Paul Henri Mallet

Victorian edition of this important survey of Norse literature and history.

• Paul Henri Mallet (Swiss).
• Northern antiquities; or, An Historical Account of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Laws, Maritime Expeditions and Discoveries, Language and Literature of the Ancient Scandinavians, (Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders) with Incidental Notices Respecting our Saxon Ancestors.
• Contribution by Sir Walter Scott (Scottish).
• Fore-edge painting of a Viking ship and a color lithographic frontispiece of Yggdrasil.
• London: Henry G. Bohn, 1859.
• [4], 578 pages.
• Octavo.
• An excerpt from the Prose Edda and index at rear.
• Bound in full contemporary green morocco, raised bands, spine lettered and elaborately ornamented in gilt, boards double-ruled in gilt, 1597 armorial device of Queen Elizabeth stamped in gilt on boards, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt and purple silk ribbon marker.

Northern Antiquities was the fullest description of old Scandinavian culture published to that point, inspiring unprecedented interest in Norse mythology among both French and English readers. First published in French in 1756, it was first translated into English in 1770 by the literary antiquarian Thomas Percy (the translation used here). This edition includes many additions, editorial notes and corrections first made in the 1847 edition, including a large portion of the Prose Edda and Blackwell's linguistic correction of "curved drinking horns," which earlier had been falsely translated as "gold-inlayed skulls of enemies." It also contains Sir Walter Scott's summary of the Eyrbyggja Saga, first published in Illustrations of Norther Antiquities in 1814.

"History has not recorded the annals of a people who have occasioned greater, more sudden, or more numerous revolutions in Europe than the Scandinavians, or whose antiquities, at the same time, are so little known."