Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda. Volume 4: Heldenlieder. By Klaus von See, Beatrice La Farge, Wolfgang Gerhold, Debora Dusse, Eve Picard and Katja Schulz. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004. Pp. 810. € 98.

Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda. Volume 5: Heldenlieder. By Klaus von See, Beatrice La Farge, Wolfgang Gerhold, Eve Picard and Katja Schulz. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006. Pp. 620. € 88.

These two large volumes are devoted to commentary on two groups of heroic poetry within the corpus of Old Icelandic verse in eddic measures, that is, in the Norse version of the common Germanic verse-form that we find in all the early Germanic languages whose early literatures have survived in written form. Volume 4, which runs to 810 pages, includes commentary on the three Helgi-poems, Helga kvida Hundingsbana I (HHI), Helgakvida Hjorvardssonar (HHv) and Helgakvida Hundingsbana II (HHII). Volume 5, a slightly slimmer volume of only 620 pages, includes eddic poems that have to do with the legend of the hero Sigurðr, Frá dauda Sinfjotla, Gr’pisspá (Grp), Reginsmál (Rm), Fáfnismál (Fm) and Sigrdr’fumál (Sd). Whereas the poems in Volume 5 share much of their subject-matter with poetry and prose in Old English and Old and Middle High German, as well as with Old Icelandic prose texts like Volsunga saga (Vols), the Helgi poems have usually been considered not to have direct analogues outside Scandinavia.

Margaret Clunies Ross
University of Sydney