Norrœna Society

The Norrœna Society was the imprint of a private publishing venture that between 1905 and 1911 produced multi-volume sets of reprints of classic 19th-century editions, mostly translations, of Old Norse literary and historical works, Northern European folklore, and medieval literature.

The Norrœnna Society was founded around 1896 as "a federation of Anglo-Nordic men of letters", by King Oscar II of Norway and Sweden for the purpose of “resurrecting, reproducing, collecting and collating or indexing every thing that pertained to the early history of the Anglo Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian races— to furnish the people of Northern Europe with their own vital history.” Under his ægis, the Society grew rapidly, becoming international in scope, represented in London, , Copenhagen, New York City and Berlin. In Great Britain, where the name of the Society was changed to the Anglo-Saxon Society, membership reached 30,000. Upon expanding into America, the name was again changed to The International Anglo-Saxon Society. At that stage, the Society began issuing elaborate, official certificates of membership. According to surviving examples, known members included Dr. Johnathan Ackerman Coles (1843-1926) of Newark, New Jersey and Edward Francis Wehrle (1868-1941) of Los Angeles, California.

The Norrœna Society was led by Rasmus B. Anderson, who served as United States Ambassador to Denmark (1885-9) and the founding head of the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the oldest such department in an American university. He spearheaded the "large literary venture" as part of his lifelong aim to educate others, particularly Americans, about the culture, history and pre-Christian religion of Northern Europe, publishing a wide range of works on these subjects.

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