Bloodhoof E-Book

Gerður Kristný

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Bloodhoof is a compulsively modern recasting of the ancient Eddic poem Skírnimál – a minimalist epic telling of the abduction of Gerður Gymisdóttir from a land of giants and her eventual return from the court of Freyr with her beloved son. The journey is full of iron-hard rocks, ice and serpents, and fields of corn whispering in the breeze. Bloodhoof is a story of "ghosts and long-dead heroes" – a game of thrones that will linger in the memory. Parallel-text verse in Icelandic and English. Gerður Kristný was born in Reykyavik in 1970. She has produced 18 books of fiction and non-fiction, as well as children's books and poetry. Her work recently featured in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, and in the October 2011 issue of Words Without Borders. She has also been a Featured Poet in Eyewear magazine. Her numerous prizes include the Icelandic Literature Prize in 2010 for Bloodhoof. Rory McTurk is Emeritus Professor of Icelandic Studies at the University of Leeds, and the editor of the Blackwell's Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (2007). This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.

Leseprobe

BLOODHOOF

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill,Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright in original poems © Gerður Kristný 2012

Translation copyright © Rory McTurk 2012

Introduction copyright © Rory McTurk 2012

Copyright in this edition © Arc Publications, 2012

Design by Tony Ward

Printed in Great Britain by the

MPG Book Group, Bodmin & King’s Lynn

978 1908376 10 7 (pbk)

978 1908376 11 4 (hbk)

Cover image and illustrations © Alexandra Buhl / Forlagið

Blóðhófnirwas originally publishedin2010byForlagið Publishing, Reykjavík, Iceland, by whose kind permission the Icelandic text is reproduced in this volume.

This book is copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part, nor of the whole, may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications Ltd.

The publishers acknowledge the financial assistance of

Gerður Kristný

BLOODHOOF

BLÓÐHÓFNIR

Translated from the Icelandic

by Rory McTurk

2012

CONTENTS

Introduction

Blóðhófnir • Bloodhoof

Biographical Notes

INTRODUCTION

Gerður Kristný’s poemBlóðhófnirspeaks in large measure for itself. Non-Scandinavian readers may find it helpful, however, to have a short introduction to the literary and mythological tradition from which it springs.

Gerður Kristný, an Icelandic poet and novelist, is here allying herself closely, but at the same time critically, with the literary tradition of her native land. Her poem is a modern Icelandic woman’s response to the story of Freyr and Gerður as told in two main sources. One is the anonymous poem known asSkírnismál(‘Words of Skírnir’) orFör Skírnis(‘Skírnir’s journey’), preserved in its fullest form as part of the so-called Poetic Edda in an Icelandic manuscript dating from the second half of the thirteenth century. The other source is the Prose Edda by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), a guide for poets written in the first half of the thirteenth century and containing extended accounts of Old Norse mythology for the benefit of poets seeking to make use of mythological allusion. It is clear that the poem predates Snorri’s work and was known to him, since he quotes briefly from it. Both the quotation and his version of the story indicate, however, that he knew the poem in a form rather different from that in which it is preserved most fully.

Skírnismál’