Axe-Age, Wolf-Age: Selection from the Norse Myths

Retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Illustrated by Hannah Firmin. In retelling these myths, first published in my book 'The Norse Myths', I closely followed the two thirteenth-century Icelandic sources (the thirty-four poems of the 'Elder Edda' and Snorri Sturluson’s 'Prose Edda') on which we depend for much the greater part of our knowledge of Norse mythology, but did not hesitate to develop hints, flesh out dramatic situations and add snatches of dialogue. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and my own observation of Iceland, I tried to portray some descriptive background to the myths - a background the original audience would have taken for granted. And I found it right to use good, blunt words with Anglo-Saxon roots wherever I could do so. Since there is no 'right' order for the myths, which were the product of countless people, times and places, I simply attempted to find a psychologically satisfying sequence, leading inescapably towards Ragnarok, that reduced contradictions and chronological inconsistencies to a minimum. In reprinting twenty-two myths for this edition, I have followed the text of 'The Norse Myths' except, here and there, to omit an insignificant name, or to hone some sound or meaning.