[This rating and review refers to the Bellows translation, volume 2.]
Well annotated, competently translated, and best of all, it reads like poetry. This volume covers the poems of the Elder Edda that don't have a necessarily mythological theme but deal with the heroic exploits of kings and warriors. Vital to understanding the culture of the Dark Age north. ( )

This is a fantastic book on so many levels. The explanation of the translations of the poems is well done, the translations are well-crafted and follow the meter of the original, and the footnotes are more important than I first thought. In other words, it was not a quick read through ancient Icelandic poetry! It was worth reading to gain an understanding in this work that is important to music, Tolkien, and mythology in general.

All that said, this translation is from 1926, long before Wagner became problematic. But it's also from 1926, so there were few (if any) women writing about this subject matter and comparative mythology was in its infancy. Bellows compares his translation of the material with other translators, and gives justification for why he chose to include a line or change the order in a stanza. He also gives detailed notes of the movement of a poem's final written format, gathering information about whether it originated in Northern Germany (mentions of the Burgundians and Attila the Hun are key here) or whether it came from more northern countries. All of that information is necessary to a greater understanding of these poems.

What I would like to see now is women's research on this same subject matter, especially since the oldest poem in the cycle, Guthrun's Lament, involves the repeated telling in the other poems of Guthrun's life. She is wife, sister, mother; in one cycle she is originally married to Attila the Hun (yes, really, that Attila) while in another he is a later marriage and it is he, and not her brothers, who betray her beloved Sigrun (Siegfried). Is she one of many betrayed women? Or was she a famous queen in her own right about whom tales have sprung no matter their original subject matter (think: King Arthur)?

Worth reading, though, especially for those with an interest in Tolkien, or early poetry, or Scandinavian/Icelandic history. ( )

While Norse mythology has seen an increase of interest in the past half century, not so it’s heroic sagas though as seen in this book there is a reason for that. The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems is half of a collection of anonymously written poems from across the Norse world and translated in the early 20th Century by Henry Adam Bellows.

The heroic poems are divided into three lays or cycles: Helgi, Niflung, and Jormunrekkr. The first three poems feature the early Danish hero, Helgi, through all of them cover some of the same events. The overwhelming number of poems are a part of the Niflung cycle which is a Norse rendition of the German heroic epics connected with Siegfried—of Wagner operatic fame. The final two poems are about the revenge against Jormunrekkr by two brothers of the wife he killed as incited by their mother Guthrun from the Niflung cycle.

While some individual poems are good, “Atlamol en Gronlenzku” being one example, many more are pieced together and or cover the same events though written by different writers. Once you have read several poems in a row about the same events or one explicit event, all the poems are lessened in quality. After a while, one is looking to see how different writers create different ways to cover the same thing but grow quickly unimpressed especially when Bellows explains in introductions or footnotes that some lines are probably from a different poem.

Overall, this is a very well translated collection of poems, some of which are very good, however do to the fact many of the cover the same things over and over the overall collection because burdensome to read. ( )