Jómsvíkinga saga (The Saga of the Jómsvikings) belongs to the very earliest of the preserved Icelandic sagas that concern secular protagonists. The fairly short saga continues to attract attention today, both for the memorable heroics of its narrative--the famous oaths of the Jómsvikings, and their stoicism in the face of execution foremost among them--and for its unique place in Old Icelandic literature, standing as not quite a historical saga (in the vein of e.g. Heimskringla) and not quite a romance or mythical-heroic saga (in the vein of e.g. Vǫlsunga saga).
The title under review here is a compact volume containing a complete English translation of the saga, together with an introduction, a few endnotes, a bibliography of related readings, and an index of persons and places. The translators are Alison Finlay (who has published translations of some of the Sagas of Icelanders, particularly the sagas of poets, as well as a translation of Heimskringla with Anthony Faulkes), and Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir of the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies (whose many publications on Jómsvíkinga saga must form the basis for any serious future study of that saga).
The introduction serves as a concise but thorough guide to the historical and literary context of this saga, and even to its manuscript tradition, summing up in an impressively clear twelve pages what might require other writers three times as many pages to say. The translators take care to explain here (in "Note on the Translation," pp. 11-12) that among the sometimes significantly differing redactions, it is on the version of manuscript AM 291 4to that they have chosen to base their translation. This is a fortunate and probably correct decision, as there are good reasons (explained in brief by the translators) to consider this version closest to the original, and it is also the version on which the Old Norse text in the forthcoming edition for Íslenzk fornrit will be based.
But the meat of the book is of course its translation, for which the translators state their principles thus in the introduction (11-12):
"The text has been translated as literally as possible, with much of the original sentence structure retained, and the variation in tenses common in Old Icelandic narratives reproduced, even where this entails switching from present to past and back again in the course of a sentence. This may make the reader work harder, but endeavors to capture some of the flavor of the original style and register, in particular, the unevenness of style characteristic of an early Old Norse text."
This method of translation creates what is often simply a calque of the Old Norse original, which is useful to the student of Old Norse but in fact not necessarily useful to the otherwise educated reader, who expects a clear idea of the content of the saga. Some might question the necessity of making such a reader "work harder," particularly those who believe it is a translator's function to remove impediments for the reader. But given that the introduction does not specify the kind of students for whom the title stipulates the translation was created, if we assume that those are in fact students of Old Norse, this translation serves those students well.
To demonstrate the principles of translation used in this volume, near the beginning of chapter 10 (49), we read, "Nothing but bad treatment I thought you gave the crew that I gave you last summer" translating Til ills eins þótti mér þú hafa þat lið er ek fekk þér í fyrra sumar,with the order of corresponding words identical to that in the original and fairly awkward from the perspective of a typical reader of English. Fortunately, idioms are translated into effective English rather than calqued (til ills eins, for example, would be more literally "to bad alone"). But the spelling of names according to Old Icelandic norms (e.g. Queen Þyri rather than Thyri) also suggests that the intended audience is students of Old Norse, given that no explanation is provided in the introduction or elsewhere to help an uninitiated reader know how to read the letter thorn.
Beyond the stated methods the translators adhere to, a reader might question the virtue in some of their silent decisions, such as the use of archaic cognates rather than more readily understood modern terms ("whelps" and "bitches" on p. 20 and again on p. 22 make an antiquated impression). These archaisms also stand awkwardly next to expressions like "man-eater" (translating vergjǫrn, p. 30), which may be a regional slang term, but will not register for every reader. There is also the matter of color terms: both svartr (e.g. 19) and blár (25) are translated "black." While many translators believe that both these color terms referred to "black," it might be beneficial to signal to the reader in some way that a different term has been used in the original, especially in a translation that is otherwise so exact in duplicating every wrinkle of the original language.
Nevertheless, on some points of translation that the reader might have questions about, the translators are clear in commendable ways that deserve wider imitation. The best example of this is in the handling of numbers given in hundreds and thousands, where the original wording is duplicated along with the translators' impression of the total meant in Arabic numerals in parentheses, e.g. "two hundred (240)" on p. 49. This simple expedient eliminates any confusion both about the words in the original text and the translators' impression of their mathematical meaning to us today, without bogging down the text with endnotes or lengthy paraphrases.
Overall, an English translation of this important saga made from the best available surviving variant is welcome, especially given the translators' relevant experience with the text. Some will have quibbles with certain of the translation practices applied, but the volume will be most useful to the exact audience most likely to seek it out: advanced students making their way through the Old Norse text.