Hringadróttinssaga
(Icelandic)

Icelandic is often equated with Old Norse since many of the Old Norse sagas were preserved in Iceland. The following video was made by one of the leading scholars of Old Norse, Dr. Jackson Crawford, and is a translation of the Ring Poem into Old Norse with good Old Germanic alliterative patterns.

Hringadróttinssaga, Lord of the Rings (Icelandic)

I looked for the Icelandic translation for several years without success. One day I happened upon the ebay-like site bland.is and found that there were about a dozen sets for sale there. One of them became mine very quickly. I have occasionally looked back there, but not found them again in such quantity (all from one seller). Most of the time have not found them at all. In terms of the number of clicks on my site based on internet searches, this page is always number one or number two.

This set was printed twice--the first time with dust jackets and plain boards, the second time with the dust jackets replaced by boards that contained the same art. In my set FR and TT are from the second printing with printed board covers and RK is from the first printing with a dust jacket. I didn't actually notice the difference until November 2022 when another collector pointed it out. The printed boards mimicked the tight-fitting dust jacket so exactly that I had never noticed the difference. Coincidentally, the other collector happens to have FR and TT from the first printing and RK from the second printing (which was produced with a matching box). Between the two of us we have two perfect sets--one from the first printing with dust jackets and one from the second printing without dust jackets, but with a box. One wonders if perhaps these two sets were in the same place at the same time in the past and got mixed up.

Hringadróttinssaga (Icelandic), purchased on-line from Ríkharður Sveinsson, Reykjavik, Iceland on bland.is in 2019 (hardback)

Tolkien, J.R.R. Hringadróttinssaga. Translated by Þorsteinn Thorarensen and Ádám Kristjánsson. Vol. 1, Föruneyti Hringsins. Fjölvaútgáfan, 1993. ISBN: 9979-58-228-6

———. Hringadróttinssaga. Translated by Þorsteinn Thorarensen and Ádám Kristjánsson. Vol. 2, Tveggjaturna-tal. Fjölvaútgáfan, 1994. ISBN: 9979-58-258-8

———. Hringadróttinssaga. Translated by Þorsteinn Thorarensen and Ádám Kristjánsson. Vol. 3, Hilmir Snýr Heim. Fjölvaútgáfan, 1995. ISBN: 9979-58-277-4