Vikings & Anglo-Saxons!
We are a hardy race, being independent booksellers, so of course we are interested in those Norse entrepreneurs who made Europe a lively place in the so-called Dark Ages.
One of the standard-setting writers about medieval Scandinavia was Nobel Prize-winning Sigrid Undset. I have assembled all her works that we carry on this page, even though they technically do not involve Viking culture and history (a few are even contemporary to Undset’s own time). Other than that, she needs no defense as one of the greatest of historical novelists.
Many books have emerged on the conflicts, the tensions, and the meldings between the Vikings and the inhabitants of what would become the British isles, so I have expanded the topic to include the Picts, the Druids, and Anglo-Saxons.
The Poetic Edda: the Heroic Poems
The Poetic Edda: the Heroic Poems
Passed down long ago from poet to poet and singer to singer in the great oral tradition of Scandinavia, this collection of heroic sagas explores a mythical world. Incorporating legends of Norse gods and heroes, great fires and floods, superhuman warriors and doomed lovers, these dramatic poems weave vivid portraits of powerful characters caught up in passion, ambition, and destiny. Filled with gripping conceptions of the world's creation and ultimate destruction, the verses chronicle the triumphs and tragedies of a lost mythological past, where words of wisdom and beauty echoed off the steel of waving swords.
The hero poems of The Poetic Edda are literary monuments that have inspired such luminaries as Richard Wagner and J. R. R. Tolkien. This Dover edition, which includes exceptionally detailed and complete translations by Henry Adams Bellows, will continue to enchant new generations of readers. It is a companion to The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems, also available from Dover Publications.
Reprint of "Lays of the Heroes" from The Poetic Edda, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1923.