The first English translation of Olga A. Smirnitskaya’s influential 1994 Russian work on Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies.

In 1994, Moscow State University professor Olga A. Smirnitskaya published a significant work in the field of Old Germanic Philology entitled The Verse and Language of Old Germanic Poetry (Стих и язык древнегерманской поэзии). The book was lauded as one of the most important contributions from the Russian school of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies to the worldwide scholarship in that field. It covers the emergence and evolution of Old Germanic verse forms from the earliest runic inscriptions to the pinnacles achieved in Old English Beowulf and Old Norse skaldic poetry. This translation is a fundamental piece of scholarship that will be in great demand by non-Russian-speaking scholars working in the fields of Old English and Old Norse language and literature all over the world, as well as by wider scholarly audiences involved in any aspect of studies of Old Germanic languages and literature, especially poetry and meters.