The heroes of all the myths we have covered thus far have been quite complex, and this weeks reading about Sigurth is no different. In this es.say, analyze how the poems d

The Poetic Edda

Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

The Poetic Edda

Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

Translated and Edited, with Introduction, by

JACKSON CRAWFORD

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2015 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

www.hackettpublishing.com

Cover design by Brian Rak Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson Composition by William Hartman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edda Sæmundar.

The Poetic Edda : stories of the Norse gods and heroes / translated and edited, with introduction, by Jackson Crawford. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-62466-356-7 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-62466-357-4 (cloth) 1. Eddas—Translations into English. 2. Old Norse poetry. 3. Mythology, Norse—Poetry. I. Crawford, Jackson, translator, editor. II. Title. PT7233.C73 2015 839’.61—dc23 2014032991

PRC ISBN: 978-1-62466-415-1

Titles of Related Interest Available from Hackett Publishing

Beowulf. Translated, with an Introduction, by Dick Ringler

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Translated, with notes, by Joseph Glaser, Introduction by Christine Chism

Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur. Translated, with an Introduction, by Joseph Glaser

Joseph Bédier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseut. Translated, with an Introduction, by Edward J. Gallagher

To two fire-hearted heroes, gone far away, whose spirits breathe life in me still: To Papa, my biggest inspiration, and Wyatt, my smallest.

Og til deg, du nøkkel, lås og dør, mitt hjartas stad— mi grue, kveike, ved og glør, eg gjev mitt kvad.

{vi} ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my professors at the Universities of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Texas Tech, particularly Sal Calomino, Tom Dubois, Rob Howell, Jared Klein, Brian McFadden, Joe Salmons, and my doctoral advisor Kirsten Wolf.

I am grateful to Christy Lenzi for giving me her rich input on this book’s Introduction, and to my students at UCLA, especially Justine Bateman, Colin Bogan, Jenna Bremer, Jessica Brodsky, Courtney Cook, Casey James Holmberg, Cameron Kemper, Chanda Lenee, Masha Lepire, Tinho Mang, Jules Robins, Charlotte Rose, and Rafael Semedo, for their comments on my translations in the courses where they were first “field-tested.” I thank Katherine Crawford, who suggested some of the measures I took to render the Old Norse names more readable in English, and who shared the birds with me. I thank also the anonymous reviewer for Hackett, as well as editorial director Brian Rak, production director Liz Wilson, and copyeditor Harbour Fraser Hodder, who all made many important suggestions that improved this book.

Thanks also to Johanna and Kelley, who let me spend so many hours writing at their restaurant.

The mistakes and infelicities in this book are, naturally, attributable to me alone.

Jackson Crawford Riverton, Wyoming December 29, 2014

{vii} CONTENTS

The page numbers in curly braces {} correspond to the print edition of this title.

Introduction

Poems about Gods and Elves

Voluspa (The Prophecy of Ragnarok) Havamal (The Counsel of Odin the One-Eyed) Vafthruthnismal (Odin’s Contest with Riddle-Weaver) Grimnismal (The Words of Odin in Disguise) For Skirnis (The Journey of Skirnir on Behalf of Frey) Harbarthsljoth (The Taunting of Thor by Odin) Hymiskvitha (The Fetching of the Cauldron) Lokasenna (Loki’s Taunts) Thrymskvitha (The Theft of Mjollnir) Volundarkvitha (The Escape of Volund the Smith) Alvissmal (The Words of All-Wise) Baldrs draumar (Balder’s Dreams) Rigsthula (The Tale of Rig) Voluspa en skamma (The Short Prophecy of Ragnarok) Grottasongr (The Song of Grotti)

Poems about Heroes

Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar (The Poem of Helgi, Son of Hjorvarth) Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I (The First Poem of Helgi, Killer of Hunding) {viii} Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II (The Second Poem of Helgi, Killer of

Hunding) Fra dautha Sinfjotla (The Death of Sinfjotli)

