SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews 2°7
present many difficulties for detailed interpretation they can
provide excellent summaries of various types of archaeological
evidence and their absence is to be regretted. Indeed the text
has to stand very much on its own since the illustrations
conspicuously fail to provide any idea of the nature or range of
the artefacts which form the basic framework of any such survey.
The plates are more attractive than instructive, as is also the case
with the text figures by Svenolov Ehren. His repudiation of
tonal gradation in favour of solid black achieves considerable
impact but conveys nothing of the individual characteristics of
the different objects. A further difficulty is the absence of any
indications of his widely varying scales. Plates and text
illustrations thus fail to form an integral part of the book and
serve merely as decorative adjuncts to the text which cannot
itself be expected to provide an adequate introduction to
Swedish prehistory.
In this respect Sten Brons ] iirn falls far behind the high
standards set in the author's Ancient Peoples and Places volume,
Sweden. This has regrettably been unavailable for some time and
a revised edition would be most welcome. Meanwhile Det
Forntida Sverige will be found to supply what is lacking in its
offspring.
JAMES A. GRAHAM-CAMPBELL
THEELDER EDDA-A SELECTION. Translated by PAULB. TAYLOR
and W. H. AUDEN. Introduction by PETER H. SALUS and
PAUL B. TAYLOR. London, 1969. £2.
The participation of a major poet in this new translation makes
for more memorable verse than in previous renderings, and
facilitates the reader's comprehension of the behaviour and
beliefs of an obscure time. The task of understanding is still
a formidable one, and it is too much to expect that any
translation of these poems could bouleverser the reader like
Omar Khayyam. They are bitty and allusive, the language ­
in any language - necessarily complex, the gnomic and
philosophical content strange to us, quirky, forgettable, quite
often inconsistent. This edition contains 20 pages of notes and
glossary and a 36-page introduction: they are confined to brief
exegetic apparatus, and do not mention the thornier poblems of
origins and provenance. The volume may belooked on as a primer
of Northern mythology as it is transmitted through the poems.
The best of the translations are perhaps The Lay of T'hrym,