Pretty much the first thing that struck me about these sagas is how immediately accessible they are – I have read medieval texts before (even if not very many), and usually (i.e., unless one happens to be a medievalist) it takes a lengthy introduction and extensive notes for any modern-day reader to even get the point of any tale from that period, not to mention any deeper significance or wider-ranging connotations. Not that one should expect a penetrating exploration of the conditio humana from those tales, but they are rousing good read, and I doubt there are many medieval texts out there of which one can say that.The Penguin edition which I read, titled The Sagas of the Icelanders, does have a lengthy introduction that covers all kinds of aspects of Icelandic sagas: their historical context, the role they played in the society of their time, the poets and their audience, it even offers an analysis of various formal elements commonly found in those tales. It is all extremely helpful, and without a doubt did considerably enrich my reading experience of the sagas – but you could just as well simply skip all the introductory stuff and jump right into the tales themselves, and would likely enjoy them just as much as I did after dutifully having made my way through all the editorial material. This is no small feat, for texts that are almost a thousand years old to be able to grip a twenty-first century reader on such a basic, simply-enjoying-the-story level.Which is most emphatically not to say, however, that those sagas read like contemporary texts. I feel a bit uncertain about the translations – with texts this old I am always somewhat worried that the translators might sacrifice precision to readability, creating a false sense of familiarity in a misguided attempt to make an ancient text accessible to a modern-day reader and producing what is effectively a streamlined version of the original. Not being particularly proficient in Old Norse, I really cannot say whether this is the case here, but my entirely subjective and completely uninformed impression was that the translators of the Penguin edition did a pretty good job at making the sagas immensely readable while still retaining their essential strangeness to a reader in the early twenty-first century.The area where this strangeness made itself felt most keenly (for me at least) was neither in the matter-of-fact attitude towards supernatural occurrences that most of these tales show (with the extent of the supernatural element varying greatly, from the simple use of runes for healing to outright visions of ghosts and the battling against mages that would not be out of place in any Sword & Sorcery tale) nor in the sometimes weird customs of the Northlanders (I remember a particularly large WTF moment when someone attempted to kill his house guest because he had drank too much of his host’s ale, and nobody seemed to think that the least bit excessive), but in the way subjectivity is treated throughout all of this tale – or rather, is not treated at all, as subjectivity is something does not really happen here.There is no interiority to the characters in these sagas, no inner space in which their thoughts and emotions could resound, no psychological motivations, in fact no psychology at all. The people the Icelandic sagas tell of are pure exteriority – we get to know their actions, but never their thoughts or feelings, everything is told from a strict outside perspective. Possibly it is that which gives events in the sagas their distinctive air of inevitability, of its protagonists marching down a prescribed road with unwavering fatalism – a fatalism, however, that is not all perceived as tragic, at least not by the protagonists of the tales; it might be very different for a listener / reader who in a way has to supply the emotions here, using the sagas as some kind of projection surface.It would be a mistake, however, to think that the characters in these tales are flat or two-dimensional just because they are lacking an inner space – they emphatically are not; quite to the contrary, many of them are very memorable and multifaceted. They derive their plasticity from other sources, their personalities do not resonate in an inner, but an outside space, namely that of their interpersonal relationships. The Icelanders in these sagas appear to define themselves mostly by way of their relation to other people – their family, their clan, their neighbours. It is their actions and interactions that give them resonance, seeing themselves reflected in others rather than reflecting on themselves like a more contemporary subjectivity would.It is easy to see how for a subject that defines itself by how it relates and appears to other, fame would play an important role, and by extension how the sagas themselves would serve that purpose. Even with all the supernatural elements, the sagas at their core are historical writings, chronicles that serve the remembrance and propagation of the names of Iceland’s famous men. This also gives them a slighty metafictional slant, an underlying consciousness that the deeds reported are already destined to become part of a saga even as they unfolding.This selection from Penguin is missing what seems to be considered as the best of the sagas, Njal’s Saga, but otherwise presents a very generous selection, containing among famous ones like Eigil’s Saga and the Vinland Sagas also some lesser-known ones and several short tales; all presented in texts that appear to be excellent translations from authoritative sources with an extensive introduction and the occasional footnote where it is necessary. The only issue I had was the weird placement of maps and genealogical tables right in the middle of text (rather than at paragraph breaks) but that is just a minor distraction from an overall very much recommended edition.
