He is known primarily for his scholarly work on Beowulf and his translation of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda for The American-Scandinavian Foundation, but also as a writer of pulp fiction and for his left-wing politics.
[4][5][6] However, the bulk of his career was spent at the University of California in Berkeley, where he started in 1916 as an instructor in English and Germanic philology, became a full professor in 1930, and remained until retiring in 1955.
Many stories focused on topics of Northern history and legend, such as Harald Hardrada's time in the Varangian Guard (the serialized novel He Rules Who Can, 1928) and Völsunga saga (the novella "Vengeance," 1925).
With Farnham Bishop, Brodeur wrote adventure stories starring Lady Fulvia, a Sicilian warrior woman in the time of King Roger II, as well as the novel The Altar of the Legion (1926).
[21] Gordon Griffiths wrote in his memoir that Brodeur, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Haakon Chevalier were the sole members of the Berkeley Communist faculty group in the early 1940s.