Gripisspa (Gripir’s Prophecies to Sigurth) Reginsmal (The Tale of Regin) Fafnismal (The Tale of Fafnir) Sigrdrifumal (The Meeting with Brynhild) Brot af Sigurtharkvithu (Fragment of a Poem about Sigurth) Guthrunarkvitha I (The First Poem of Guthrun) Sigurtharkvitha en skamma (A Short Poem of Sigurth) Helreith Brynhildar (Brynhild’s Ride to Hel) Drap Niflunga (The Death of the Niflungs) Atlakvitha (The Fall of the House of Attila) Guthrunarkvitha II (The Second Poem of Guthrun) Guthrunarkvitha III (The Third Poem of Guthrun) Oddrunargratr (The Weeping of Oddrun) Guthrunarhvot (The Inciting of Guthrun’s Sons) Hamthismal (The Tale of Hamthir)

Appendix: The Cowboy Havamal Glossary of Names

Titles of Related Interest Available from Hackett Publishing

Note: The English “titles” are not necessarily translations of the Old Norse titles, but are meant to assist in remembering the content of each poem.

{ix} INTRODUCTION

In a Nutshell The Poetic Edda is a collection of poems in the Old Norse language. These poems are the source of almost all the myths of the Norse gods—famous characters in popular culture such as Odin, Thor, and Loki—and also of the thrilling and tragic adventures of legendary Viking heroes, especially Sigurth, his wife Guthrun, and her brothers Gunnar and Hogni.

The World of the Poetic Edda The poems of the Poetic Edda have their roots in the cold, brutal world of medieval Scandinavia. During the so-called Viking Age (roughly AD 800– 1100), the fierce Scandinavian pirates and adventurers known as Vikings robbed and raided in nearly every country of Europe, and explored as far afield as Baghdad and the eastern coast of present-day Canada. Meanwhile, they developed an extensive poetic literature about their gods and heroes, which their Christian descendants would commit to writing many centuries later.

Readers must understand a few facts about the culture that produced these poems, since the characters in them often act in a way that is incompatible with twenty-first-century social norms. Norse society prized a warlike, aggressive stance in men, and in the gods they worshipped. Fighting over limited resources, and even naked aggression against neighbors, was not necessarily considered wrong if it advanced one’s wealth and honor and that of one’s family. With the availability of natural resources sharply limited in medieval Scandinavia by its harsh climate and (in many regions) by sparse farmland, violent competition between families was a fact of life, and the raiding of overseas territories blessed with more food and gold must have seemed no more ethically problematic than the killing of an animal for its flesh and hide.

Not that Norse society recognized no code of ethics. But unlike modern moral standards, which tend to be utilitarian and altruistic (Does a given action benefit someone without harming someone else?), the Norse moral code was based on gaining and maintaining {x} honor, and avoiding shame. Honor was gained principally through displays of one’s courage in confrontations with enemies, initiative and hard work at the farm and aboard ship, and a readiness to use violence in return for the violence done to one’s friends and relatives. Those who show these qualities most abundantly, such as the god Thor and the hero Sigurth, are praised, in spite of actions that modern society would consider crude or evil (Thor owns slaves, for instance, and in the poem Harbarthsljoth he tells his father Odin that he would have gladly helped him hold down a woman he was trying to have his way with).

In a society in which the main social unit was not the individual but the family, it was imperative for members of the family to maintain their honor by avenging any harm done to another member of their family. If a man’s brother had been killed, he would have to take revenge on the killer, but he might exact vengeance by killing a member of the killer’s family rather than by killing the perpetrator directly. This promise of mutual revenge bound a family together in a feuding world, and thus there was a special horror for the notion of accidentally or knowingly doing damage to one’s own family.

Nonetheless, the heroes of the Poetic Edda are sometimes forced to take action against their own families, usually because of the ironclad force of their sworn words and boasts. The Eddic poems depict a world in which a person’s words are absolutely binding, no matter the consequences—which are often tragic. For instance, in Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar, Hethin boasts (while drunk) that he will take his brother Helgi’s lover, the Valkyrie named Svava. Though Hethin regrets this foolish and dangerous oath almost immediately, Helgi casually accepts that it is his brother’s duty to carry it through:

[33] “Don’t concern yourself, Hethin; the oaths men make while drinking will always prove true. A king has challenged me to a duel, and before three nights have passed, I must meet him at the appointed place. I doubt that I will survive; and then it would be good, if you took Svava.”

