The Broken Sword, Original and Revised, Part One, by Nicholas David Rosen

I was at college in the first half of the 1980s when I found and bought a copy of THE BROKEN SWORD; it was the revised 1971 edition, with a preface by Poul Anderson, explaining how he had cleared the “wordbrush” and substituted one Person for another in a brief but important scene.  Elsewhere, Sandra Miesel expressed the view that the revised edition was an improvement, and wrote that subsequent quotations in her essay were from the revised edition.

I recently found a trade paperback of the original version on sale, with an introduction by Michael Dirda, and bought and read that.  The remainder of this post is directed primarily to Anderson fans who have read the book, but should also be of interest to book lovers who have not; while I will not recount the plot, those who do not want to learn anything about the events before reading the book had best cease to peruse this post.

The writing of the original version is less polished than the revision, and contains various typographical errors, although I do not know whether they were slavishly copied from the first printing, or newly introduced.  Plural possessives throughout the book use double quotation marks instead of single apostrophes.  “Monsters of the Wood of Grendel” should be “Monsters of the Brood of Grendel”, and a troll speaks of lying beside a human man, where “human may” (maiden) seems much more likely.

There are other changes which, in my view, improve the revised edition.  The revised edition describes Orm, at the grace-ale for his son Ketil, maintaining his cheer “as befitted a warrior who had contempt for death”, a memorable phrase lacking in the original.  In the revised edition, as I recall it, Imric describes his foster son Skafloc’s enthusiastically war-loving verses upon receiving his new steel weapons and armor as well said “if a little boyish.”  In the original, Imric’s words do not include this sound critical comment.

In both editions, milk from the infant Skafloc’s elfin wet-nurse Leea was sweet fire in his mouth and veins, but in the revised edition, “her milk” becomes “the milk which she brought forth by no natural means.”

Although the writing of the first version left room for improvement, in the author’s opinion, Sandra Miesel’s, and my own, the twenty-seven year old Poul Anderson accomplished more than telling a gripping, heroic, and tragic tale in a fully adequate prose style.  He wrote the book in several prose styles, using a spare, saga-like style for the opening tale of Orm, a lusher prose to describe Skafloc’s childhood and coming of age among the elves, and a style suggestive of a late medieval romance to describe Ketil’s being led astray and coming upon the witch in the guise of a beautiful young woman.  Anderson also composed a number of poems in alliterative verse (some rhymed as well) for the characters to recite in a variety of contexts and moods.  This would have been an impressive achievement for a writer of fully mature skill.

If you have not read the book, and are at all attracted to heroic fantasy of a grim Nordic sort, where heroes, villains, and bystanders are slain, and any women not dead themselves are left to grieve their heart-breaking losses, yet people dree their weirds bravely, with undaunted resolution, THE BROKEN SWORD is for you.  I prefer the revised edition, but either version provides a gripping tale and exceptional literary experience.