The Saga of the Volsungs

With the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok

De: Jackson Crawford - translator

Narrado por: Jackson Crawford

From the translator of the best-selling Poetic Edda comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature.

Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members - including, among others, the dragon slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.

©2017 Jackson Crawford (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Excellent SAGA (not a novel)

The stories are engaging, enjoyable, and enlightening. The people and monsters are excellent and the differences between Norse sagas and the Greco-Roman sagas is fascinating. While Oedipus runs from his fate, these characters just except prophesy as unavoidable and keep on going. Yet, they look for tricky ways around the oaths they take as inviolable. Boys of good families are taught fighting and strategy by becoming highway robbers for a few year (as long as you don't rob from your own family members). This is a saga, not a novel, so there is some repetition and many, many, similar sounding names for different characters.

This is very difficult material to narrate, and the author's narration was likely the best choice considering everything. This yielded a good, but far from great, result.

loved it

dr jackson is great, his translation and narration are wonderful. can't wait for his havamal transition to be on here.

Research

This book feels longer than it is but this is makes it easier to understand how these stories fit together.

Better than Poetic Edda

I didn't like Poetic Edda for it reselmbled a lot like The Silmarillion. Maybe that's why I felt The Saga of the Volsungs was better. Many of these stories are filled with action and often were gruesome, which I usually don't like to read. Yet, as Jackson Crawford pointed out in the introduction, you have to understand that the world we live is quite different than the Vikings'. If you didn't grasp that, you may find this book not upto your taste.

outstanding

loved it, tells the stories well while also giving the reader enough details and outside information to fully understand the sagas and their contents

Beautiful

Was very satisfying to get a window into what world lies hidden in the runes. Great AMERICAN author 🦅🦅🦅

Great Story and Narration

Loved the narration and the references to the Poetic Edda! The foreword was also very informative.

Good read

This would make a great reference book to learn more about Norse legends and lore

Edifying & dry reading

Old Norwegian words & culture explained in forward (or introduction?). Not vocally acted but I enjoyed it as a cultural revelation.

For Anyone Who Likes the 'Grimmest' of Folktales

A cabin hidden in a dark wood, vengeful heroes and heroines, shapeshifters, incest. No starry-eyed virgins or happy endings. Perfect for anyone who was enraptured by Germanic folktales as a child, hiding under the covers with a flashlight after being sent to bed. Crawford's reading of his own translation from the original Old Norse sounds exactly the way I heard similar tales in my head as a very young reader: matter-of-fact and pitiless. A reader doesn't have to be a sociopath to enjoy this literature. You just have to be in touch with the ghoulish side of your nature. Limited performance to 4 stars only because I'd prefer a slightly more deliberate pace. Crawford's is a wee bit too headlong.