Altnordische Philologie: Norwegen und Island. Edited by Odd Einar Haugen, translated from the Norwegian by Astrid van Nahl. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Pp. 653, numerous illustrations. $277, EUR 198.

In 2004 a book titled Handbok i norrøn filologi appeared in Norway, and almost immediately its German version was commissioned by Walter de Gruyter. One can say about it, as about Baldr, only good things. The book is excellent, and this is a minor miracle, considering what a stream of useless encyclopedias has flooded our market in recent years. Two additional cicumstances contributed to its success. Altnordische Philologie is, in a way, the second edition, and Odd Einar Haugen says in the preface that the text has not only been adapted to the needs of German students but also cleansed of the errors present in the original version. Besides this, Haugen was fortunate in enlisting the services of a translator who has a professional grasp of the material and knows how to write German, rather than translating into it. In the Norwegian book, every author, inevitably, displayed his or her own style. Now that the whole has been reshaped in a foreign language by a single person, individual essays are more streamlined and read like consecutive chapters. However, quite naturally, the Norwegian version already had all the features that guaranteed the desired results. The initial idea, namely to concentrate on philology, was worthy. Also, the authors exchanged their contributions (something that is never done in the production of our thematic encyclopedias) and thus avoided repetition. In appraising scholarly books, the epithet interesting turns up rarely, if at all. Such books are supposed to be profound, innovative, well-researched, and, of course, on the cutting edge. But Altnordische Philologie is interesting to read: it contains a series of absorbing plots couched in clear language.

Anatoly Liberman
University of Minnesota