THE IMPUDENT EDDA IS AVAILABLE AT THE FOLLOWING RETAILERS (AND EVERYWHERE ELSE PAPERBACKS ARE SOLD, TOO):
***Signed copies are available at Armageddon Shop (Cambridge, MA), Green Hand Bookshop (Portland, ME), Harvard Book Store (Cambridge, MA), Ingebretsen’s (Minneapolis, MN), Million Year Picnic (Cambridge, MA), and Etsy!***
“The Impudent Edda gives us valuable insight into Norse mythology from the mind of a Bostonian drunkard…everything you need to know about Odin’s obsession with dick pics, Thor’s flamethrower, and Frey’s gay bar experience—what’s not to like!?” —Tommy Kuusela, editor of Folk Belief and Traditions of the Supernatural and co-host of the När man talar om trollen podcast
After 800 years, the final installment of The Edda Trilogy has at long last arrived! Picking up where its medieval forebears, The Poetic Edda and The Prose Edda, left off, The Impudent Edda not only introduces readers to a fresh, new perspective on both familiar and previously unknown narratives of Norse mythology, but also brings the world’s foremost epic fantasy trilogy to its inevitable and fateful conclusion: in a dank alleyway behind a dive bar in Boston.
“You’ve heard of two renowned Eddas, The Prose Edda and The Poetic Edda, but have you heard of The Impudent Edda? What? You have not heard of the Edda found in the deepest, darkest depths of a seedy alleyway in Boston? Blasphemy! This is a comical take on Norse mythology and unlike anything I’ve read in relation to mythology in general.” —Cassidee Lanstra, FanFiAddict
This special Puffin Carcass Deluxe Edition of The Impudent Edda presents the complete, unabridged text of the original Codex Bostonia audio-manuscript in English for the first time ever, offering readers a highly accessible yet deeply poetic rendition of fun and classic tales ranging from Odin’s unprovoked murder of an ancient witch to Freyja’s voluntary experiment as a prostitute among lecherous dwarves to Thor’s drunken and petty act of larceny on the eve of Ragnarök, the final world-shattering battle of the gods. Additionally, this Puffin Carcass Deluxe Edition also includes 9 original impudent myths, 44 photos, 227 highly informative footnotes (providing important background information on ancient Scandinavian transmogrifiers, the functional capabilities of Odin’s magical toilet, and Tyr’s virtuoso guitar-playing skills, among many other nuanced facets of ancient Nordic lore), extensive front and end matter including an incredibly educational Foreword by Eirik Storesund, and glorious cover art by Matt Smith.
“The text throughout is caustic, demotic and profanity-laden, as though our narrator isn’t some hoary-bearded Viking bard sitting by the fireside but a modern guy shooting the breeze with buddies over a beer. The result is a smart, lovingly rendered blend of academia and pastiche.” —James Lovegrove, Financial Times
Tongue-wagging blather and other updates will be posted here as they occur!
2024
October 31st: I (your humble translator) had the honor and pleasure to chat with Siobhán Clark on the Myth Legend & Lore podcast. The episode was released on Halloween because there’s nothing as scary as when Odin gets his hands on a smartphone!
April 13th: I (your humble translator) was interviewed by fellow indie author Bjørn Larssen on Before We Go Blog.
2023
December 8th and 10th: The 2023 Barbarian Aggression World Tour started and concluded at Navigation Brewing Company and Sacred Profane Brewing, respectively. Beers were consumed and books were signed, just as fate had preordained.
November 28th: An excerpt from The Impudent Edda about Odin’s corpse-shredding, world-creating frenzy was published at McSweeney’s. Check it out here: “Middle-Earth is Just an Eyelash on the Celestial Gallows Pole.”
November 21st: A tragic, lost tale from The Impudent Edda, “Thor and Loki Go Christmas Shopping,” was unveiled at Spells and Spaceships as part of the month-long #Norsevember fest!
November 13th: The Impudent Edda was reviewed at Queen’s Book Asylum. Many thanks to Bjørn Larssen for the verdict!
November 8th: Fun with the Eddas (interview with the venerable Jackson Crawford) has become available on YouTube.
October 26th: I (your humble translator) was interviewed by the venerable Jackson Crawford. The interview presently only exists on his Patreon page, but I’ll include the link here when it opens up to the public on YouTube.
October 9th: The Impudent Edda was featured alongside the mighty Terry Pratchett’s new book in Financial Times‘ periodic “best new sci-fi” round up. Check it out here (if you can get behind the paywall): The best new sci-fi: Pratchett and Marvel’s Avengers get the redux treatment.
October 5th: The Impudent Edda was reviewed at FanFiAddict. Many thanks to Cassidee Lanstra for giving it a gander!
July 5th: The Impudent Edda cover was revealed over at Queen’s Book Asylum. Many thanks to Bjørn Larssen for granting Odin and Mimir’s decapitated, talking head entry to the asylum!
