Eirik the Red and other Icelandic Sagas
"He walked under the woodpile and heard the noise of riding from the north into the home-field. He saw that there were nine women there, all in dark raiment, and they held drawn swords in their hands. He heard likewise the noise of riding from the south into the home-field, and there too were nine women, all in bright raiment, and on white horses. Thidrandi now wanted to get back indoors and tell them of this sight, but the dark- clad women came up with him first and set upon him."
~
The Icelandic sagas are somewhat unique in that a character's emotional responses are implied by actions taken rather than words spoken; the contemporary audience would have been much more alert to subtle slights of honour without anything being explicitly stated. So, to our ears, this appears a terse, crisp literature... but certainly not a bare one.
The sagas concern themselves with family feuds, legal niceties, cautionary tales, and far-flung travels - Eirik to Greenland and Autumn to Rome, all of which are carefully embedded in actual historical events and extensive family genealogies - which must have lent all the greater credibility to their accompanying fantastical elements!
The sagas in this volume are:
• Hen-Thorir
• The Vapnfjord Men
• Thorstein Staff-Struck
• Hrafnkel the Priest of Frey
• Eirik the Red
• Thidrandi whom the Goddesses Slew
• Autumn and the Bear
• Gunnlaug Wormtongue
• King Hrolf and his Champions
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#medievalliterature #literature #viking