Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Viking Literature


If you are interested in the Vikings, you'll want to read some of the Sagas and the Havamal. The Sagas are tales of the lives, loves, battles and feuds of real people in the Viking period. Many of them are available free on the net. One of the most famous, and best, is the Saga of Burnt Njal. Another is the story of the trollish warrior-poet Egil Skaligrimsson. There is a web page in Iceland devoted to Egil and his Saga, and related stories. You can read the saga on-line at the Northvegr Page, or the Blackmask Page. You can also download Kormaks, Grettis, and Njal's Sagas in zip format. For laconic drama, there's always Heimskringla, the story of the kings of Norway. There's a good general introduction to the sagas in Iceland with commentary, links to some of the English texts, and many of the texts in their original Icelandic.

If you are a lover of fine books, and have a bit of cash on hand, you might want to look at The Complete Sagas of the Icelanders, edited by Vi�ar Hreinsson. This is the complete and definative body of Viking Literature in new translations. It's not inexpensive, but if you like real books rather than downloaded text files you might consider it. I'd read some of the cheap or free versions first however.

The Havamal contains advice the "High One", Odin himself, on how to get along in life.

No comments: