'She sees, coming up a second time,
Earth from the ocean, eternally green;
the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,
over the mountain hunting fish.'

After the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean, and life is renewed. The Poetic Edda begins with The Seeress's Prophecy which recounts the creation of the world, and looks forward to its destruction and rebirth. In this great collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, the exploits of gods and humans are related. The one-eyed Odin, red-bearded Thor, Loki the trickster, the lovely goddesses and the giants who are their enemies walk beside the heroic Helgi, Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, Brynhild the shield-maiden, and the implacable Gudrun. New in this revised translation are the quest-poem The Lay of Svipdag and The Waking of Angantyr, in which a girl faces down her dead father to retrieve his sword.

Comic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and a new generation of video-game and film makers.

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The Norse Myths presents the infamous Viking gods, from the mighty syr, led by Óðinn, and the mysterious Vanir, to Thor and the mythological cosmos they inhabit. Passages translated from Old Norse bring this legendary world to life, from the myths of creation to ragnarök, the prophesied end of the world at the hands of Loki's army of monsters and giants, and everything that comes in between: the long and problematic relationship between the gods and the giants, the (mis)adventures of human heroes and heroines, with their family feuds, revenges, marriages, and murders; and the interaction between the gods and mortals.

Photographs and drawings show a range of Norse sites, objects, and characters, from Viking ship burials to dragons on runestones. Dr. Carolyne Larrington describes the Norse myths' origins in pre-Christian Scandinavia and Iceland, and their survival in archaeological artifacts and written sources, from Old Norse sagas and poems to the less-approving accounts of medieval Christian writers. She traces their influences into the work of Wagner, William Morris, and J. R. R. Tolkien, and even Game of Thrones in the resurrection of the Fimbulvetr, or Mighty Winter.

She sees, coming up a second time,
earth from the ocean, eternally green;
the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,
over the mountain hunting fish.

After the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean, and life is renewed. The Poetic Edda begins with The Seeress's Prophecy which recounts the creation of the world, and looks forward to its destruction and rebirth. In this great collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, the exploits of gods and humans are related. The one-eyed Odin, red-bearded Thor, Loki the trickster, the lovely goddesses, and the giants who are their enemies walk beside the heroic Helgi, Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, Brynhild the shield-maiden, and the implacable Gudrun. This translation also features the quest-poem The Lay of Svipdag and The Waking of Angantyr, in which a girl faces down her dead father to retrieve his sword.

Comic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty, and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and speak to us as freely as when they were first written down seven hundred and fifty years ago.

This brilliantly original and accessible guide explores how Valhalla and its Valkyries have inspired our cultural landscape, from Wagner to the Marvel Universe. Carolyne Larrington's elegantly written retellings capture the beauty of the original myths, while also delving deeper into the history of their meanings, offering the reader an intelligent and up-to-date take on these powerful stories.

A ruggedly handsome blond man swings his huge hammer. Gaunt-faced figures with icicle crowns and frost-rimmed cheekbones march from the north through an endless winter. These strange supernatural figures might sound familiar--and also like creatures of myth and legend. Yet they haven't stepped straight off the vellum of ancient manuscripts. Rather, these compelling characters are contemporary reimaginings of mythic figures from Old Norse mythology. All speak to our contemporary hopes and fears, bridging the gap between a vanished medieval past and a vibrant, living present. Larrington guides us on an enchanting journey through centuries of heroism, cruelty, and magic, while also exploring how these stories speak to the enduring human condition. This book is for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of Norse mythology and its cultural resonances through the centuries.

Central to the legends of King Arthur are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses, those spellcasters and mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny, bestriding the Camelot mythology with a dark and brooding presence. Yet until now no book has told their stories in depth. Carolyne Larrington brings these dangerous women fully and vibrantly to life. Here is Morgan-le-Fay, a complex sorceress of immense cunning and skill, immortalised by Helen Mirren's Morgana in John Boorman's film Excalibur. Here too are the mystical Lady of the Lake; the beguiling Viviane, Merlin's deadly nemesis; and Morgause, Queen of Orkney, mother to Mordred, Arthur's incestuously-conceived son and his bitterest foe. Echoing the search for the Grail by the Knights of the Round Table, Larrington takes her readers on an intriguing quest - to discover why, over the centuries, the Arthurian enchrantresses have continued to bewitch those caught in their seductive web.
Whether chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, benevolent or filled with hatred, the enchantresses are seen to represent a strain of female power that challenges male chivalric values from within. King Arthur's Enchantresses makes a unique contribution to writing on the Arthurian myths. It will intrigue and delight anyone with an interest in mythology, religion, cultural history and medieval literature.

