The rich and compelling corpus of Old Norse poetry is one of the most important and influential areas of medieval European literature. What is less well known, however, is the quantity of the
material which can be attributed to women skalds. This book, intended for a broad audience, presents a bilingual edition (Old Norse and English) of this material, from the ninth to the
thirteenth century and beyond, with commentary and notes. The poems here reflect the dramatic and often violent nature of the sagas: their subject matter features Viking Age shipboard
adventures and shipwrecks; prophecies; curses; declarations of love and of revenge; duels, feuds and battles; encounters with ghosts; marital and family discord; and religious insults, among
many other topics. Their authors fall into four main categories: pre-Christian Norwegian and Icelandic sk獺ldkonur of the Viking Age; Icelandic sk獺ldkonur of the Sturlung Age (thirteenth
century); additional early sk獺ldkonur from the Islendingas繹gur and related material, not as historically verifiable as the first group; and mythical figures cited as reciting verse in the
legendary sagas (fornaldars繹gur). Sandra Ballif Straubhaar is Senior Lecturer in Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
