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by lukan 38 days ago
The cover with the viking in a horned helmet does not hold up so well for me. The text is more historically accurate?
2 comments

That's just poor taste by the publisher of the translation. I think this is the original cover of the first part from 1941, which is a bit more subtle: https://img.tradera.net/images/363/614895363_bd12c6ee-75d3-4...

It's a great book, I highly recommend it.

Thanks, I will give it a try then.
That’s the international publisher’s mistake. The text is famous for being similar in style to the preserved Icelandic originals. It’s quite authentic.
The cover uses a 19th century drawing by the French painter Louis Charles Bombled (from a book on the history of France, oddly enough). NYRB's cover designer, Katy Homans, is usually good, so I'm not sure why this was chosen. I'm sure their design budget is somewhere near zero, so being public domain may have been a factor.