This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society. Dramatically recreating the voices of the legendary past, eddic poems distil moments of high emotion as human heroes and supernatural beings alike grapple with betrayal, loyalty, mortality and love. These poems relate the most famous deeds of gods such as inn and rr with their adversaries the giants; they bring to life the often fraught interactions between kings, queens and heroes as well as their encounters with valkyries, elves, dragons and dwarfs. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters in this volume showcase the poetic riches of the eddic corpus, and reveal its relevance to the history of poetics, gender studies, pre-Christian religions, art history and archaeology.

This book explores the connections between history and fantasy in George RR Martin's immensely popular book series 'A Song of Ice and Fire' and the international TV sensation HBO TV's Game of Thrones. Acknowledging the final season's foregrounding of the cultural centrality of history, truth and memory in the confrontation between Bran and the Night King, the volume takes full account of the TV show's conclusion in its multiple readings across from medieval history, its institutions and practices, as depicted in the books to the show's own particular medievalism. The topics under discussion include the treatment of the historical phenomena of chivalry, tournaments, dreams, models of education, and the supernatural, and the different ways in which these are mediated in Martin's books and the TV show. The collection also includes a new study of one of Martin's key sources, Maurice Druon's Les Rois Maudits, in-depth explorations of major characters in their medieval contexts, and provocative reflections on the show's controversial handling of gender and power politics.

Written by an international team of medieval scholars, historians, literary and cultural experts, bringing their own unique perspectives to the multiple societies, belief-systems and customs of the 'Game of Thrones' universe, Memory and Medievalism in George RR Martin and Game of Thrones offers original and sparky insights into the world-building of books and show.

A significant new account of emotion in Middle English literature, proposing key methodologies for the analysis of feeling and affect in literary texts. It shows how contemporary audiences learned to understand emotion in themselves and others, through empathetic response, the development of fictionality and the emergence of interiority.

Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the identities and psyches of those who inhabit them? In her sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of imaginary and fantastical beings has moulded the cultural history of the nation. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie, preternatural landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o'Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee, or water-horse, and even Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal.
Focusing on liminal points where the boundaries between this world and that of the supernatural grow thin those marginal tide-banks, saltmarshes, floodplains, moors and rock-pools wherein mystery lies the author shows how mythologies of Mermen, Green men and Wild-men have helped and continue to help human beings deal with such ubiquitous concerns as love and lust, loss and death and continuity and change. Evoking the Wild Hunt, the ghostly bells of Lyonesse and the dread fenlands haunted by Grendel, and ranging the while from Shetland to Jersey and from Ireland to East Anglia, this is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where Gog, Magog and their fellow giants lie in wait.

Carolyne Larrington has gathered together a uniquely comprehensive collection of writing by, for and about medieval women, spanning one thousand years and Europe from Iceland to Byzantiu. The extracts are arranged thematically, dealing with the central areas of medieval women's lives and their relation to social and cultural institutions. Each section is contextualised with a brief historical introduction, and the materials span literary, historical, theological and other narrative and imaginative writing. The writings here uncover and confound the stereotype of the medieval woman as lady or virgin by demonstrating the different roles and meanings that the sign of woman occupied in the imaginative space of the medieval period.
Larrington's clear and accessible editorial material and the modern English translations of all the extracts mean this work is ideally suited for students. Women and Writing in Early Europe: A Sourcebook also contains an extensive and fully up-to-date bibliography, making it not only essential reading for undergraduates and post graduates but also a valuable tool for scholars.

A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.

The literature of the European Middle Ages attends closely to the relationship of brother and sister, laying bare sibling behaviours in their most dramatic forms as models to emulate, to marvel at or to avoid. The literary treatment of siblings opens up multiple perspectives on brothers' and sisters' emotions: love, hate, rivalry, desire, nurturing and ambivalence underlie sibling stories. These narratives are in turn inflected by rank, social context andmost crucially, gender.
This book examines these sibling relationships, focusing on the important vernacular literatures of Iceland, France, England and Germany, and building on recent research on siblings in psychology, history and social science. Multiple and subtle patterns in sibling interaction are teased out, such as the essential sibling task of borderwork (the establishment of individuality despite genetic resemblance), and the tensions caused by the easy substitutability of one sibling for another in certain social situations. When the sibling bond is extended to the in-law relation, complex emotional, strategic and political forces and powerful ambivalences nuancethe relationship still further. Quasi-siblings: foster- or sworn-brothers complete the sibling picture in ways which reflect and contrast with the sibling blood-tie.

CAROLYNE LARRINGTON is a Fellow and Tutor in medieval English literature at St John's College, University of Oxford.

