Updates

August 19, 2026

An eleventh translation, and Skald is now free to start

Version 0.6.1 is live on the App Store and Google Play. Two things change with it. William Cullen Bryant’s 1871 Odyssey joins the reader, bringing it to eleven translations beside the Greek. And Skald is now free to download: Books I, II and IX are open to everyone, with a single one-time purchase for the remaining twenty-one.

William Cullen Bryant’s Odyssey, 1871

Bryant was America’s most read poet before he was Homer’s translator, and he came to the Odyssey late, finishing it in 1871 after his Iliad. He wrote it in blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter — which lets the line follow the sentence instead of the other way round. Set it beside Pope, whose 1726 version rhymes in heroic couplets, and the difference is immediate: Pope closes every second line with a chime, Bryant lets a thought run until it is finished.

He also fills a real gap. Until now the English verse in Skald jumped from Cowper in 1791 straight to Ian Johnston in 2002. Bryant is the only nineteenth-century English verse Odyssey here, and he sits squarely in the middle of that span — a Victorian-era ear on the poem, plainer than the eighteenth century and older than anything modern.

Bryant is complete for all twenty-four books. Open the reading-source dropdown at the top of a book and you will find him under Translations, in date order between Cowper and Johnston. The Greek keeps its own tab, so you can set the original beside Bryant exactly as beside any other translation.

Free to start, one purchase for the rest

Skald no longer costs anything to download. Book I, Book II and Book IX — the opening of the poem, and the Cyclops — are free to read in full, in every translation and every reading depth, with the Greek, the museum art, the map and the glossary all present. If you want the other twenty-one books, a single purchase unlocks them permanently: US$7.99, shown in your own currency by the store.

It is one payment, not a subscription. There is no account, no advertising in the app, and nothing to set up.

If you already bought Skald, nothing changes and you need do nothing. Your library stays complete. The app recognises earlier purchases on its own, so there is no code to enter and no restore to run — open it and everything is where you left it.

Everything else is where it was

No artwork changed in this release. The museum collection, the voyage map, the fleet, the glossary and the passage notes are all as they were — and the Greek now runs beside eleven public-domain translations rather than ten.

August 4, 2026

Four new reading plates, and Princeton joins the museum

Version 0.5.0 is live on the App Store and Google Play. Ten artworks join the collection, four of them placed beside the exact lines they illustrate, and one arrives from a museum that had not appeared in Skald before.

Four artworks beside the lines they illustrate

Most museum pieces in Skald live in the gallery, where you can browse the whole collection. A smaller set is anchored to a Homeric line number, so the artwork appears beside the passage itself — in every reading depth, in the Greek, and in all ten translations. Four of the new arrivals are anchored that way.

In Book 4, Menelaus and his companions hold the shape-shifting Proteus until he gives up the way home; the scene survives on a walrus ivory game piece carved nearly nine hundred years ago. In Book 5, Leucothea reaches Odysseus through the storm and gives him the veil that carries him ashore. In Book 11, Elpenor’s ghost is the first of the shades to speak. And in Book 16, Athena stands at the farm where only Odysseus and the dogs can see her.

Princeton University Art Museum, and four more collections

Eckersberg’s Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus (1812) is the first work in Skald from the Princeton University Art Museum. Alongside it, new pieces arrive from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Rijksmuseum — a Roman coin that carries Odysseus and his old dog Argus, a red-figure jug whose weathered archer is probably Odysseus with the bow, and Flaxman’s Hermes leading the suitors’ souls down to Hades in the poem’s final book.

Why the totals did not move

Ten works joined this release, and ten records left it. While preparing the update we found duplicate entries in the catalog — the same artwork held under more than one identity — and merged them. So the museum catalog still stands at 178 works with full records across 49 collections, and the app holds more than two hundred historical artworks in all. The collection is slightly larger than the count suggests, and considerably tidier.

Reading on larger tablets

Larger tablets get better layouts and more comfortable type. The Greek still runs beside ten public-domain translations, and every artwork keeps its source and rights details.

July 25, 2026

A tenth translation, and the museum grows to 178 works

Ian Johnston's modern verse Odyssey

Skald's tenth translation is its first modern English rendering: Ian Johnston's verse translation (2002), dedicated to the public domain by its translator in January 2024. It joins the nine historical translations in the same aligned reader — aligned to the Greek using Homeric line numbers, so tappable concepts and museum art carry over to Johnston's wording across all 24 books.

Twenty-seven museum artworks join the collection

27 museum artworks join the collection — 178 pieces in all, from the Met and the Art Institute of Chicago to new arrivals from museums in Prague, Baltimore, and Leipzig. 15 of the new pieces also appear as art plates beside related passages in the text. Every artwork keeps its source and rights details.

Three collections appear in Skald for the first time: the National Gallery Prague, The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and Friedrich Preller’s Odyssey fresco cycle from the Römisches Haus in Leipzig. Books 16 and 20 receive their first artifact-linked reading plates — the reunion of father and son, and the thunder omen before the bow.

By the numbers

• 10translationswas 9 at launch
• 221artworks in allwas 194 at launch
• 178with museum provenancewas 151 at launch
• 49museum collectionswas 46 at launch
• 280inline art plateswas 265 at launch

The new translation is live on the App Store today, and the full update — version 0.4.0 with the complete art expansion — is submitted on both stores and rolling out over the coming days. As always: one-time purchase, everything on your device.

July 22, 2026

Launch day: Skald: Odyssey is here

Skald: Odyssey is live on Android, iPhone, and iPad in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is a complete Odyssey reader, built for curious adults and shared reading: all 24 books in source-grounded 1-, 5-, and 20-minute telling depths, the original Greek beside nine historical public-domain translations, and the voyage held together by the Nostos map, the fleet, and a Homeric glossary.

Reading with room to look closer: 194 artworks at launch — 151 museum pieces from 46 collections, plus public-domain paintings and engravings beside the text — paintings, prints, and ancient objects placed beside the passages they belong with, each keeping its source and rights details. Historical works are never blended with generated imagery; reconstructions live in a separate, labeled Sketch mode.

Skald is a one-time purchase with no subscription, no ads, no app account, and no in-app purchases. The reading library lives on your device.