The Sagas of Icelanders by Jane Smiley (PDF)

Description

The prose literature of medieval Iceland is a great world treasure – elaborate, various, strange, profound, and as eternally current as any of the other great literary treasures – the Homeric epics, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the works of William Shakespeare or of any modern writer you could name. Mysteries surround these stories – how were they composed and by whom? what were the motives of the authors? Why were they written in prose when the currency of medieval literature was poetry? How did their contemporaries understand them – did they even read them, or did they hear them read aloud? But the questions fall away as we read the sagas and tales themselves. They are written with such immediacy and forthrightness and they concern such basic human dilemmas that for the most part they are readily accessible and seductive. Reading one creates the appetite for another and another. In the present volume, Penguin has drawn upon the newly translated and edited Complete Sagas of Icelanders to offer the English-speaking reader a rich selection of Icelandic prose. Long and short, complex and simple, fantastic and realistic – there is a taste of everything here, an abundant introduction to a world a thousand years separated from ours, both intensely familiar and intensely strange.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I got this to read while I was in Iceland. I have to confess that I had never heard of the sagas before I bought my plane ticket and started to plan my visit. This is a great shame, because the stories are fantastic and should be a much wider read part of the English literature.THE GOODThe sagas are true (if embellished) stories about the early vikings who moved to Iceland. They are full of adventure: viking raids, abducting maidens, duels, banishments, etc. It helped to read the book while in Iceland: the beautiful desolation of the island really rams home just how hard life must have been for these early settlers.There’s something very Tolkein-ish about these tales in both style and content. If you liked Lord of the Rings you’ll like these, (although there are a few less dragons and orcs!). Egil’s saga was the highlight of this book for me, although the other stories were also fun to read.THE BADThe book is pretty big – if you just want to read a few of the best sagas to get a taste while in Iceland, then you might not want to lug this tome around. Despite its size, it also doesn’t contain Njall’s saga, which is one of the better sagas. If you just want a couple of sagas to get a flavour of the genre, then I might suggest a smaller work that contains the sagas of Egil and Njall.

⭐When I was growing up, I had the good fortune to have a collection of books regarding such Sagas, some cast off from the Rehobeth Public Library, others from Penguin Books. To get that kind of material, one need lay out the big bucks for the Magnus Magnusson volumes, which are rare. This is kind of the next best thing, very enjoyable for sure, but NOT really the very best material, each of which requires a book of its own. Icelandic Sagas were VERY popular in the USA some 100 years ago, you’re onto a real treat here if you don’t know. (Try separate book “Grettir the Strong”, the most famous villain in Icelandic history and a really fun read!)

⭐This book is packed with many of the Icelandic sagas and tales. A very welcome addition to my library.

⭐The paperback version of this book is excellent, with supplementary material that adds real value to the text. However, the Kindle edition has NONE of the maps, figures, or tables. (At least I haven’t found any. It’s a big book.) The list of maps and drawings from the book’s table of contents appears, but the links only jump to the approximate place in the text where the material would have been. There are other inconsistencies with the linked table of contents, but they are tolerable. Annoyingly, the table of contents is not available from the Kindle “go to” menu; you have to jump to “cover” and scroll forward.All this would have been acceptable if Penguin had DISCLOSED the absence of maps and figures on Amazon and had LOWERED the price accordingly. The e-book costs about the same or MORE than most sellers’ hardcopy prices!I’m sure there were good reasons to omit this material. The details of the maps are hard to see even in print. But maybe some of the material, like tables and drawings, would have been readable. And this book would be a good fit for the larger Kindle DX. A flagrant example of a publisher dumping e-book garbage on the market and charging a premium price. And a real pity considering the care the editors obviously lavished on the original book.

⭐Came in a reasonable amount of time. Looks good. It’s for my son who loves these types of stories.

⭐I paid $18.99 for this Kindle edition ($20.51 with tax), and for that much, excuse me, I think I’m entitled to a well-formatted electronic edition. This was not. It had NO table of contents, so it was impossible to jump to the glossary when needed. There were numerous formatting errors (mysterious colons in the middle of sentences, spaces in the middle of words, other words run together, etc.), and most of the drawings and tables didn’t make it into the book at all. Just big blank spots.I’m going to stop buying any Kindle books if they can’t be produced more carefully. I’m getting tired of these sloppy quick-and-dirty ebook transfers that are riddled with errors. In a large, scholarly work like this, I expect to be able to access the glossary and the index while I read. Without that, the Kindle Experience is nowhere NEAR the experience of reading a “real book”.

⭐These sagas are selected from the excellent and rare five volume set “Complete Sagas of the Icelanders”. The translations are clear and readable. A glossary is provided to explain terms unfamiliar to those new to the sagas. In addition there is considerable historical background material which gives the necessary context for understanding the sagas.If you enjoy the Old Icelandic sagas, this volume is a _must have_. If you aren’t familiar with the Old Icelandic sagas, this is probably the best place to start.

⭐It’s a heavy book, and had stamping everywhere (former university library book). But the stories are good. Very nice read. The newer version is lighter, but the edges are rough cut. Book arrived in a week.

⭐As described, arrived promptly. What more could you want?

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