The correct spelling of “Starkad” is “Starkað”. The last letter is “eth”, a voiced dental fricative (pronounced like the “th” in “them”). The resemblance to the letter “d” has caused this letter to replace it except in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. 

This book is my latest project, something I've been meaning to write since I wrote Starkað's Death Song in 2012. This has now been unpublished as I intend to reuse it in modified form in my new new book.

Starkað is to Old Norse literature what Beowulf is to Anglo-Saxon literature, that is to say, the ideal of a great warrior. Starkað was probably a historical character, but his real achievements as a warrior caused a lot of legendary material to be added to his story, with the result that it is now a mish-mash of bits and pieces spanning more than 200 years of Scandinavian history from the time of Hrothgar (c. 530) to the time of Sigurd Ring (c. 750). Starkað gives his own summary of his battles in his Death Song, so it is not necessary to summarise his story here.

From the jumble of names, places and events that make up the different versions of his story, a few events stand out for the detail, and in particular, for the poetry in which they are written. One of these is known as Starkað’s Death Song. This is appears in Book VIII of the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus (finished before 1208). There is a noticeable difference in the style of the narration and the speeches, which are far more poetic. This is probably because the speeches were taken from old lays about Starkað. We know that there were old lays about Starkað, because Saxo himself transcribes part of one, translating it into Latin hexameters (The Incitement of Ingeld in Book VI). Starkað’s Death Song is written in Latin prose, but it is similar enough to the Ingeld passage to make it a reasonable assumption that it originates in an old lay.

In Gautrek's Saga, Odin gives Starkað the gift of poetry, and the saga includes several stanzas attributed to him in their Old Norse form, so I decided to write the book from a first person point of view as though it was Starkað's account of his whole life.