The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise

Christopher Tolkien’s masterly translation of the Icelandic Heidrek’s Saga, including the dramatic Battle of the Goths and the Huns, the lyrical Waking of Angantyr, and the unique riddle-contest between King Heidrek and the god Odin.

Heidrek’s Saga is a medieval entertainment – a ‘romance’, but a romance that derives little of its matter from the literature of France or Germany. It is an example of a kind of story-telling that was flourishing in Iceland by the beginning of the twelfth century, and which (in contrast to the more celebrated ‘Sagas of the Icelanders’) told of legendary figures whose origins lie far back in time beyond the settlement of the country.

The elements of the story, diverse in age and atmosphere, are unified in the theme of a possession bearing an ancestral curse, as it passes down the generations; but the saga’s peculiar value lies in the older poems which the unknown author set into the framework of his narrative, including The Battle of the Goths and the Huns, perhaps the oldest of all the Northern heroic lays, The Waking of Angantyr, source of many eighteenth-century ‘Gothic Odes’, and the unique riddle-contest between King Heidrek and the god Odin in disguise.

Translated from the Icelandic with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by Christopher Tolkien, then Lecturer in Old English at New College, Oxford, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise was first published in 1960 in Nelson’s Icelandic Texts series. Marking Christopher Tolkien's centenary, this first ever paperback edition also includes his original essay 'The Battle of the Goths and the Huns' as a bonus chapter.

‘Admirable … There is an Icelandic text with a facing translation, an informative introduction and good, crisp notes, and finally a generous set of appendices. The translation of the prose parts is clear, forceful and accurate.’ Times Literary Supplement

Christopher Tolkien, born on 21 November 1924, is the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. At the end of the war he returned to Oxford University and became a Fellow and Tutor in English of New College in 1964, lecturing in the University on early English and northern literature. Appointed by J.R.R. Tolkien to be his literary executor, he has devoted himself since his father's death in 1973 to the editing and publication of unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion and Beowulf, and the collections entitled Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth. Since 1975 he has lived in France with his wife Baillie.

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