.com. 

Table of Contents

"For readers who've long sensed that older winds blow through the works of their beloved Tolkien, Song of the Vikings is a fitting refresher on Norse mythology. Without stripping these dark tales of their magic, Nancy Marie Brown shows how mere humans shape myths that resonate for centuries--and how one brilliant scoundrel became, for all time, the 'Homer of the North.' "--Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne

 

"In medieval Iceland, one of the most remote corners of the known Earth, a very un-Viking Norseman named Snorri Storluson crafted the heroic mythology on which rests everything from Wagner's Ring cycle and the Brothers Grimm to Tolkein (who considered Snorri's work more central to English literature than Shakespeare's) and even the evils of Nazism. In "Song of the Vikings," Nancy Marie Brown brings to vivid life this age of poetic Viking skalds, of blood feuds and vengeance raids, of royal intrigue and fierce independence, when the barren, beautiful landscape of the North was haunted by trolls, giants and dragons - all of which Snorri, the most important writer the world ever forgot, captured for eternity."--Scott Weidensaul, author of The First Frontier