The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse-Icelandic Prose

Book excerpt: Saints’ legends form a substantial portion of Old Norse–Icelandic literature, and can be found in more than four hundred manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts dating from shortly before the twelfth century to the 1700s. With The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse–Icelandic Prose, Kirsten Wolf has undertaken a complete revision of the fifty-year-old handlist The Lives of the Saints in Old Norse Prose. This updated handlist organizes saints’ names, manuscripts, and editions of individual lives with references to the approximate dates of the manuscripts, as well as modern Icelandic editions and translations. Each entry concludes with secondary literature about the legend in question. These features combine to make The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse–Icelandic Prose an invaluable resource for scholars and students in the field.