Product Description

With colour artwork by Gillian McClure, a collection of Norse myths.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #170594 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews

A review of the 'Norse myths'
The author retells the beautiful and colorful Norse mythology in an organized way which in it, it is comfortable to follow the development of the story and without losing in sense of Myth in the translation.
The many stories of that mythology are wonderful and capture the reader in the magical world of the Gods fighting against the giants and trying to keep their grip as rulers until the unavoidable Ragnarok.
The author also made good notes of each story which explains the story's origin and the introduction at the beginning of the book is very interesting and explains a lot about the Norse world and the development of its Mythology through the hundreds of years.
I recommend this book very much to the fans of this kind of literature, the Norse mythology is just fascinating and full of cleverness and humor.

Tal Katz.

Strange and disturbing stories we think we know.
Adult retelling of stories we think we know from the surviving original sources. Reading Crossley-Holland's book is like reading the real Grimm's Fairy Tales -- they are much stranger and more disturbing than you remember from the kiddie show about Thor and his hammer. The Aesir are a doomed race of flawed, violent, sometimes cruel but ultimately heroic gods. Odin is not always a benevolent father, but also is obsessed with knowledge and willing to kill, deceive and suffer intensely to get it. Freya is not only a war-goddess but a kind of personification of sex. The stories cover the building of Asgard, an ur-War between the Aesir and the ultimately allied Vanes, struggles between the gods and the Frost Giants, the mischief and ultimately evil of Loki, and an array of malevolent dwarves and monsters with names like Niddhog (the worm that gnaws the root of the world-tree Yggdrasil, Fenris the wolf of the end of the world. Incidentally, Tolkien got many of the names of his characters from the sources. Highly recommended.

Must-have reference.
Finally I've found it: the book of tales of Odin, and Thor, and Bifrost, and Ragnarok! What a pleasure to read the tales that inspired so much of the world's fantasy literature! Here you'll find the background stories behind and the likes of Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied or the Volsungs' Saga, and obviously the roots of Professor Tolkien's own Middle-Earth mythology, so numerous are the similarities.

Not only are the thirty-two myths comprised in this translation very well told and captivating, but the introduction and notes are very complete and interesting, not to mention the very practical glossary and index. I haven't read Snorri Sturluson's Edda so I can't compare, but I'm pretty sure Kevin Crossley-Holland's is one of the best reference books on the subject, a must-have on one's shelf.