Stories are important. Maybe even essential. We learn about each other through stories; whether it be the Cliff Notes version of ourselves we tell to coworkers and clients or the long narratives enjoyed of our child's daily exploits at school. Long before our first attempts at writing stories we shared tales of ourselves, our heritage, our world through the spoken word. Homer's hymns, Aesop's fables or Icelandic sagas - they are all instructive, rich and certainly the greater for having been heard rather than read. I have a personal story I've told about a half dozen times to different friends over the years involving me, Ozzy Ozbourne, Teddy Roosevelt and the Alamo. In its few tellings I've never failed to solicit a laugh or a smile. I feel, however, if I tried to write that story rather than tell it I would kill its soul. When my audience is nodding their head and laughing at a certain part of the narrative I can embelish that portion and play it longer. If I see their eyes begin to glass or their attention wane, I move quicker to the next act. By the end of the anecdote I've (hopefully) played the strengths of the story to my audience and, if not entertained them, at least shared something personal about me that helps to further explain who I am. It was an absolute pleasure to read these dozen or so sagas of Icelanders whose culture is foreign to me, and yet I found the recognizable humanity in their struggles, the pleasures and pains of living and the search for some way to leave a mark on the world. Many of these stories were oral traditions passed through multiple generations of story tellers. How wonderful to know that the version I've read is an English translation of a collection of Icelandic texts written onto animal skins 700-1000 years ago from a story told and retold countless of times - to the point that whatever I'm reading is certainly a pale copy of the original. And yet the center of the story still holds. I'm invested in these explorers, their story. I truly want to understand the why, where and how of their lives. It makes me genuinely happy to know that while I appreciate great writers from the last 200 years, it isn't necessary to be a master of the written word to tell a compelling story.Vonnegut exhorts his reader in a few of his novels: Listen. He doesn't tell us to Look, or Read Carefully, but to hear what he is writing. I can hear his words in my head, but I don't think that is what he meant. I love reading Vonnegut aloud, even to myself if my wife or daughter won't listen. As a lover of storytelling, I'd like to think that Vonnegut would be happy to know that a fan of his works took him at his literal meaning. And perhaps some master Icelandic storytellers of yore could relate as well.
What do You think about The Sagas Of Icelanders (2001)?
The following is not really a review, so skip it if that's what you're after:-------------------------------------------I've read several of the sagas included in this collection before (Egil's, Laxardal, Bolli Bollason, Greenlanders, and Eirik the Red), and I intend to deal with additional sagas separately if I review them. However, there are also several "tales" given here that I haven't seen elsewhere, i.e., the shorter works known as Þáttr, and I might as well make some notes on individual tales in this collection here.---------------------------Thorstein Staff-StruckThis is a very nice and simple Icelandic miniature which seems so familiar it makes me wonder whether the same tale, or some variant on it, occurred in Njal's Saga. I'm not sure, but anyway, in a few pages it gives a good sample of the flavor of sagas of revenge in which a little slight, and a lot of goading, can lead even mild men to kill, in this time and this place. I already admire Thorstein and Bjarni greatly.
—Zadignose
So the problem with an omnibus edition of Icelandic Sagas is that they get old pretty fast -- the action is often repetitive, and it doesn't help that many names sound alike and get confusing*.I think here, as with any story collection, the key is to read just one or two -- as opposed to trying to make it through the entire thing at once.That said it's pretty fascinating when you put it into the historical context. At a time most non-medieval scholars would still call the Dark Ages, the Icelanders (and Norse) were an extremely well developed society, with complex legal systems, women who had way more power (if not necessarily rights, though this is debatable) than others on the European continent of the time, and a code of honor that could rival the Pashtun or Albanian Kanun (one may debate if a code of honor is modern or medieval, of course).I still think I enjoyed Njal's Saga the most (not included in this edition) since it reads the most like a novel, but I also particularly enjoyed the Saga of Hranfkel the Godi.*I would imagine a non-native English speaker would have similar trouble separating James, Jimmy, Jon, John, etc as I, with no Icelandic knowledge other than pronunciation of a few letters and the patronymic, have with Thord, Thorolf, Thorstein, etc.
—Rebecca
1) Egil's Saga; (tr.) Scudder, Bernard2) The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal; (tr.) Wawn, Andrew3) The Saga of the People of Laxardal; (tr.) Kunz, Keneva4) Bolli Bollason's Tale; (tr.) Kunz, Keneva5) The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi; (tr.) Gunnell, Terry6) The Saga of the Confederates; (tr.) Ellison, Ruth C.7) Gisli Sursson's Saga; (tr.) Regal, Martin S.8) The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue; (tr.) Attwood, Katrina C.9) The Saga of Ref the Sly; (tr.) Clark, George10) The Vinland Sagas; (tr.) Kunz, Keneva11) The Saga of the Greenlanders; (tr.) Kunz, Keneva12) Eirik the Red's Saga; (tr.) Kunz, Keneva13) The Tale of Thorstein Staff-Struck; (tr.) Maxwell, Anthony14) The Tale of Halldor Snorrason II; (tr.) Gunnell, Terry15) The Tale of Sarcastic Halli; (tr.) Clark, George16) The Tale of Thorstein Shiver; (tr.) Maxwell, Anthony17) The Tale of Auden from the West Fjords; (tr.) Maxwell, Anthony18) The Tale of the Story-Wise Icelander; (tr.) Maxwell, Anthony
—Courtney