{xi} But of course, the problems created by such oaths are not always resolved so conveniently. The greatest tragedy of the heroic poems is the murder of Sigurth, which is brought about because Brynhild has been tricked into breaking her vow that she will marry only a man who knows no fear (she marries Gunnar, believing him to be the fearless man who braved her test of courage, but in fact it was Sigurth in disguise). Since not

Brynhild but her sister-in-law Guthrun married the fearless Sigurth, Brynhild insists that her husband Gunnar must kill him. But even here, Gunnar and his brother Hogni will not break their oaths of blood- brotherhood with Sigurth, and Gunnar instead must get his brother Gotthorm, who was too young to swear oaths with Sigurth, to commit the murder.

One gets a sense from scenes like this that faithfully keeping promises ought to be the glue that holds society together, but instead tears it apart. It is instructive to remember that the evil god Loki, whose actions cause the gods constant heartbreak and loss, is tolerated in the gods’ homes because of Odin’s oath that he will never drink unless Loki is served too (see Lokasenna, st. 9–10).

Norse society also had a fairly rigid class structure, one reflected in nearly every poem in the Poetic Edda. It is most obvious in Rigsthula, which tells the story of how the god Heimdall fathered the ancestors of the three human classes (slaves and peasants, free men, and the nobility), and which makes clear the different standards of dress, activity, and diet that were expected of people at different social levels. But the rigidity of the class structure is also reflected in an abundance of offhand comments; in fact, the very first lines of the first poem, Voluspa, casually assert the existence of higher- and lower-born people: “Heed my words, / all classes of men, / you greater and lesser / children of Heimdall.” Just as casual is Oddrun’s reminder in Oddrunargratr that she made an oath to provide her medical expertise not just to anyone, but to anyone of sufficiently high class:

[10] Oddrun said, “I did not come here because I thought you were worth my help. I have sworn that I will always give help when it is needed to those who share my noble rank, and I honor my oath.”

{xii} Another component of Norse society that surfaces in many poems is the belief that each person has an inevitable, fixed date of death, decided by the shadowy goddesses of fate called the Norns. This is what the hero Sigurth alludes to, for instance, when he shrugs off the dragon’s threats in Fafnismal:

[10] “Every man will manage his own wealth till his fated death-day, but there is a time when each one of us leaves here for Hel.”

Or, to quote Sorli in Hamthismal:

[30] “But we fought well, we stand over sword-torn Gothic corpses and set a table for the eagles. We earned honor here, though we are fated to die today— a man will not live one day longer than the Norns have decided.”

But beyond even this belief in an inevitable death-date, many of the poems of the Poetic Edda convey a sense that every detail of a life and death can be foreseen, and that this inevitable course of events cannot be changed. The witch in Voluspa foresees the death of all the gods, and offers no way for it to be avoided. On a more individual level, Sigurth’s entire life is foretold to him in Gripisspa—including most of the terrible mistakes he will soon make—but this does nothing to prevent him from doing exactly what he was predicted to do. The characters in these myths are marching toward their doom, unable to change course or to step off their predetermined path even if they fight it the entire way. Only the god Odin seems to believe seriously that he can reverse fate, but the reward for his efforts will be a final defeat just as total as if he had never tried.

Thus, a profound sense of hopelessness pervades the myths of the Poetic Edda. The gods know that they will inevitably die in the fiery final battle of

Ragnarok, and not a single one of the main human characters in the heroic poems dies happy. But surprisingly, the despair of a bad end is not accompanied by a sense of hopeless despair in any of the poems—instead, the gods and heroes alike {xiii} are actively engaged in courageously combating the inevitable. This code of boldness and the defiance of fate must have stirred something in the Norse audience in their barren farmsteads and bloodstained seaside camps, just as it may stir a modern audience faced with the seemingly hopeless circumstances of life in the crowded, postindustrial world of today.

The Gods, the Realms, and the Heroes: A Basic Orientation Leading the gods is Odin, often called the “Allfather.” Odin is a profoundly anxious and, in some senses, selfish character, which is rarely suggested by his depictions in popular media. Odin knows (thanks to the prophecy in the poem Voluspa) that his fate and the fate of all the gods with him is to die at Ragnarok, and so he desperately gathers wisdom and knowledge in an effort to learn some way to postpone this catastrophe. In particular, he has sacrificed his own eye in the well of Mimir for a drink of its wisdom- granting waters (Voluspa, st. 28), and he has even sacrificed himself to himself on the supernatural ash tree Yggdrasil in order to learn the runes (see Havamal, st. 138–41).

