The Elder or Poetic Edda (Illustrated)

this book is awesome!! old norse and english side by side with great woodcut type art at the beginnings of the many poems. this is a really great book!i did almost knock off a star due to a print issue. pages 146 and 147 of "skirnismal" are blurred to the point of almost unreadable. another reviewer posted a photo of it so it seems that all the books have it, not just one. i found a simple remedy. as of this writing, you can find a pdf of this book at : [...]the pdf pages to find are 230 and 231. if you print them in "landscape" format rather than the usual "portrait", and cut them out, they fit pretty well on the pages in the book. i just pasted them on with glue stick. problem solved. its a bit of hassle, but well worth it to have a hard copy of this book. also, as you can see in the other reviewers photos, the pages arent white but have a darker shade as is common on older photo copies. once again, a small issue and i dont care, this book is too cool to worry about such small things.i recommend it highly, one of my favourite books ever!! nice translation too.

This is a great book, and the illustrations are very nice. I love having it in it's original language and and English translation on the facing page. The reason I didn't give this copy of the book 5 stars is because of the quality. I can't help but to feel like this was copied on a xerox machine or scanned into a computer and printed off on (slightly thicker than) copy paper, then bound in a nice paperback cover. I didn't notice until later that pages 146 and 147 must have been pulled off the xerox machine too quickly, they appear out of focus, crooked, and are in fact unreadable. :/ I am about to see if amazon can correct this. Whether they can of not, my review won't change. The homemade quality of the pages is just really off putting to me. For this quality, I could have copied the library's copy of this book page by page and spiral bound it myself for much less money and actually been able to read ALL of the pages.

Print on Demand books that are copies of an original and not an original themselves but don't make it clear they are not the original, to my mind, are misleading. This book is basically a scanned copy. It's cleanly done, though the important, appealing qualities of an original (which I thought it was) are absent -- it is a paperback and the pages are like a photocopy, though sufficiently legible. So it is useful as a reference. Be warned before you buy, this is not the book it appears to be, but a print-on-demand remake of the original. The reviews associated with it are for the original hard bound edition, not this one. I thought this was perhaps a paperback edition of the original, but it isn't.

If you're reading this & considering purchasing this volume, chances are you're already familiar with the Germanic mythological tradition & therefore interested in the illustrations, so go ahead & immediately purchase this wonderful bargain for the illustrations alone. It's a beautiful & fantastic volume. For English speakers who have even rudimentary linguistic familiarity with written Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish, it's even more beautiful & fantastic as each page is written in both Icelandic & English transforming The Elder Edda itself into a remarkable translating & linguistic exercise.If you're just beginning your personal inquiry into the Germanic mythological tradition, save this for later after thoroughly reading the Edda's, Saga's & myths in stand alone form without comments, interpretations, introductions & the like.

A very good read :) came in great quality, though I did notice that its basically a book put together from scanned copies of the original book.

the book was a little bit damaged

First of all, I really like this book, and am saddened that it's currently out of print. Some have expressed some criticism with the "Christianization" of the material, particularly in some of the illustrations, but it still is a favorite.Sombody should explain to these knuckleheads at Amazon that the title of the book is indeed "the Elder or Poetic Edda"; however, it is attributed (mistakenly) to an Icelandic bishop named Saemendur; Saemunder's first name is not Edda. The actual author is unknown. Olive Bray is the translator.Lavrans Reimer-MøllerCambridge MAUSA

pages 146 + 147 of the text (not the book, but the book that is photocopied within this book) are illegible due to a bad scanning process.On amazon.com this fault is mentioned, and I feel strongly it should be on amazon.co.uk as well - as buying a brand-new book shouldn't require mass research into whether it is, or isn't, readable.That said, the content is brilliant, having old norse and english translations side by side is a nice touch, and it was packed well and received without any scuffs or creases. The book is also fairly large , features a most welcome and lengthy introduction. It comes complete with index, bibliography and footnotes describing norse terms and characters that some may be unfamiliar with, which is also a bonus.Decide how much having two pages that can't be read at all impacts your personal experience, and then add or remove a star accordingly to my rating.

It's an old book that has been republished (auto-publication) but for once it's very well done. It's easy to read because the pages has been scanned and rendered clearly, the illustrations and the covers have been respected and are really good looking. It's not the full poetic Edda (the Heroic Lays seems absent), but many important texts are present here and more importantly the original Old Norse text is present too.