Will I love The Sagas of Icelanders?

This book is essentially an anthology of some of the best stories ever told.

It includes sagas as well as several tales, shorter anecdotes the Icelanders told. I love the Icelandic landscape, and it comes startlingly alive in the pages of this book.

One of the best is Egil’s Saga. In terms of fantastic events, it exceeds most fantasy written today. Others are realistic and give a feel for what life was like for ordinary people in early medieval Iceland. 

I love literature that is elaborate, strange, and profound. I love books that don’t give their secrets away right on… show more.

I thought this was one of the most influential and important books of the 21st century.

I truly enjoyed the details and level of research that went into this book, as well as the wealth of information about the Vikings’ Icelandic settlements, their traditions, customs, and way of life. I felt transported back in time, when the first longships landed on the Icelandic shore, and I felt that I was living with those early settlers, not just reading about their lives.

I felt a very powerful connection with their struggles to establish their farms and regulate their communal life. I… show more.

Even though this is a massive tome with almost 800 pages, the book is the perfect introduction to the rich medieval literature of the sagas that form the foundation of Icelandic literature today. It contains many of the main sagas including the Egil's Saga, the Laxdæla Saga, and the Vinland Sagas as well as background information on saga history, medieval Iceland, and the Icelandic language. A collection full of the battles, witchcraft, poetry, monsters, and heroic journeys that influenced generations of writers from Jules Verne and J.R.R. Tolkien over to A.S. Byatt.