In order to raise an army to fight by his side at Ragnarok, Odin travels in Midgard (the realm of humans) in disguise, stirring up battles and often granting favors to powerful warriors. He sends his Valkyries (human women with the power of flight) to bring the men who die in battle to his hall, Valhalla (literally “the hall of men killed in battle”), in Asgard (the realm of the gods). In Valhalla, these men fight and kill one another all day, and in the evening they are resurrected for a feast. Because death in battle was the only way to join Odin’s heroes in Valhalla, the religion of the Viking Age reinforced and encouraged the reckless disregard for life that is a hallmark of so many of the heroes of the Poetic Edda and the Norse sagas. But by the same token, Odin’s role as an inciter of war and a killer of men led to some unease about his role, as we see in some of the insults Thor and Loki level at him in the poems Harbarthsljoth and Lokasenna, respectively, and by many of his own names that Odin lists at the end of Grimnismal (such as “Evil doer,” “Battle-Merry,” and even simply “Killer”).

Regarded as a family, Odin and his children are referred to as the Aesir. Odin’s wife is Frigg, and with her Odin has two sons, Balder and Hoth. The accidental murder of Balder by his blind {xiv} brother Hoth is one of the great tragedies of Norse mythology, and it is instigated by Loki, a fickle, enigmatic figure who sometimes aids and sometimes harms the gods. Loki’s children include the wolf Fenrir, who bit off the hand of the god Tyr and who will eventually kill Odin, as well as Hel, the half-corpse queen of the

dead, and the Midgard-serpent, a dragon who encircles Midgard and who will eventually kill, and be killed by, Thor.

The god Thor is the son of the Earth (personified as a goddess) and Odin, and by far the most popular of the Norse gods. Where Odin is unpredictable, snobbish, and even treacherous, Thor is a hero of the common man, usually hard at work killing giants with his hammer, Mjollnir. In the pages of the Poetic Edda, his popularity can be seen both in the ways he is depicted respectfully and seriously (as at the end of Lokasenna, when it is only Thor’s threats that scare Loki) and with tongue in cheek (as in the humiliation he suffers when he has to dress like a bride in Thrymskvitha).

In addition to the Aesir gods, there are also the Vanir, who are lower in rank than the Aesir and associated with nature and fertility. The Vanir include Njorth, god of the sea, and his two children, Frey, god of agriculture, and Freyja, goddess of love. There are hints that there are (or were) more Vanir, but that the Aesir defeated them in an ancient war, and that Njorth and his children are the hostages from that conflict.

The home of the gods in Asgard can be reached from Midgard by means of the rainbow bridge, Bifrost. This bridge is guarded by Heimdall, watchman of the gods, who has magnificent powers of vision and hearing, and who is also referred to as the father of human beings (for that story, see the poem Rigsthula). To the east of Asgard, beyond a vast sea that encircles Midgard, is Jotunheim, the realm of the gods’ enemies, the giants (note that the giants are not necessarily larger than the gods, and do not necessarily look different from gods or humans). There are other realms (such as Hel, the home of the dead who do not die in battle), but most of the action of the Eddic poems takes place on Midgard, Asgard, and Jotunheim. These realms are connected by the roots of the great ash tree Yggdrasil.

Readers may be tempted to see the poems about the heroes as more separate from the poems about the gods than they are, but they are products of very much the same society and period, and the human heroes are connected to the gods both by genealogy (as the poem Voluspa en skamma shows) and by Odin’s profound interest in helping and harvesting human warriors (for instance, {xv} in Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II, where Odin assists Dag very directly in his mission of vengeance).

The human characters of the heroic poems are members or relations of the family of the Volsungs, including most notably Sigmund and his sons

Helgi and Sigurth. Helgi’s story is an interesting study in the variations and changes that can add up in a myth as it is told in different ways in different places and times, as the three poems about him follow the same basic skeletal pattern (a warrior-prince named Helgi falls in love with a Valkyrie) but with substantial differences, including who Helgi’s father is (Hjorvarth or Sigmund). The poems about Sigurth tell a more straightforward narrative, of a brave prince who kills a dragon but is killed when Brynhild, the jealous wife of his brother-in-law Gunnar, manipulates her husband and his brothers into betraying him. Following his death, the last poems of the Poetic Edda focus on Sigurth’s widow, Guthrun, who is remarried to Attila, and who kills her second husband after he kills her brothers.

