The Völsunga Saga on Volsungasaga

The Story Of The Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) > With Excerpts From The Poetic Edda

• attestation: The Volsunga Saga was originally composed in Old Norse (Icelandic) during the thirteenth century by an anonymous author

  "Originally written in Icelandic (Old Norse) in the thirteenth century A.D., by an unknown hand."

• attestation: The saga draws substantially on older source material, some of which survives in the Poetic Edda

  "most of the material is based substantially on previous works, some centuries older. A few of these works have been preserved in the collection of Norse poetry known as the "Poetic Edda"."

The Story Of The Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) > With Excerpts From The Poetic Edda > Translators' Preface.

• attestation: The Volsunga Saga is described as the most complete and dramatic form of the great Northern Epic

  "this translation of the most complete and dramatic form of the great Epic of the North"

• attestation: The Volsunga Saga was being translated into English for the first time in this edition

  "this great work, now for the first time, strange to say, translated into English"

• comparison: The Volsung Tale is called the Great Story of the North, equivalent to what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks

  "this is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks"

• attestation: The saga is described as essentially an unversified poem that had never before been translated into English

  "this Volsung Tale, which is in fact an unversified poem, should never before been translated into English."