Einarr Skúlason's Geisli: A Critical Edition. Edited by Martin Chase. Toronto Old Norse and Icelandic Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. vii + 249. $29.95 paper, $65 cloth.

Those who are interested in Christian skaldic poetry know Einarr Skúlason's Geisli well. This drápa (poem) has come down to us complete. It celebrates the life and posthumous miracles of St. Óláfr. Geisli was probably composed in the summer of 1153 (as Chase argues), in the reign of Einarr's patron and friend King Eysteinn Haraldsson gilli, who commissioned the drápa and who is mentioned in it twice: in a bid for hearing and in a bid for a reward. The opening statement above needs a note: to know Geisli well is far from easy. The faulty transmission and the complexity of the diction can be taken for granted. It is less obvious that the kennings and heiti (poetic synonyms) underlying the imagery of a Christian skald require the same type of elaborate commentary that editors habitually accord the skalds' pagan compositions. In explicating Geisli, references to Scandinavian mythology have to be supplemented by and partly give way to a search for analogues and sources in saints' lives, patristic literature, and the gospels (to give the most conspicuous example, geisli is not merely a ray: it is the basis of the metaphor of Christ as the sun).

Anatoly Liberman
University of Minnesota