The Sagas of Icelanders (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Anonymous, Jane Smiley (preface), Robert Kellogg (introduction)
|
|
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of The Sagas of Icelanders.
discuss this book
friend reviews (0)
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
lists with this book
This book is not in any lists. Go add it to a list.
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 266)
Read in October, 2007
The preface by Jane Smiley was a bit disappointing, but the introduction by Robert Kellogg was good, and the translations are great. These sagas still risk a bit of repetitiveness and can seem stiff or wooden in parts, but these new translations (with notes on the source texts used) have made them a good deal fresher than the ones I read as a child (what were my parents thinking? so violent!). The violence is still there, but so is the disarming directness and humor in some spots. Also, the comp...more
Like this review?
yes
1 comments
Read in January, 2008
I got this book a couple of years ago and decided to read onw Saga a year. during the winter months. I dunno, Winter seemed the time for reading Nordic Sagas. So this year I read "The Saga of the Cofederates" which, I'm told, is a satire. There is a trickster character who outsmarts the confederates and saves his son, repairs their father-son estrangement, and gets to live comfortably ever after.
Where the first Sagas I read, had little more than bare story, explanation of bloodli...more
Where the first Sagas I read, had little more than bare story, explanation of bloodli...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommends it for:
Swedes
If you're like me you've probably thought to yourself among the vikings/pirates/ninjas triad, which can I favor for color, character and baddassery. Well, as a young lad I would not hesitate to say Ninjas! All Through college I would have to say Pirates, Pirates, Ninjas respectively. Now that I am in my mid-20's and I have read the sagas of Icelanders, I realized I have been very, very wrong! Vikings, vikings, vikings.
The writing here is elegant in its simplicity and the absence introspectio...more
The writing here is elegant in its simplicity and the absence introspectio...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I read two of the sagas in this book from the Vinland Sagas, Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga. Both were excellent. I read these before venturing to Iceland and after. They made a lot more sense after we visited because our trip and Icelandic tourism mainly covers The Settlement, when the early Vikings escaped or were forced away from Norway.
Excellent resource for learning the beginnings of Iceland and subsequent exploration of Greenland and Atlantic Canada by Leif the Lucky ...more
Excellent resource for learning the beginnings of Iceland and subsequent exploration of Greenland and Atlantic Canada by Leif the Lucky ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
I know I'm probably biased, but this stuff is awesome. As a monument of western literature, the sagas and tales of the Icelanders are as strange as they are magnificent. Intensely violent, utterly human, and completely entertaining. Don't let the thought of having to read Beowulf again fool you. This is not Beowulf. The sagas are surprisingly realistic. Check it out. You'll be glad. Make sure you start with some of the shorter sagas though. The long ones, though great, can be a little too detail...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2003
The West's earliest novel form. Part fact, part myth, here is the distant ancestor of today's Daniel Steel, MacKinlay Kantor and James Joyce. Trash or treasure, today's novel descended from these texts. And all that without even mentioning the stories the Sagas tell!!!
If nothing else, read this for Jane Smiley's excellent preface. Not only are the Nordic peoples fascinating, their impact on Western history and culture is under-appreciated.
If nothing else, read this for Jane Smiley's excellent preface. Not only are the Nordic peoples fascinating, their impact on Western history and culture is under-appreciated.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
While many are familiar with the Icelandic sagas as classics of world literature, it often seems that few bother to read them, probably due to a misconception that they are stilted and dull. Hardly! They are full of heroic lawyers (best seen in Njal's Saga) and violent revenants known as draugar (the Norse living dead). I challenge you to find zombies involved in tense courtroom battles dull.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
The human drama as well as the poetry of the sagas is amazing. The human element to the chronicles unfurls slowly and you have to get through the constant referencing to lineages which was vital at the time. if you can find a dual language version and learn to read the icelandic the sagas come alive a bit more.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Stories from the land of ice and snow...Valhalla, I am coming! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
This is the type of stuff - along with Lord of the Rings - that Robert Plant was digging, whilst his Guitarist With Mystique, Page, was reading up on Your Mutual Friend, Crowley.
This is the type of stuff - along with Lord of the Rings - that Robert Plant was digging, whilst his Guitarist With Mystique, Page, was reading up on Your Mutual Friend, Crowley.
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in January, 2003
recommends it for:
any lover of classical literature
1. What inspired Tolkien's names.
2. That early Icelanders were a paradox: poet, pirate, farmers who besides exhibiting tremendous individualism and sense of freedom, developed sophisticated legal systems and literature.
Egil's Saga was perhaps the most impressive and the one I keep rereading.
2. That early Icelanders were a paradox: poet, pirate, farmers who besides exhibiting tremendous individualism and sense of freedom, developed sophisticated legal systems and literature.
Egil's Saga was perhaps the most impressive and the one I keep rereading.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
The best anthology of Icelandic sagas you can get the States. If you haven't read the sagas, then you haven't said a poem then chopped a guys head off.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Warren gave this to me after learning about my love of Jane Smiley (who wrote the preface) and the history of the Norse peoples. I can't wait to read it, just have been in school continuously since he gave it to me, so no time to treat it right!
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
The most entertaining violence I have ever read. Characters saved their lives with poetry and put curses on each other with shame poles. My starved inner Viking was well fed with these stories.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2007
This is a daunting book at first glance, but the stories are for the ages, and one of humanities greatest treasures. This translation is very easy to read, and I tore through it like fiction.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommends it for:
Brutal Poets, history buffs
Blood, sex, death, brutal violence, paganism, and shape shifting and poetry what more could you want from this translation of texts as old as King James' Bible.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2007
I'm literally entralled. Nothing more to say, but that I intend to hunt down as many of these sagas as I can find.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2007
I believe Tolkien based LOTR on these tales. (It's been on my to-read list for a rather long time.)
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Vikings. Combat. Raids. Runes. Magic. Curses. Bloody feuds. What more do you really need?
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
A tough read unless your really into it but if you like everything Viking its great.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
I read this after visiting the Faroe Islands. Vikings were crazy!
Read it!
Read it!
Like this review?
yes
1 comments
