The Comparative Völuspá

“There feeds he full on the flesh of the dead,
And the homes of the gods he reddens with gore;
Dark grows the sun, and in summer soon
Come mighty storms: would you know yet more?”

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Linguistically dated to the end of the pagan period of Viking Age Scandinavia, no poem in the Old Norse corpus is more celebrated than the harrowing masterpiece Völuspá, the ‘prophecy of the völva’. A völva was a type of esteemed seeress, a figure comparable to contemporary notions of a witch. In Völuspá, a völva tells the wisdom-seeking god Odin about the deep past and foretells a horrific future followed by a lush, green rebirth. This unique and beautiful edition features three historic translations next to an Old Icelandic edition of the text. It also contains an original introduction from scholar Lyonel Perabo as well as a comparative look at the related poem Baldrs draumar and the mysterious eddic fragments.

260 Pages

5X7