E. V. Gordon (1896–1938)

Originally published in 1927, and still available today, this introduction to the Old Norse language and literature was one of two texts that I used in my private reading during college. Although not a language officially offered at Oberlin, I was lucky enough to discover that the head of the German department had studied it, and to convince him to tutor me in the subject...

Gordon's work, revised and updated by A.R. Taylor in the second edition, takes a rather old-fashioned approach to show more language-learning, in that it presents students with a selection of pieces in the original language, and expects them to wade right in. Notes, glossary and grammatical outline are (of course) supplied at the rear of the text, but the idea is definitely to learn as one goes.

I do not think my studies would have prospered, if I had used this method alone, but thankfully I also had access to Valfells' and Cathey's excellent Old Icelandic An Introductory Course, which - when used in conjunction with Gordon - offered a coherent and fairly painless introduction to a complicated language. show less

Not my usual 'I don't know why this isn't more popular' review! Songs for the Philogists was printed as an exercise in using a printing press ... and some of the copyright owners objected, so there was limited distribution. The copies which remained were destroyed by a bomb in WWII ... so it's not surprising that so few copies remain in existence.

I have, with some reservation, given this 3.5 stars. The reservation is that these are _songs_ and I don't know most of the tunes referred to, so show more have no way of judging how good they are as lyrics, even when I understand the language they are written in.... show less