Read more
Heidrek''s Saga is a medieval entertainment - a ''romance'', but a romance that derives little of its matter from the literature of France or Germany. It is an example of a kind of story-telling that was flourishing in Iceland by the beginning of the twelfth century, and which (in contrast to the more celebrated ''Sagas of the Icelanders'') told of legendary figures whose origins lie far back in time beyond the settlement of the country. The elements of the story, diverse in age and atmosphere, are unified in the theme of a possession bearing an ancestral curse, as it passes down the generations; but the saga''s peculiar value lies in the older poems which the unknown author set into the framework of his narrative, including The Battle of the Goths and the Huns , perhaps the oldest of all the Northern heroic lays, The Waking of Angantyr , source of many eighteenth-century ''Gothic Odes'', and the unique riddle-contest between King Heidrek and the god Odin in disguise. Translated from the Icelandic with Introduction, Notes and Appendices by Christopher Tolkien, then Lecturer in Old English at New College, Oxford, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise was first published in 1960 in Nelson''s Icelandic Texts series. Marking Christopher Tolkien''s centenary, this first ever paperback edition also includes his original essay ''The Battle of the Goths and the Huns'' as a bonus chapter.
About the author
Christopher Tolkien was born on 21 November 1924. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force, later returning to Oxford University to become a Fellow and Tutor. He devoted himself after his father’s death in 1973 to the editing of his unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin. He died in 2020 at the age of 95.
