Old English 'Frige' is linguistically cognate to the name of the Old Norse goddess 'Frigg', and not that of the Old Norse goddess Freyja. As a result, English 'Friday' in fact translates to 'Frige's Day'. As a result, the English weekday names are not a product of Old Norse influence but arose natively, and so bear the names of native Anglo-Saxon deities. This occurred in nearly all recorded Germanic languages and well before the Viking Age. In actuality, these weekday names were put in place by way of a process known as interpretatio germanica. xvii) and, consequently, that modern English 'Friday' is named after the goddess Freyja. Orchard makes it seem as if the English days of the week are of Old Norse origin (p. The first major issue here is Orchard's handling of weekday names. The introduction essay is considerably more hairy. Anyway, a minor gripe, but it needs to be pointed out. Daily life among the vast majority of the North Germanic peoples was focused squarely on matters pastoral and agricultural and had little to do with this specific class of Norsemen. Further, famous as the vikings are, they made up a small fraction of Scandinavian society at their greatest. Referring to these poems as 'viking lore' may have been a marketing decision intended to move units, but it is unfortunately misleading the lore in question primarily dates from the Viking Age, sure, but elements of the compositions date at least as far back as the Migration Period (the 5th to 9th century CE) and other elements are from a few hundred years after the Viking Age ended (the Poetic Edda was compiled in the 13th century and the Viking Age is held to have ended in the 11th century). This translation of the Poetic Edda is titled 'The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore', and the material contained within is frequently referred to as 'viking lore' throughout.

Unfortunately, Orchard's translation not only continues most of the problems found in Larrington's translation, but also introduces a variety of new issues. Specifically I had hoped that Orchard's 2011 Penguin Classics translation would be a superior alternative to Carolyne Larrington's commonly available Oxford World's Classics translation (titled 'The Poetic Edda' and first published in 1996).

PLEASE NOTE: Due to poor organization of translations on this website, I must note that this is a review of Andy Orchard's translation of the 'Poetic Edda', which he has titled 'The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore'.īeing familiar with Andy Orchard's handbook on Norse mythology ('Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend', 1997) and finding it to be a nice middle ground between Rudolf Simek's deeply flawed handbook and the limited scope of John Lindow's own, it was with high hopes that I waited for Andy Orchard's 2011 English translation of the Poetic Edda, or, alternately, as Orchard has chosen to go with here, the 'Elder Edda'.

The Poetic Edda by Unknown