Lastly, here’s what some other folks who know a thing or two about Eddic lore had to say regarding the epic trilogy’s final volume:
“The Impudent Edda, Rowdy Geirsson’s translation of the Codex Bostonia, is an artistic masterpiece that reveals the deep lore of Vinland’s misty shores. The primal drone of ancient wisdom from the realm where Buliwyf fought the Wendol, Leif Eriksson erected the Newport Tower, and a band of Norwegians and Goths carved the Kensington Runestone reverberates through these stories. In The Impudent Edda, the modern reader is presented with a string of narratives and facts about the Old Norse gods in a tradition that has clearly developed on its own but betrays its origins in the medieval Icelandic sources with details fitting as tightly as the leggings on Mr. Eriksson’s statue on Commonwealth Avenue. It has truly been a delight to read this work from the hand of an Eddic poet in his prime.”
—Mathias Nordvig, translator of Völuspá – The Vision of the Witch and host of The Sacred Flame podcast
“Hilarious, ridiculous, deadpan, replete with extensive footnotes and photographs of New England locations where this stuff went down, The Impudent Edda is the weirdest version of Norse mythology you’ll ever read. But what’s weirdest of all is the fact that it’s genuinely educational, and proof that a flight of fancy can be meticulously researched. A foul-mouthed joy.”
—Tony Williams, author of Nutcase and Cole the Magnificent
“Have I mentioned this is the best ever retelling of the Norse lore?”
—Bjørn Larssen, author of Children and Why Odin Drinks
“There’s a crazed-ness to what remains of Old Norse mythology, like so many broken shards laid out in an attempt to make a driveway. The myths themselves speak of gaming pieces found in long grass. Hinting at coherence, but with fleeting logic, the myths might prompt a response of Wyn-Tiw-Aesc-Feoh, to quote the Old English runic text. The Impudent Edda embodies much of this response, purporting to be a thunder’s-drive through the mythos as known, found in a wod-induced rant on a phone-recording, as if the gods themselves were trying to remember what happened the previous night before Muninn flew the coop. We can thank Rowdy Geirsson for the translation from raw Bostonian, and for supplying appropriate scholarly apparatus. With humor and profanity, and a touch of desperation, stories known and unknown are raced through like there’s a giant on their eagle-tail. All reverence is shoved aside in a spilling of wisdom not unlike Kvasir having a nose-bleed. Such impudence is surely a sign of religious maturity.”
—Math Jones, poet and author of The Knotsman and Sabrina Bridge
“You don’t have to be a Bostonian to find The Impudent Edda hilarious and even if you know a lot about Old Norse mythology, you’ll find its unique take both thought-provoking and insightful. The Norse gods as you’ve never seen them before!”
—Carolyne Larrington, translator of The Poetic Edda and author of The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think
“Geirsson presents us with new and intriguing myths featuring the Norse gods we love and loathe, best enjoyed with a beer or ten!”
—Siobhán Clark, author of The Saga of Ádís Rauðfeldr and host of the Myth Legend & Lore podcast
“A vital translation, regardless whether you’re a Bostonian, Asgardian or, dear god, from Connecticut.”
—Chris Monks, editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and author of The Ultimate Game Guide to Your Life
“Previously available only in the original Bostonian (spoken by few outside of Midgard’s 02127 zip code), Geirsson’s translation of The Impudent Edda into American English is the fulfillment of his erudition, scholarship, and employment of a few thousand ‘R’s. While the original transcription of the Codex Bostonia preserved its linguistic inventiveness and visceral vulgarity, this new translation will bring these charming stories of testicle yanking, head severing, eyeball gouging, and driver’s license renewing to a wider audience thanks to the translator’s Odinic knowledge of the source material and his ludic fluency with the anonymous native poet’s pants-drunk barbaric yawping.”
—Corwin Ericson, author of Swell and Checked Out OK
“Thank Odin that Geirsson got this thing published before some asshole tried to explain the Norse gods away as if they were all just wizards from New York.”
—Gregory Amato, author of the Spear of the Gods trilogy
“Start with a deeply layered set of myths. Invite the best storyteller you know in the greater Boston area. Add alcohol (even more than the myths already contain), and you get The Impudent Edda. Geirsson combines deep knowledge of Norse mythology and a skeptical irreverence for its norms (and norns), building a world of Chevy-driving, street-brawling, and bar-crawling Massachus-Æsir that remains delightfully familiar to fans of the vikings and their tales.”
—John Sexton, Professor of English at Bridgewater State University and co-host of the Saga Thing podcast
“An anonymous poet (I like to call him Snorri Gaiman McNulty) walks into a Boston dive bar and starts rambling. Geirsson is behind the counter serving pints of Sam Adams with Brennivín chasers—taking it all in. The end product is The Impudent Edda: rancid, hilarious, true to the essence of Old Norse mythology (i.e., sex, deception, violence, and getting out of a tight spot by whatever means necessary). This work of impudent scholarly rigor contains new orally-derived versions of all the myths we know and love and some that we wished we’d known earlier.”
