Customer Reviews

Teutonic Mythology

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My experience with Norse Mythology can be separated distinctly into before I read Rydberg and after. Before I read his work the mythology was for practical purposes just a collection of confused nursery rhymes, but after I read Rydberg the pieces came together and it really became a whole epic of human history.

He takes the broad range of Northern European folklore, including the Prose and Poetic Eddas and (notably, because many people overlook it) the Gesta Danorum, along with many local stories that have come down to us, and he compares the characters and themes to those in other Indo-European mythologies, particularly the Vedas. The goal being to identify elements of the Norse Mythology that came from older Indo-European eras (and so can be fruitfully compared to others to understand better), and which are unique to the Northern European cultures, and then to arrange them appropriately.

The whole epic he uncovers is truly amazing. On a scale comparable to the Hindu Vedas or the Hebrew Bible in scope, at least as great as Homer. Some things that are completely lost from our fragmentary tales reemerge with clarity, such as the identity of Freyja's husband Od, the significance of Freyr's sword being lost to the giants, the cause of the Aesir-Vanir war, and so on. This is a story you've never heard before, you've only read excerpts.

An incredible amount of research went into this book, and occasionally he misses his mark. Few people agree with ALL of his conclusions, he revised them himself continually for years before and after publishing this book, but the majority of his claims are very good. The theory and method are the important things to come away with in my opinion, and you can test his conclusions for yourself (he provides copious footnotes so you can do that).

Some critics have even claimed that Rydberg was racist, although I can find absolutely no evidence of that in any of his books. The evidence I've seen cited held his words to 21st century standards, even though he was writing in the 19th century; World War 2 changed the way we talk. In any case, you can find the entire volume online in the public domain, so if you have concerns you can see for yourself.


Amazon doesn't let me publish a separate review for two different versions of the work, so there is one final important note: Beware of certain publishers selling this on Amazon!

AVOID General Book LLC (currently the cheapest copy) - The production quality is awful, it is almost unreadable. There is no warning on Amazon about what you are getting, but there is a page in the beginning of the book that explains it.

They scanned an old copy of the book with OCR software and printed it without proofreading. The Table of Contents and all images have been removed, and any text formatting is gone (chapter headings are not set apart in any way). It's full of typos where the OCR failed. Also their OCR software seems to only recognize plain English letters, and this particular book has many references to words in Old Norse that it can't figure out at all.

It's very difficult to read, the quotes of Old Norse sources are impossible. Don't throw your money away, buy one printed by a different publisher. I returned this one to Amazon and bought a different one.

The second I bought was from Adamant Media. It is a facsimile of the original, preserving the format and style. The price is higher, but considering the alternative it's definitely worth it. Kissinger is another publisher that is known to also print facsimiles, I don't have experience with the others I see listed. Hover your mouse over links in the "Formats" box at the top of the page to see who the publisher is.