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Showing posts with the label Steingrímur Thorsteinsson

the implications of Norse elements in fairy tales.

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Flipping through Andrew Lang's The Crimson Fairy Book (1903 CE), I read  a pretty brilliant NorsePlay  remix in the story of  The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnföder . This story is full of loans & borrowings from across the lore, the large ones being the hero named Sigurd (from The Saga of the Volsungs ), the horse Gullfaxi (from the race in  Skáldskaparmál ) which one is forbidden to ride (this rule from  Hrafnkels saga applied to his horse Freyfaxi), and a weather effecting magic item that summons hail (from The Story of Thorstein Mansion-Might ). There are a couple other lesser parallels to be divined, but the above are the most certain & definitely present. [story illustration by Henry Justice Ford.] Even without being well-versed enough in the Norse Lore to identify any of the above, the story in itself stands alone as a fun tale. Sourcewise, Lang adapts the story from an 1884 CE German translation by Viennese politician & Scandinavian language expert Josef