—Simon “Troll Expert” Nygaard, Assistant Professor of Old Norse religion at Aarhus University, and vocalist and drummer of Wulfaz
“In this weird and wild, bawdy and beautiful mashup, Rowdy Geirsson reimagines the famed Norse Prose and Poetic Eddas as a lost manuscript unearthed by archeologists in an alley in Southie. In this version, the exploits of gods and heroes are, like, wicked local. Thor waits in line at the RMV to renew his driver’s license (and also begets Fenway Park’s Wally the Green Monster and trashes a Dunkin’ Donuts). A drunken Odin is tossed from The Dropkick Murphys’ McGreevey’s pub in the Back Bay. Loki goes apple picking in his Ford Pinto. Belichick the Bold (god of strategy) beseeches Odin and Co. to lift Tom Brady’s suspension. Loki and Thor get trapped like Charlie on the Green Line for eternity. Did I mention MIT, Asgard, elves, Malden, valkyries, trolls, and Jörmungandr, the sea serpent, destroying Revere Beach? The whole wonderfully absurd conceit comes packaged with footnotes, appendices and notes on the translation, and it rightly ends with the world-burning, beer-fueled epic battle of Ragnarök, kicked off by the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry and fought by the likes of Bobby Orr, Gronk, Big Papi, Bird, Russell, and Ted Williams alongside the Norse pantheon. The result is a raunchy retelling of myths from the viking world, set on a collision course with Boston lore and legend. Pissah!”
—Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms
“In the vernacular of a California-bred beach kid (insert Jeff Spicoli voice here): ‘No way. The Impudent Edda was f*ckin’ awesome.’ From start to finish, it is a very entertaining and clever read that brings Norse mythology to life in all of its color, and then some. I enjoyed it immensely, even if I am a Lakers fan who seriously dislikes Larry Bird and that whole Celtics team.”
—Eric Schumacher, author of Hakon’s Saga and Olaf’s Saga
“Some stories demand to be told. These stories demand to be drunkenly shouted into the ear of an unwilling participant over the noise of a crowded bar. In contrast to the quaint idiom of The Impudent Edda as transliterated in Norse Mythology for Bostonians, this edition’s clear prose and modern spelling conventions make it easily accessible to the average reader, while still delightful to the experienced Scandinavian Studies scholar. This collection contains the finest examples of Bostonian-Norse literature yet discovered, and entirely new information never before seen in any of the Eddas. From Tyr’s love of heavy metal music to Odin’s penchant for sending lewd pictures to Freyja, the Norse gods present themselves to us in recognizable and sometimes relatable paradigms of human behavior. Certainly a must-read for anyone with an interest in the humanity and hilarity of the Norse pantheon, imagined in a Bostonian context.”
—Brenna Byrd, Associate Professor of German Studies and instructor in Old Norse at University of Kentucky
“Astrophysics is hard in the best of times, but it’s reassuring to know Rowdy Geirsson is out here translating the seminal texts regarding true Norse astrophysics and their effects on far flung distant worlds like Boston. The third Edda is upon us, and Norse myth and folklore will never be the same.”
—Greg Wright, host of the Godyssey podcast
“This is not a book for people who think that swearing is bad language. However, it is very definitely a book for people who like Old Norse literature and are willing to play with it. Rowdy Geirsson takes what you know about the Eddas and subverts it, somewhat like Sellar and Yeatman did with English history in 1066 and All That, and it feels like The Dropkick Murphys suddenly decided to play viking metal. The book consists of a foreword by Eirik Storesund of Brute Norse fame and then gets straight into explaining the historical origins of The Impudent Edda and the astrophysics of the universe described in Nordic mythology. After that we get to the stories, which are individually short and quick to read, and heavily footnoted, which lends credence to the idea that this is an edition of a newly discovered text.
The central conceit of the book, that people continued to worship the Nordic gods to the present day, is entertaining. The idea that new gods could arise and that the Nordic mythological landscape could be mapped onto Boston and its surroundings is plausible and fun. We can be certain that this kind of thing would have happened within the living religion of the Nordic peoples if a secretive group of people in Boston continued to worship Odin and Thor to the present day, and who is to say that they did? The stories have evolved and are made more relevant to the modern audience by being framed in modern terms. Overall, The Impudent Edda is great fun and clearly rooted in a solid knowledge of its source material. Or maybe it really is what it purports to be: a newly discovered Edda with new information about the physics behind Loki’s ability to be shagged by a horse.”
—Roderick Dale, author of The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr and co-author of Vikings: Raids. Culture. Legacy.
If you’d like to peruse the full list of wondrous tales of arcane Scandinavian spiritual wisdom included in The Impudent Edda, you can do so at this earlier post: Translating The Impudent Edda.
