Dwarfish Eddas

Red Erik or the Saga of Erik Blod Hammer is an edda in the traditional manner. One of the Greater Tales, it covers just about every form of Dwarfish warfare, pitched, skirmish and guerilla as well as dealing with the trickier matters of assassination and ritual evisceration. It contains one of the most complete descriptions of blod feud that is extant in dwarfish record. Every scholar of dwarfish bellicosity should read this book: it is a virtual thesaurus of bloody doings.

That is not to say that the more mundane matters of routine survival are missing from the text because they are not. Anyone who wishes to know how to pin a shattered collar-bone or how to reposition a split leg bone when it has ruptured the skin will not be disappointed either.

Certain obvious things are missing. For example, the edda covers many different forms of wassailing and ( for pussy dwarfs that is) how to recover from the effects on the following days but there isn't a single recipe for brewing ale.

There are also a number of useful anecdotes about how to hunt, trap and despatch a boar but there isn't a single recipe or instruction on how to cook one. The assumption, a novice might have thought, is that real dwarfs simply rip out its liver and eat it warm.

For all this it is an instructive piece, a veritable compendium of carnage.