> (The Davidson translation of Saxo Grammaticus likewise translates
> stuff that was left in Latin in earlier translations.)
While nothing equals a good solid book and a contemporary translation, I should note that the first nine books (that is, the mythic bits) of Well-Lettered Saxo's Danish History are available online at
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/DanishHistory/
It's a wonderful collection of myth, legend, folklore, law and custom, and if you want to understand the Heortling attitude to kinstrife and why it is a bootless (no were-gild or vengeance) crime, then Long Saxo's your man. There are lots of insights and echoes of Heortling marriage practice and daily life as well. The translation is public domain and therefore a bit Victorian, but the introductory essay is very good and well worth a browse.
The entire Online Medieval & Classical Library is a marvellous resource if you have access to a laser printer - there are lots of Icelandic and Norse sagas, The Lay of the Cid, Quintus Smyrnaeus' Fall of Troy (what happened after the Iliad), the Nibelungenlied, all the sort of stuff many of us would drool over if they were found in a bookstore.
A semi-random snippet from Saxo:
"While Fridleif was besieging Dublin, a town in Ireland, and saw from the strength of the walls that there was no chance of storming them, he imitated the shrewd wit of Hadding, and ordered fire to be shut up in wicks and fastened to the wings of swallows. When the birds got back in their own nesting-place, the dwellings suddenly flared up; and while the citizens all ran up to quench them, and paid more heed to abating the fire than to looking after the enemy, Fridleif took Dublin. After this he lost his soldiers in Britain, and, thinking that he would find it hard to get back to the coast, he set up the corpses of the slain (Amleth's device) and stationed them in line, thus producing so nearly the look of his original host that its great reverse seemed not to have lessened the show of it a whit. By this deed he not only took out of the enemy all heart for fighting, but inspired them with the desire to make their escape."
Until White Dwarf makes the collected Thrud the Barbarian available online, this is probably as good as it gets. :)
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_... John Hughes
The question seldom addressed is *where* Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.
-Terry Pratchett, Soul Music.
Powered by hypermail