Present clockwise from bottom left:
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The Viking, Tre Trykare -- Crescent, 1972
A History of the Vikings, Gwyn Jones -- Oxford, 1968 rev. 1984.
The Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson -- tr. Jean Young --
University of California Press, 1992 (Bowes & Bowes 1954)
Egil's Saga, ER Eddison -- Cambridge University Press, 1930.
The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson -- Abelard-Schuman, 1954.
Njal's Saga et al., Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Palsson -- Folio Society, 2002.
Vikings (Runequest), Greg Stafford & Sandy Petersen -- Avalon Hill, 1985.
The Long Ships, Frans Bengtsson -- Collins, 1984 (Collins 1954).
Beowulf, tr. Seamus Heaney -- Norton 2002.
Mother of Kings, Poul Anderson -- Tor 2001.
Historical Atlas of the Vikings, John Haywood - Penguin 1995.
The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems, tr. Henry Bellows -- Dover, 2007.
The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems, tr. Henry Bellows -- Dover, 2004.
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Im careful how I spend money on books which I buy at the rate of one or two a week. I want to limit myself to two large bookshelves so for some time now this has required regular jettisoning of good material, at the dim end of enthralling, to make room.
Brick bookstores, and there is a very good one left in Dublin, rarely have anything I want. The fiction I read tends to be old and is reprinted on junk paper with artless computer aided cover illustrations so I order older editions online. Non-fiction for decades has typically been edited by the unintelligent ideologue, the modern academic, who doesn't realise that the only useful function he can serve is to motivate the reader like an unobtrusive guide who remains silent except to point out the subtle and the interesting which might escape attention when first we pass through. He, or often she, is not remotely as important as the writer of the work. And so I order older editions, edited and introduced in the 1960s or 1970s.
Credible recommendation is vital when ordering unseen books online. Greg Stafford's excellent bibliography in the Vikings supplement was where I read a note on
The Viking edited by
Tre Trykare. This hefty volume is filled with strikingly informative deft line drawings of ships, of men and women and of mundane tools and household objects. If I was asked to recommend a single book from above it would be that.
Egil's Saga was translated by ER Eddison, the greatest writer of fantasy, and hardly needs further words of recommendation. Poul Anderson's
The Broken Sword is considered superior in the
1954 edition, and I have to admit it is good enough to elbow itself into the short list of fantasy works I admire. I haven't read the 1971 revised edition to compare.
The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson is a splendid historical adventure story, an authoritative page-turner. The Norton edition of Beowulf offers great value as among the essays included is Tolkien's 1936 lecture,
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. Since the earliest Norton edition is from 2002 there is the obligatory daft feminist gibber, in this case Jane Chance's
The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother. As is my habit I heartily excised this stain with my craft knife and metal rule and fucked it in the bin.
I neglected to include in the photo above my copy of the D'Aulaires'
Norse Myths 1967 Doubleday (1995 The New York Review of Books). This is a glorious and invigorating book. I posted some pictures from the
d'Aulaires' Greek Myths before and may do the same for the book of Norse Myths. I consider
The Prose Edda to be a companion book as it covers the same material in a highly respected translation.
Staffords
Vikings is an example of a high calibre gaming resource but it can't compete with the primary material it draws on in providing a wide ground for the imagination to roam over. Some people complain that they don't have time to read source works but these same people have no shortage of time to read gaming product over and over again. It is really a matter of standards; in the same way as it pains many gamers to read books for grown-ups, it pains me to read mediocre gaming drivel in which a childish aptitude for imitation and misunderstanding is transfigured through gamer enthusiasm as "fit for the purpose of gaming".
The shallow content in gaming books enforces literalness from a DM/reader in order to squeeze as much information out of a scenario that exists between the art and the stats. We see an obsession among gamers as to how best to present the scant content for extrusion; the ubiquitous and tedious sandbox is one outcome of this obsession. My approach has been to read widely and improvise during games on selection. There is ample time for selection of ideas by association with the unfolding reality during an eight hour game. I frequently ask the players to justify individual and party strategy to each other as a delay while I scribble down ideas, remembering to nod slowly and appreciatively when I have finished writing. One principle in reading widely is not to read books because they may be relevant for gaming but because they are inherently interesting and since I am interested in gaming too I can plunder much of what I read - but
indirectly.
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