The debate and discussion around Game of Thrones has covered questions of climate issues, industrialization, and questions of power, sex and gender. But in this essential companion to both George R.R. Martin's novels and the HBO show, Carolyne Larrington explores how this remarkable universe was constructed from the actual Middle Ages. The book examines sigils, giants, dragons and direwolves in medieval texts; ravens, old gods and the Weirwood in Norse myth; and a gothic, exotic orient in the eastern continent, Essos. From the White Walkers to the Red Woman, from Casterly Rock to the Shivering Sea, this is an indispensable guide to the 21st-century's most important fantasy creation.

'All men must die': or 'Valar Morghulis', as the traditional Essos greeting is rendered in High Valyrian. And die they do - in prodigious numbers; in imaginatively varied and gruesome ways; and often in terror within the viciously unpredictable world that is HBO's sensational evocation of Game of Thrones. Epic in scope and in imaginative breadth, the stories that are brought to life tell of the dramatic rise and fall of nations, the brutal sweeping away of old orders and the advent of new autarchs in the eternal quest for dominion.

Yet, as this book reveals, many potent and intimate narratives of love and passion can be found within these grand landscapes of heroism, honour and death. They focus on strong relationships between women and family, as well as among the anti-heroes, the 'cripples, bastards and broken things'. In this vital follow-up to Winter Is Coming (2015), acclaimed medievalist Carolyne Larrington explores themes of power, blood-kin, lust and sex in order to draw entirely fresh meanings out of the show of the century.

A wideranging and groundbreaking investigation of the sibling relationship as shown in European literature, from 500 to 1500.

The literature of the European Middle Ages attends closely to the relationship of brother and sister, laying bare sibling behaviours in their most dramatic forms as models to emulate, to marvel at or to avoid. The literary treatment of siblings opens up multiple perspectives on brothers' and sisters' emotions: love, hate, rivalry, desire, nurturing and ambivalence underlie sibling stories. These narratives are in turn inflected by rank, social context andmost crucially, gender.
This book examines these sibling relationships, focusing on the important vernacular literatures of Iceland, France, England and Germany, and building on recent research on siblings in psychology, history and social science. Multiple and subtle patterns in sibling interaction are teased out, such as the essential sibling task of borderwork (the establishment of individuality despite genetic resemblance), and the tensions caused by the easy substitutability of one sibling for another in certain social situations. When the sibling bond is extended to the in-law relation, complex emotional, strategic and political forces and powerful ambivalences nuancethe relationship still further. Quasi-siblings: foster- or sworn-brothers complete the sibling picture in ways which reflect and contrast with the sibling blood-tie.

Carolyne Larrington is a Fellow and Tutor in medieval English literature at St John's College, University of Oxford.

This is the first comprehensive and accessible survey in English of Old Norse eddic poetry: a remarkable body of literature rooted in the Viking Age, which is a critical source for the study of early Scandinavian myths, poetics, culture and society. Dramatically recreating the voices of the legendary past, eddic poems distil moments of high emotion as human heroes and supernatural beings alike grapple with betrayal, loyalty, mortality and love. These poems relate the most famous deeds of gods such as inn and rr with their adversaries the giants; they bring to life the often fraught interactions between kings, queens and heroes as well as their encounters with valkyries, elves, dragons and dwarfs. Written by leading international scholars, the chapters in this volume showcase the poetic riches of the eddic corpus, and reveal its relevance to the history of poetics, gender studies, pre-Christian religions, art history and archaeology.

A Store of Common Sense is the first comparative study in English of Old Icelandic and Old English wisdom poetry. It examines problems of form, unity, and coherence, and how the genre responds to social change, both reflecting and shaping the thinking of the communities which originated it. Larrington's book explores the possibility of Christian influence on Norse texts and demonstrates the impact of Christian learning on the ancient pagan genre. The existence of a gnomic key in Norse and English narrative verse is also shown.

This book explores the connections between history and fantasy in George RR Martin's immensely popular book series 'A Song of Ice and Fire' and the international TV sensation HBO TV's Game of Thrones. Acknowledging the final season's foregrounding of the cultural centrality of history, truth and memory in the confrontation between Bran and the Night King, the volume takes full account of the TV show's conclusion in its multiple readings across from medieval history, its institutions and practices, as depicted in the books to the show's own particular medievalism. The topics under discussion include the treatment of the historical phenomena of chivalry, tournaments, dreams, models of education, and the supernatural, and the different ways in which these are mediated in Martin's books and the TV show. The collection also includes a new study of one of Martin's key sources, Maurice Druon's Les Rois Maudits, in-depth explorations of major characters in their medieval contexts, and provocative reflections on the show's controversial handling of gender and power politics.

Written by an international team of medieval scholars, historians, literary and cultural experts, bringing their own unique perspectives to the multiple societies, belief-systems and customs of the 'Game of Thrones' universe, Memory and Medievalism in George RR Martin and Game of Thrones offers original and sparky insights into the world-building of books and show.