spacestationtrustfund's review
4.0
In this house we stan Rudolf Simek's distaste for Snorri's exaggerating ass <3
trish204's review
5.0
This book is everything. I thought I didn't know about it when Neil Gaiman spoke of it in the introduction to his newest book, Norse Mythology, but as it turned out shortly after I bought this English version, I had it all along. *lol* Typical me.
My original copy is in German though as the book was written by the Austrian professor Rudolph Simek of the University of Bonn who is a luminary in the field. I kept this translation because it has some additional text to my copy (included after the newest discoveries, the original is older and therefore had a few less archaeological knowledge to include).
This is not a novel. This is what the title says: a dictionary. You hear the name of a Norse god and want to know all about him/her? You just look him/her up in this.
However, it needs pointing out that this does not only contain all the Norse mythology but also the Anglo-Saxon myths, Germanic mythology, etc. Hence, you can find details on the Nibelungen saga and other (often less popular) myths and figures too.
Since it's in alphabetical order (as is every dictionary), there is no narrative, a term from Norse mythology might be followed by a Germanic one so there is a "disruption", and some explanations might include details on other characters/events of the same mythology that one doesn't know about yet (but there is a great cross-reference section).
Every explanation is detailed (as much as our knowledge allows, a lot has been lost because Vikings and other people of Northern faiths didn't keep written records) and easy to understand.
Also, it gets more and more obvious when reading such works that most myths are variations of one another. One already has that feeling when reading the Edda or Neil Gaiman's version of those stories, but here it's even more obvious because you get the legends of several "different" faiths. If we look at Siegfried of the Nibelungen saga, for example, who slew a dragon ... even the depiction from several hundred years ago (that is still featured on MANY German churches) looks very much like the slaying of Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent, which can technically also be described as a dragon).
I had already been on a Norse trip ever since Neil Gaiman's book (that one has a narrative and is in novel form) so I read the entire dictionary although that is not the way to do it of course. And it was a great way to remind me of some popular German myths that are usually not found in any novels/movies. Despite me reading the whole thing through and this being "only" a reference book, the reading never got tedious or boring. A definite authoritative work from a great scholar.
My original copy is in German though as the book was written by the Austrian professor Rudolph Simek of the University of Bonn who is a luminary in the field. I kept this translation because it has some additional text to my copy (included after the newest discoveries, the original is older and therefore had a few less archaeological knowledge to include).
This is not a novel. This is what the title says: a dictionary. You hear the name of a Norse god and want to know all about him/her? You just look him/her up in this.
However, it needs pointing out that this does not only contain all the Norse mythology but also the Anglo-Saxon myths, Germanic mythology, etc. Hence, you can find details on the Nibelungen saga and other (often less popular) myths and figures too.
Since it's in alphabetical order (as is every dictionary), there is no narrative, a term from Norse mythology might be followed by a Germanic one so there is a "disruption", and some explanations might include details on other characters/events of the same mythology that one doesn't know about yet (but there is a great cross-reference section).
Every explanation is detailed (as much as our knowledge allows, a lot has been lost because Vikings and other people of Northern faiths didn't keep written records) and easy to understand.
Also, it gets more and more obvious when reading such works that most myths are variations of one another. One already has that feeling when reading the Edda or Neil Gaiman's version of those stories, but here it's even more obvious because you get the legends of several "different" faiths. If we look at Siegfried of the Nibelungen saga, for example, who slew a dragon ... even the depiction from several hundred years ago (that is still featured on MANY German churches) looks very much like the slaying of Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent, which can technically also be described as a dragon).
I had already been on a Norse trip ever since Neil Gaiman's book (that one has a narrative and is in novel form) so I read the entire dictionary although that is not the way to do it of course. And it was a great way to remind me of some popular German myths that are usually not found in any novels/movies. Despite me reading the whole thing through and this being "only" a reference book, the reading never got tedious or boring. A definite authoritative work from a great scholar.
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