I just purchased (on the basis of Michael Dirda’s review in today’s Washington Post Book World) Richard Fletcher’s Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. When following up on Amazon.com’s highly useful feature “Customers who bought this book also bought….”, I found this excellent endorsement of Orrin W. Robinson’s Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages.
If you are seeking a nice, concise yet not superficial discussion on Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old High German, Old Low Franconian and Old Frisian then you simply have to buy this book.
Who could pass up an endorsement like that? Actually, it’s wonderful that the writer is so enthusiastic for Old Low Franconian. It makes me feel just a tad less eccentric, and even a bit more grateful for modern capitalism’s ability to satisfy such a wide and varied array of interests and tastes.
(I’m looking forward to Fletcher’s book and hope that it will be as good as William Ian Miller’s really outstanding Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland or Jesse Byock’s pathbreaking and exciting Viking Age Iceland.)