Sandra Ballif Straubhaar

Straubhaar's book presents Old Norse poetry by or about female figures from the real to the magical. Depicted is the giantess Hyrrokkin, riding on a wolf with vipers as reins.

Straubhaar's 2011 book Old Norse Women's Poetry: The Voices of Female Skalds presents the work of Icelandic and Norwegian women poets from the 9th to 13th centuries, in other words starting from the Viking age. Each text is presented in three forms, with the Old Norse poetry, a verse translation, and a somewhat literal prose translation. The skalds covered range from "real people" and the quasi-historical, to dream-verse, legendary heroines, magic-workers and prophetesses, and finally the hostile "trollwomen".[S 3] The book had a mixed reception among scholars, who noted its problematic definitions of women grading from real to magical.[2]

Catherine Cox, in South Atlantic Review, called the project of assembling the poetry "admirable", but "flawed by inconsistencies and ambiguities" of attribution and definition of what the "voices of female skalds" actually are, given that both real and imagined women are included. In Cox's view, a much sharper analysis of the distinction was required.[3]

Cynthia Hallen, in Rocky Mountain Review, described the book as "a diverse and intriguing database of verse", but comments that neither the verse nor the prose translation actually capture the "word orders, rhetorical figures, skaldic conventions, and the breathless tone of the passage". She liked the "nuggets" of history and cultural insight, but found them too scattered, and the commentaries sometimes too understated. She appreciated the timeline and glossary of names but would have liked approximate dates for the passages.[4]

Kate Heslop, in Speculum, noted that most of the poetry in the book was little known, making the collection "unprecedented". Heslop understood Straubhaar's frustration over unproductive debates about authenticity, but commented that the rich variety of female skaldic verse "demand[s] an engagement with poetic voice as a textual construct; the poetry .. is no less real for being fictional, after all".[5] She called the texts accurate and the translations reliable, barring the "notorious cruces" of Völuspá 22, and found the "unavoidably looser verse rendering" attractive. In contrast, she thought the introduction "too meager" and "a missed chance for a new perspective". She disagreed with Straubhaar's claim that manuscript variation was unimportant, as it was "key to tracing such processes".[5]

Jenny Jochens, in Scandinavian Studies, welcomed "this handsome volume", but wondered why only one of the "women-centered Eddic poems from the Codex Regius" was included. After describing the chapters in detail, Jochens stated that the poetry is not sufficiently set in context, making pleasurable reading difficult and requiring increased work by teachers. She noted that one of her own articles, apparently not known to Straubhaar,[6] gives a more complete survey.[1]