Seven Viking Romances

Combining traditional myth, oral history and re-worked European legend to depict an ancient realm of heroism and wonder, the seven tales collected here are among the most fantastical of all the Norse romances. Powerfully inspired works of Icelandic imagination, they relate intriguing, often comical tales of famous kings, difficult gods and women of great beauty, goodness or cunning. The tales plunder a wide range of earlier literature from Homer to the French romances—as in the tale of the wandering hero Arrow-Odd, which combines several older legends, or Egil and Asmund, where the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops is skilfully adapted into a traditional Norse legend. These are among the most outrageous, delightful and exhilarating tales in all Icelandic literature.

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5.10 "W x 7.76 "H x 0.68 "D | 304 pages Paperback

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S):

Author: Various

Author: Hermann Palsson

Author: Peter Economy

The improbable life story of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) included a peculiarly gothic childhood in Ireland during which he was successively abandoned by his mother, his father and his guardian; two decades in the United States, where he worked as a journalist and was sacked for marrying a former slave; and a long period in Japan, where he married a Japanese woman and wrote about Japanese society and aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories, which were drawn from Japanese folklore and influenced by Buddhist beliefs, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.

Hermann Pálsson

Hermann Palsson studied Icelandic at the University of Iceland and Celtic at University College, Dublin. He was a professor of Icelandic at the University of Edinburgh and a general editor at the New Saga Library. Palsson wrote many books on the history and literature of medieval Iceland. He died in 2003.

Paul Edwards

Peter Economy is the associate editor of Leader to Leader magazine and an online expert for Allbusiness.com. He lives in La Jolla, California.