Motifs and Style The poetry of the Poetic Edda makes use of certain stock phrases and images, many of which are rooted in the realities of medieval life and warfare.

Three species of scavenging predatory animals—eagles, ravens, and wolves—are frequently mentioned, alone or together. One particularly frequent motif is the “feeding of” (or as I have sometimes rendered it, “setting a table for”) these animals, a visceral shorthand for killing in battle. One of the most striking statements of this theme is from the poem Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I:

[5] … One raven said to another raven, expecting a feast: “I know something:

[6] “Sigmund’s young son will wear armor! He’s just a day old; his first day has just dawned. But he has sharp eyes {xvi} like a war-king; that boy’s a friend of wolves— we’ll be happy and well-fed!”

Not only is being followed by scavenging predators predictive of success in battle (see, for instance, Reginsmal, st. 20 and 22), but as opportunistic feeders on the weak and dead, these creatures function also as a mirror in which the Norse raider sees himself and his warlike gods. Indeed the war- god Odin’s mental powers are literally embodied in his ravens Thought and Memory, as he implies in a stanza from Grimnismal, which for all its mythic color reads like the poignant reflection of an elderly man worried about what he might forget in his old age:

[20] “Thought and Memory, my ravens, fly every day the whole world over. Each day I fear that Thought might not return, but I fear more for Memory.”

Another major theme is wisdom, though this has a narrower meaning for us than it had for the Norse, who used “wisdom” to mean many sorts of mental abilities, including a deep knowledge of obscure facts and often some kind of power to foresee the future. So while Odin in the poem Havamal speaks of wisdom mostly in the modern sense of intelligent behavior and understanding, in the next poem, Vafthruthnismal, he has a contest to see whether he or the giant Riddle-Weaver is “wiser”—meaning whether he or the giant knows more facts and names about mythical creatures and places (similar definitions of what it means to be “wise” are seen in Grimnismal and Alvissmal, among other poems). Meanwhile, in Gripisspa, the hero Sigurth’s uncle Gripir is said to be wise because he can foresee the future. Of course, those who have this kind of wisdom are also those who are most acutely aware of the doom that awaits them, and this may be a curse, as Odin explicitly says in Havamal:

[55] You should be only a little wise, never too wise. A wise man’s heart is seldom glad if he’s truly wise.

{xvii} [56] You should be only a little wise, never too wise. It’s best not to know your fate beforehand; you’ll live happier if you don’t.

Additionally, the Eddic poems are often rambling and discursive in a way that modern readers may not be used to, especially when it comes to

dispensing “wisdom” of the kind briefly discussed above. Time and time again, the thread of a story will be momentarily broken while a character asks for or imparts some wisdom or lore. This is especially true of the poems about young Sigurth—see the exchange of Loki and Andvari in Reginsmal (st. 3–4) for a short example, or most of the poem Fafnismal for a very long example. Consider how abruptly Sigurth interrupts Fafnir—a dragon who is dying from a wound Sigurth gave him!—to ask him:

[12] “Tell me, Fafnir, they say you are wise, and very knowledgeable— who are the Norns who govern childbirth and choose who mothers what child?”

Another technique that may seem odd to modern readers is that many of the mythical stories in the Poetic Edda switch back and forth between prose (“plain” writing) and poetry. Many of the poems are preceded by a prose introduction that sets the stage for the action and dialogue in the poem— Grimnismal and Lokasenna, for example. Others have the dialogue mostly in verse but the narration mostly in prose (Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar is an example), or they conclude with a brief epilogue in prose (as Lokasenna or Brot af Sigurtharkvithu do), or simply with a note that the reader has reached the end of the poem, or a reminder of what the name of the poem is (as in Hamthismal).

As for the characteristics of the poetry itself, the verses of the Poetic Edda do not rhyme or use a consistent number of syllables, as traditional English poetry does. Instead, the poetry is held together by alliteration and by counting the number of stressed syllables in a line.

