author : Jackson Crawford

This is the course guidebook that accompanies the 24 lecture “Great Course” of the same name. It is essentially an abbreviated transcript of each lecture, a few pictures, and some related reading. (I watched the lectures, which is what I am reviewing here, and am using the book simply as an aide-memoire.)

The course focusses on the source material from the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, covering the history of the gods and other characters depicted therein. It also covers the Viking mindset, and, later in the course, branches out into some other sagas, and some related European tales, showing where characters and events from one tale are depicted differently, or even merged, in other tellings. There is a lot of interesting discussion, but the main take-aways from me is how little source material there is underneath all the study, and how fluid and multi-versioned the tales were even at the time they were being written down.