The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer Author: Jesse L. Byock | Language: English | ISBN:
B002RI9DU6 | Format: EPUB
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer Description
Based on Viking Age poems, The Saga of the Volsungs combines mythology, legend and sheer human drama. At its heart are the heroic deeds of Sigurd the dragon slayer who acquires magical knowledge from one of Odin's Valkyries. Yet it is also set in a very human world, incorporating strands from the oral narratives of the fourth and fifth centuries, when Attila the Hun and other warriors fought on the northern frontiers of the Roman Empire. One of the great books of world literature, the saga is an unforgettable tale of princely jealousy, unrequited love, greed and vengeance. With its cursed treasure of the Rhine, sword reforged and magic ring of power, it was a major influence for writers including William Morris and J. R. R. Tolkein and for Wagner's Ring cycle.
- File Size: 358 KB
- Print Length: 164 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0140447385
- Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (May 27, 2004)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B002RI9DU6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,976 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Norse & Icelandic Sagas - #15
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Norse & Icelandic Sagas
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Norse & Icelandic Sagas - #15
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Norse & Icelandic Sagas
Jesse L. Byock's translation of the Old Icelandic "Volsunga Saga" -- a prose version of older stories, some surviving in Old Norse poems, including events going back at least to the fall of the Roman Empire -- is the most readily available English-language version, and in my opinion is one of the best -- arguably, the best, period.
"Volsunga Saga," the story of the ancestors and deeds of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, his murder, and the following vengeance, has been translated into English a number of times; a reflection in part of its own qualities as a story, in part of the celebrity of Wagner's "Ring" cycle, portions of which are, rather loosely, based upon it, as well as other Norse and German versions, and Wagner's own notions of what Germanic myths should have been. (The relations between versions of the tales, which seem to have been popular over a wide area for many centuries, are complex. I have discussed some examples in a review of another translation, as "Volsung Saga.")
The Saga differs from the "Nibelungenlied" in more than details, and in being in Old Icelandic prose rather than Middle High German verse; the Icelandic narrative is rich in a sense of personal honor offended, and legal precepts followed or ignored, in places where the German account is very much concerned with the outer signs of rank and feudal hierarchy. Both are equally reflective of reality; but different realities.
William Morris worked up a fine-sounding English version with the assistance of the Icelandic scholar Eirikr Magnusson, first published in 1870; it had a long-lasting paperback edition from Collier Books, beginning in 1962 (also published in a British edition as a Collier-Mac). That version had a good introduction by Robert W.
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