Two New Book Contracts (One a Surprise) (Patreon)

Today I signed contracts for my next two books with Hackett Publishing Company.

One is my translation of The Saga of Hrolf Kraki, with The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek. I mentioned this already as a possibility for my next book a few months ago, and I've already done one of the most famous poems from the latter saga here. Initially, we had talked about including more sagas in one book, but we decided to include just the two that there is the most demand for, which also means we can include both sagas in the title and not to have to come up with a title for four sagas that would either be cumbersome or wouldn't clearly communicate what's in the book (like the infamous book Seven Viking Romances).

The second is a surprise, even to me, but Hackett has decided that they want my translation of The Prose Edda. I know this is something many of you have asked for, and I'm excited to take on that companion project to The Poetic Edda. 

The two sagas are due first, in January 2019, and the translation of The Prose Edda is due in January 2020. With the last two books, it took about a year after I signed the contract before the book was published, because Hackett always gets a few other experts to read and review the text and inevitably they have suggestions about things that could be improved or modified etc. It also just takes a while to get a book ready for publication.

We're also still in talks about the Old Norse textbook. This would be a new type of project for both me and (to some extent) the publisher, so I'm working on producing some sample chapters (which I'll probably also share at least part of here).

All the best for now, and thanks again for your support on Patreon.