William Morris’s ‘greatest single inspiration’ was said to be the language and literature of medieval Iceland. After a brief survey of the origins and scope of Old Norse literary texts, this piece works through the considerable volume of translations of Old Norse saga literature which Morris made along with his Icelandic collaborator Eiríkur Magnússon, and considers why, after a ten-year period of astonishing productivity, his interest seems to have cooled. Morris’s knowledge of Old Norse literature and traditions is detailed, his translation methods are analysed, and the style and lexis of his controversially archaizing translations described, with special reference to Eiríkur’s experiences of working with him. Morris also translated Old Norse eddic verse, and many of the prose sagas he translated contain skaldic stanzas in the elaborate and unique dróttkvætt, or court, metre. The piece concludes with an assessment of these poetic translations, which are often overlooked, and the particular metrical and lexical challenges the originals present.

The Introduction describes the distinctive character of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, arguing that in range, quality and originality this body of literature rivals anything produced elsewhere in the Middle Ages. Highlighting the enduring importance, influence and popularity of this unique corpus of literature, it sets out the rationale for a volume providing a comprehensive account of its history and development. It then outlines the reasons for organizing the chapters of this volume primarily by the time and place of their texts’ setting, rather than any putative order of composition, in order to emphasize the fundamental intertextuality of Old Norse-Icelandic literary genres and the diversity of genre, style and worldview which these texts encompass. After this, the contents and approach of each section of the History are introduced in turn.

This chapter describes the prevalence of prosimetrum – the alternation of narrative prose and skaldic verse – in the Íslendingasögur, with a brief consideration of prosimetrum in konungasögur and samtíðarsögur. A distinction is introduced between verses which are quoted as the dialogue of characters and those which appear to corroborate the narrative prose; it is explained that this distinction is established through the way the verses are incorporated in the prose, and is not inherent in the stanzas themselves. The aesthetic effects of verses representing dialogue in saga prose – additional content, the direct perspective and apparent voice of a character, control of narrative pace and ornamentation – are set out. The plausibility or otherwise of the impromptu recitation of skaldic verse is discussed, and a contrast drawn between the elaborate artificiality of skaldic verse and the ostensible simplicity of saga prose. The distinction between the two kinds of verse use is then problematized. A discussion of how and why the prose and verse first came together comes next, with speculation about how authors constructed their prosimetrical sagas and the literary effects achieved.

The German writer Günter Grass (1927–2015) is perhaps still most celebrated for his novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), published in 1959, and first translated into English two years later. The Tin Drum is set largely in Gdansk, in a period of the twentieth century roughly corresponding to Grass's own life from his birth to the novel's publication. It has been rec-ognized as a work in the so-called magic realist genre, in which a realistic setting is combined with openly fantastical elements. The Grass scholar Peter Arnds has argued, with particular reference to The Tin Drum, that magic realist novels generally draw on mythic materials, but in fact, he adduces very few actual mythic allusions in his analysis of The Tin Drum. In what follows, I will show that Günter Grass drew heavily and persistently on Old Norse mythology in his creation of what many regard as one of the great European historical novels of the twentieth century.

The Tin Drum and History

Oskar Matzerath, the protagonist of The Tin Drum, announces his status in the very first sentence of the novel as an inmate of a mental hospital. We are thus primed to engage with an unreliable narrator, as indeed Oskar proves to be. He recounts the circumstances of his own conception and birth in 1924, at which he is a precocious and sardonic witness and commentator. His alleged neonatal impressions are hearing his mother's promise that he will be given a toy drum on his third birthday, and the oddly confirmatory drumming noise a moth is making as it flutters wildly against a lightbulb above his mother's bed. He is indeed given a drum for his third birthday. But the same day, he tells us, he flings himself through an open trapdoor down into the cellar of the family grocery shop – a horrific childhood accident which our unreliable narrator Oskar represents as a deliberate and carefully considered act. He ascribes his subsequent failure to grow as a conscious exercise of his own will. On the day he ends his growth, he begins his career as a drummer. He is a dwarf with a drum

The Poetic Edda and Its Transformations

AROUND THE YEAR 1270, an unknown Icelandic scribe copied an anthology of poems into a manuscript now known as the Codex Regius, or Konungsbok (the royal manuscript); this collection is usually called the Poetic Edda. Some leaves of the manuscript are missing now, but over two dozen poems are preserved in what is left of it. Of these, eleven are mythological, placed together in the first half of the manuscript. The remaining poems are based on heroic legends about the Volsungs – a dynasty including Sigmundr the Volsung, descended from the god Óðinn, and his son Sigurðr the celebrated dragon-slayer, who is betrothed to the valkyrie Brynhildr, but marries Guðrún, the sister of the Burgundian heroes Gunnarr and Hǫgni.

It is not known how, or from where, these poems were sourced by the anthologist, so we know nothing of their age, authorship or provenance, which might have been very various in each respect. But it is clear that the anthologist – or his immediate source – carefully ordered the individual poems in ‘chronological’ narrative order to produce a legendary history of the Volsungs in which key episodes such as the killing of the dragon by Sigurðr, or his murder at Brynhildr's perverse and vengeful instigation, are each represented by a vividly dramatic poem either largely or wholly made up of the speech of the protagonists, interspersed with some explanatory prose links.

Many of these episodes were evidently popular and had long been widely known throughout northern Europe in the Middle Ages. There are plenty of Viking Age stone carvings of Sigurðr killing the dragon, for instance, a good number of them in northern England. Another unknown medieval Icelandic author took the legendary material of the Codex Regius – before some of the poems were lost – and turned it into saga narrative: Vǫlsunga saga (The Story of the Volsungs). This prose account necessarily loses some of the drama and immediacy of the original poems, but offers in its place continuity, consistency and some (arguably unconvincing) explanation of character and motive (many readers have judged the saga to be a disimprovement of the material).

Introduction

Eddic poetry has been far and away the most influential genre of Old Norse literature. Its reception – not only in Western Europe and North America, but throughout the world – has been wide-ranging, far-reaching, and long-lasting. Although its influence has been most evident in literary texts, there are representations of eddic scenes in the visual arts – from Viking Age sculpture to Western European romantic art and beyond. In spite of rather little evidence for musical performance in Old Norse, eddic poetry has also inspired music of various kinds – most notably, of course, Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle. As a vehicle for Old Norse mythology, and the supposed vessel of ancient Germanic religious beliefs, its influence on the history of ideas, and especially on political thought, has been particularly significant, and the subject matter and ethos of eddic poetry have continued to make their mark on popular contemporary culture.

I shall use the term ‘reception’ to refer to three processes: the post-medieval dissemination of the texts themselves, direct critical response to them, and evidence of their influence on later works. I will discuss the influence of eddic poetry on literature (primarily in English) in three sections: the influence of the verses in fornaldarsögur (sagas of ancient times) (especially the sequence of verses known as The Waking of Angantýr), the influence of mythological verse, and the influence of the heroic poems about Sigurðr and Brynhildr. Along the way, I will consider the influence of eddic poetry on visual art and on music, and then on the history of ideas; I conclude with a brief account of its reception in popular contemporary culture. I will be as inclusive as possible about which poems may be designated ‘eddic’. As we shall see, some of the most widely and popularly received eddic poetry is found outside the Codex Regius.

Before examining the post-medieval dissemination of eddic poetry, we should briefly consider its oral prehistory. Its existence is evident from Viking Age sculpture, such as representations of Sigurðr the Dragon-Slayer, many of them from Britain, and a number of Viking Age sculptures seem to represent scenes from ragnarǫk as alluded to in Vǫluspá.