'Old Norse for Modern Times (Vikingverse)' – Ian Stuart Sharpe, Joshua Gillingham, Dr. Arngrímur Vídalín


In the interests of full disclosure, I was offered the chance of reading 'Old Norse for Modern Times' in return for a fair and honest review. My reading has been headed down a Viking influenced path, just recently, so of course I said yes. I would have said yes in Norse but I hadn't read the book, at that point, so had to settle for saying it in plain old English (which does the job but Old Norse is much better, as you'll discover in a bit).

So here goes, in a first for 'Lord Samper's Library', a review of a phrase book. Not just any old phrase book though...

This is normally the paragraph where I copy and paste some blurb to give myself a little breathing space before the review itself. Not this time though, 'Old Norse for Modern Times' is pretty much exactly what it says it is; a collection of old Norse phrases that you would probably never have used back then but are just the trick for any number of situations today.

So yeah, no big surprises in the format (I mean come on, it's a phrase book, what were you expecting?) but give it a chance, dig a little further and there are any number of little gems waiting for you to say them. For a book that's only a hundred and two pages long; Sharpe, Gillingham and Vidalin have cast their net wide and drawn in phrases from everywhere (even a little Old Norse for these quarantine times). It's safe to say that there's something for everyone here and that includes me.

My own journey, through 'Old Norse', confirmed a sneaking suspicion that everything sounds better in Old Norse. Seriously, whether it's lines from 'Star Wars' ( Eigi ero þetta velmennin er leitar þú at) or 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' ( Lífit ríðr hart. Ef dvelr þú eigi ok hyggr at stundum, kann svá fara at þú missir af því), you try saying it out loud and not smiling to yourself because you sound like a Viking. You can't, can you? And if that wasn't enough, we have proof positive that the only thing cooler than 'Immigrant Song' is 'Immigrant Song' in Old Norse ( Vér komum ór landi íss ok snævarr Undan miðnætur sól þar sem hverir vella). I think the beautiful thing about this particular book is the amount of work that's gone into it so that everyone will have those moments that I did, just with entirely different phrases. Read it and see.

'Old Norse for Modern Times' is way outside what I'd normally read but I'm really glad that I gave it a go. It made me laugh, when I needed a laugh, but more importantly, I got to sound like a Viking and the mental health benefits of that should never be underestimated.

I was going to sign off with Hittask muno vér í Valhǫll! But just to be on the safe side, Ef ek skylda falla í þessi orrustu, fyrirkom þú þá vefsǫgu minni.... ;o)

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