100 Books Like Guta Saga

I love the sagas. They are stories first told a thousand years ago about the Norse settlers in Iceland. They are crisp, subtle, exciting with some excellent characters, especially the women. My favourites are the two Vinland Sagas, which describe the discovery of Greenland and then North America (Vinland) by Erik the Red and his family. This includes the wonderful Gudrid, who was born in Iceland, got married in Greenland, gave birth to a child called Snorri in Vinland, and then went on a pilgrimage to Rome. All in about 1000 AD! 

I’m a sucker for pretty much any saga, those pieces of literature where legend and myth and history mingle into a perfect mixture of inspiration for the creative mind. This saga gives us a who’s who of historical figures, as well as poetic stories about journeys, battles, and political maneuverings. My favorite bits are the smaller, easier to overlook details though, such as the cause of Sigurd the Powerful’s death. The Orkneyinga is a consuming read about the history of Orkney through medieval eyes.

North of Britain, the Vikings encountered the uninhabited Sheep Isles, or the Faroes, before they went on to discover their better-known settlement of Iceland. Connections remained close, and in the 13th century, an unknown Icelandic author wrote this swashbuckling tale of the wealthy merchants and farmers who lived in these small and craggy islands in the Viking Age, their inter-island rivalries, and their tricky relationships with the rulers of their Norwegian homeland.

What other nation can boast that it has a written account of the first people to inhabit it? Iceland was an uninhabited, volcanic island until the arrival of Vikings from Scandinavia and elsewhere in the 870s. This book, written in the 13th century, is a catalogue of some 3000 individuals who link the settlement period to the time of writing. Of these around 400 (including 13 women) are remembered as the landnámsmenn or original ‘land-takers’ who settled, distributed, named, and cultivated this empty land. In amongst the lists and genealogies are wonderful short anecdotes about their families, feuds, and adventures in their new-found land.

This well-written and well-illustrated book tells the story of Vikings, their ships, travels, and trade in the context of the global history of the ancient World – reaching from the Atlantic to China and from North Norway to Africa. The Vikings were far from the only great seafarers, warriors, and tradesmen of their time. They were part of far-flung networks, which also traded ideas. Contemporary travel accounts and recent archaeological investigations and finds are important components of this attractive book, written by international specialists.

I was drawn to this book, a ripping and irreverent yarn about Vikings, by the foreword to its new edition written by Michael Chabon.

Our sea-faring hero finds himself in endless scrapes everywhere a Viking ship could go, often brought about by his own foolishness. Of special note are his adventures in Islamic Spain.

And I discovered as I was writing this recommendation that the novel was (sort of) made into a 1964 movie, a British-Yugoslav coproduction starring, among others, Sidney Poitier. You’ve got to love that.

It's probably not by accident that three of the five books on this list are by Icelandic authors, as so much of the history and mythology of that nation is tied up with its Viking heritage. This novel, while somewhat unevenly paced, is a vivid depiction of life in Medieval Iceland, where kinship and honor were the basis by which human society clung to an unforgiving landscape. Its thematic emphasis falls on entrapment and isolation, and it offers a gorgeous sense of a premodern Nordic landscape.

In the “traders vs. raiders” approach to Viking history, women stay home and look after the farm while the men go off on adventures. Three books published in the 1990s by Judith Jesch and Jenny Jochens brought the lives of these women out of the shadows, showing how vital their role was.

In Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World, Jóhanna Kristín Friðriksdóttir brings these early studies up to date. With her mastery of detail from the Icelandic sagas, Friðriksdóttir follows an ordinary Viking woman from birth to death. She tells stories of women who are bold and successful, others who are battered and victimized.

She hopes to introduce us, she says, “to the diverse and fascinating texts recorded in medieval Iceland, a culture able to imagine women in all kinds of roles carrying power.” Like the mythical valkyries of her title, these are “women who decided.” To learn… show more.

I loved the compelling story of Moira, the fierce, sword-wielding oldest daughter of the recently slain Scottish clan chief who had to summon the strength to lead her people.

Her prisoner—the enemy—was the last man she should have fallen for, but her love for him went beyond all reason. He spoke to her in dreams and told her that she was his destiny.

Farlan, the mighty warrior captured during battle and tortured as a prisoner, fell for Moira, the fesity maid with a blade who was his equal in every respect.

With vivid characters, breathtaking descriptions of Scotland's savage beauty, and a gripping tale of love triumphing over hate, this powerful novel stirred my very soul.

Almost everything we know about the Vikings—their gods and heroes, their history and myths, their values and fears—comes from texts written down on parchment in medieval Iceland. Yet the Icelandic sagas and Eddas are biased. They explain very little about the Vikings in the east (and get wrong much of what they do describe). Their world is not the Viking World, which stretched from Constantinople to North America, but Viking Iceland.

Jesse Byock brings all this material together in Viking Age Iceland. First published in 2001, this immensely readable book is a classic that has not yet been bettered. It should be on every Viking enthusiast’s shelf.