The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy. By Margaret Clunies Ross. Making the Middle Ages, 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Pp. xiii + 290. EUR 55.

Thomas Percy was without doubt one of the major figures responsible for introducing the English public to medieval Scandinavian literature, history, and culture, and it is only fitting that his work be the subject of an analysis as thorough as the one it receives in this volume. The core of the book is a facsimile edition of Percy's Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, which was published in 1763. With the current growth of interest in the reception of Icelandic literature, it is high time that this historically and culturally important document was reprinted, along with copious explanatory notes by the editor. The five poems that Percy translated in Five Pieces are The Waking of Angantyr, Krákumál, Egill SkallagrÁmsson's Hofudlausn, Hákonarmál, and The Complaint of Harold (Hardrule). Following these poems are the facsimiles of what Percy called the "Icelandic originals "Êactually the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions he used, all of which employed the modernized Icelandic form typical of that time.

Peter A. Jorgensen
University of Georgia