EDITOR’S NOTE

HOW TO USE THIS ENCYCLOPEDIA

Claude Lecouteux’s Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic offers a stimulating and fascinating overview of its vast subject matter, which is drawn from the ancient and medieval cultures of Europe, England, and Scandinavia. While this is not the only reference handbook available in English that deals with Norse mythological material, it truly distinguishes itself with the veritable wealth of Germanic folkloric and legendary material that appears here—much of it previously inaccessible to English readers.

We have endeavored to faithfully reproduce various original names and terms in keeping with the traditional orthography (spelling) from languages such as Old Norse, Old English, and modern Icelandic. Two letters that may be unfamiliar to some readers are those known as “eth” (Ð/ð) and “thorn” (Þ/þ), which represent the sound that is reproduced as /th/ in modern texts (the character “eth” corresponds to the voiced /th/ sound, as in the English word “that,” while “thorn” corresponds to the unvoiced /th/ sound, as in the English word “thin”). Entry names that begin with the letter Þ appear in the T section, alphabetized as if they begin with “Th.”

Old Norse—and its descendant, modern Icelandic—is a highly inflected language, and one indication of this is in the nominative final -r ending that appears on certain nouns. This includes many proper names such as Freyr and Heimdallr, Asgarðr (Asgard), Miðgarðr (Midgard), and so forth. The original orthography is generally retained throughout the encyclopedia entries, except for the god names—Odin and Thor—which generally appear in their modern, anglicized spellings instead of their Old Norse forms (Óðinn, Þórr).

Occasionally a reference is made to certain names or words for which no literal attestation exists. This may be due to their great age or simply the arbitrary nature of the historical record that has come down to us. These earlier forms, which have been reliably reconstructed by historical linguists, appear preceded by an asterisk. Two examples would be the names of the proto-Germanic deities *Nerthuz (the antecedent of the continental goddess Nerthus and the Norse god Njörðr) and *Tiwaz (the antecedent of the Norse god Týr, the Anglo-Saxon god Tiw, and the continental German god Ziu).

In the presentation of the individual entries, the English edition follows the same basic format as its French predecessor. The keyword appears in bold capital letters, followed by a translation/interpretation of the word—for example, ÁLFHEIMR (“World of the Elves”). When relevant, additional grammatical information may be included, such as sg. (singular) and pl. (plural), as well as the gender of the noun itself: masc. (masculine), fem. (feminine), or neut. (neuter).

Many entries are followed by suggestions for further reading. References to books appear first, concisely cited by the author’s last name together with the main title of the book. For the complete information on a given book, the reader should refer to the bibliography at the back of the encyclopedia. Articles or essays are given full citations as they are not included in the bibliography. These references for further reading are not meant to be complete, nor do they provide the history of scholarship on a given topic, which is often vast. They are simply Professor Lecouteux’s suggestions of a few useful starting points that a curious reader may wish to investigate further. With regard to Norse entries in particular, more detailed information can be found by consulting John Lindow’s Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) or Rudolf Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 1993). The latter work in particular provides detailed references on the history of the scholarship that has been done on these topics. Neither of these volumes makes any attempt to systematically deal with Germanic folklore or continental literature, however.