The meter used in most of the poems of the Poetic Edda is known appropriately as fornyrthislag, or “meter for ancient {xviii} sayings.” Each stanza consists of (usually) six to ten lines, with each odd line paired with the following even line. Each line will have two stressed syllables, one of which will alliterate with a stressed syllable in its paired line (the odd line may also have alliteration in both stressed syllables); usually the even line will begin with the alliterating syllable.

The meter is not difficult to use in English, and something of its style may be gleaned from a single modern fornyrthislag stanza in English (an x above a syllable marks it as stressed, and a bold letter indicates alliteration with a syllable in the paired line):

[1] xummingbxrds [1] Hummingbirds

[2] xattle faxrcely, [2] battle fiercely,

[3] xake waxr, [3] make war,

[4] xighty fixers. [4] mighty fliers.

[5] xeather-cxvered [5] Feather-covered

[6] xighters hixe no [6] fighters have no

[7] xread, sixe of [7] dread, save of

[8] xying in pxace. [8] dying in peace.

In my translation, I have not sought to reproduce the meter of the original poems, nor have I made any particular effort to regularize the length of lines in the poems if doing so would add to, or subtract from, the original meaning of a stanza. Old Norse is a highly inflected language, and often a much more compact medium of expression than English. In particular, Old Norse poetry frequently employs ad-hoc compound words known as kennings that are deliberate riddles to be deciphered. Kennings are typically compact analogies, such as “whale-road” (the sea, because whales travel on it) or “pen-blood” (ink, because it runs through a pen like blood through the

body), but sometimes kennings include very obscure references, often to other tales from mythology or to shadowy semi-historical legends and characters. I have done the {xix} task of “unpacking” (or rather, fully translating) kennings and other allusive references for the reader, and thus it has usually been necessary to write lines that are longer in English than they are in Old Norse. Note also that the articles that English uses—a, an, the— are practically absent from the archaic language of the Eddic poems, and require additional space in the line in English.

Many of the characters in these poems, especially major gods such as Odin, are referred to by many different names in the Old Norse text. I have referred to each character by one name instead, so as to reduce confusion about who is acting or speaking. At times, I have allowed the characters to be called “daughter of Buthli” or “son of Odin,” as they often are in the original Old Norse, but only when the surrounding context makes it clear who is meant.

The poems often make it clear who is speaking, usually by inserting something like Loki kvath (“Loki said”) before a stanza. However, this is indicated more clearly and consistently in some poems than in others, and where a speaker is not indicated, I have inserted the name of the speaker into the stanza itself: for example, “But Helgi said, ‘Do not fear …,’” in a stanza where the original Old Norse text does not name the speaker at all. At times, especially in parts of the very old Atlakvitha and Hamthismal, I have had to make educated guesses (or an occasional silent correction) as to which character is meant to be speaking, but I do not believe that any of these guesses are controversial. Similarly, in poems where one speaker refers to him- or herself both as “I” and as “he” or “she” (this is especially true of the witch in Voluspa), I have reduced unnecessary confusion for the reader by having the speaker consistently use “I.”

Language and Pronunciation The Poetic Edda was written in Old Norse, the written language of medieval Iceland and Norway. This language is the direct ancestor of today’s Icelandic and Norwegian languages, and is closely related to the ancestors of Danish and Swedish. Old Norse is also a “first cousin” to other old Germanic languages, such as Old English and Old High German, and thus distantly related (as an “aunt” or “uncle”) to their modern descendants such as English and German.

Old Norse was written in the Roman alphabet (the alphabet used for English and most other Western European languages {xx} today) beginning in approximately AD 1150, with the addition of some new letters for sounds that the Roman alphabet was not designed to accommodate. In the interest of readability, particularly on digital devices, I have replaced these letters ( , , æ, ø, and ) with their closest equivalents from the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, and I have inserted an e between another consonant and r in characters’ names (this affects especially Balder and Sigerdrifa). However, where an English translation of an Old Norse name is already widespread and popular, I have used that instead of directly transliterating the Old Norse name according to these principles: I use Odin, Midgard, and Valhalla instead of the more authentic or consistent Othin, Mithgarth, and Valholl.

In reading alou

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