After Otten’s succesfull translation of the “Edda” in Dutch (see elsewhere), the “Völsungssage” is the second old-Idelandic text that Otten made available in Dutch. With his “Edda” Otten caught the interest of M.C. van den Toorn who works with old-Icelandic text professionally and who helped him with the translation and wrote the informative introction to this saga. The Edda is a collection of songs in different styles, the “Völsungssaga” is more of a continuing story, but with the same persons as in the Edda and is more of a heroes-epic than a collection of short stories.
The introduction speaks of the historical background, has comparisons with other texts (such as the “Nibelungenlied”) and speaks of Wagner who used this text for his “Ring des Nibelungen” symphony.
At the end again the notes per chapter, genealogy, bibliography and an index which fortunately does refer to pages this time.