The Volsung Saga [Paperback]

Anonymous (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2004

Learn the story behind that whole Ride of the Valkyries.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing (June 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419186957
• ISBN-13: 978-1419186950
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,264,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The reference book to this myth, July 27, 2009

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Volsung Saga (Paperback)

This translation remains the reference. It was done without too much pretention about the form. They wanted to be accurate and complete if possible. They brought together a vast corpus of Icelandic Old Norse sagas and translated, mostly in prose, these sagas about the mythic Sigurd and Gudrun story, Sigurd the Dragon Slayer and Gudrun his unhappy wife. It is also the story of the confrontation between the Goths and the Huns, and of course the story of Odin and his fellow gods, or rather havoc creators. It is the story that is behind Wagner's set of four operas including Siegfried. The choice to translate the sagas in prose enables the translators to be free in rendering the meaning without being overpowered by a form that imposes its own logic. Some lyrical passages are translated in ballad form which fits the text rather well. The story itself is a long sequence of bloody episodes all determined by some unacceptable deeds at the origin of the tale. A small nobleman or squire, Sigi, kills a serf because he is more successful than him in a hunt. Distasteful. And it all starts there. Then the god Loki kills one of the sons of a man out of spite and playfulness since this son Otr is in the form of an otter. Then it will lead to the hoard of Andvari and the curse. We must also know about the divine apple given to Sigi's son's wife for her to get pregnant, thus putting on the surface of the earth the Volsung tribe, the chosen ones, who will have to be genocidally destroyed to the very last drop of that blood that reeks like bitter and sour cider, for the earth to go back to normal. The details are particularly horrible though at times the feelings, the emotions, the tragic events are poignant and particularly powerful. The basic element in this tale is that an oath has to be kept no matter what and that its being broken is the best way to bring havoc on earth, and the gods do not have to be trusted because they are often mis-inspired and misguided by their own gut feelings. There are some contradictions here and there, but the sagas are wide enough to contain a couple of contradictions. A must if you want to understand an essential piece of European culture. Then you may go further and try to understand the fact that this culture arrived in Europe rather late and found another culture there, that of Cromagnon of Turkic origin that arrived a long time before the Indo-Europeans. When you know that the Huns are also of Turkic origin, that brings some kind of perspective, and salt, in the conflict when the Huns decided to re-conquer Europe. But do not look for any Christian element in these tales. The stories were finally written down after the Christianization of Europe, but these tales come from before and they are entirely vested in Nordic mythology, a mythology that is very close to the Celtic one, hence a mythology that can be traced back to the Iranian plateau where the Indo-European languages were born by a migration west and these myths are very close to the Zoroastrian or Vedic traditions. The basic schema is "the hero kills the dragon with a weapon and eventually a companion". The dragon slayer is the basic Indo-European myth and story that came to existence (at least in the form we know, because there are other forms in other parts of the world) on the Iranian plateau in the ancestor language of modern Farsi. Enjoy the book because it is enjoyable.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID