Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross. Edited by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007. Pp. xiv + 456; 6 illustrations. $116.

This collection of essays by twenty scholars active in Old Norse studies quickly announces its ambition to be something more coherent and organized than the random mélange one ordinarily expects a Festschrift to be. Divided thematically into sections ("theoretical Frameworks for Understanding Old Norse Literature"; "Old Norse Myth and Society"; "Oral traditions in Performance and text"; "Vernacular and Latin theories of Language"; "Prolonged traditions") and commencing with an introduction that provides a rationale for the choice of topics and for the significance of "Learning and Understanding" as the overall theme that links the essays together, this book clearly is the consequence of considerable thought and attention from its editors.