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
