Icelandic Histories and
Romances. Translated
and Introduced by Ralph O'Connor. Illustrated by Anne O'Connor. Stroud,
Gloucestershire, and Charleston: Tempus, 2002. Pp. 192. $24.99.
Four of the six texts translated here (Star-Oddi's Dream, The Tale
of Thorstein Shiver, The Tale of Thidrandi and Thorhall, and The
Saga of Bard the Snowfell God) have been translated in The Complete
Sagas of Icelanders, 5 vols., edited by Vidar Hreinsson et al. (Reykjavík:
Leifur Eiríksson, 1997). A fifth, The Saga of Hjalmther and
Olvir, was translated in Richard Harris's Iowa dissertation of 1970
(Hjálmpérs saga: A Scientific Edition), available
through University Microfilms. Only the sixth, Mírmann's Saga,
has not been "englished " before. Thus the comment on the back cover—"some
translated here for the first time"—is overstated, and the claim
that "no English translation [of The Saga of Hjalmther] has previously
been published " (p. 29) is evasive.
Robert Cook
University of Iceland |
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