Books like The Sagas of Icelanders — picked by fans

I could not put down this book; it was so good.

I read it late at night, I read it on the metro going to work, I read it on my lunch break, I even took it to a birthday party and read it there between the toasts and the jokes.

I’ve always liked mythology, but at times it was too dry and gloomy. So I always looked for a different story about the ancient myths, and this book delivered it. I especially loved the notes at the bottom of the page, which were even funnier than the text. 

Iceland is one of the first off-the-beaten-track places I visited as an aspiring young travel writer and I arrived with the onset of the first Gulf War - the one against Saddam Hussein.

I visited with three other people. We immediately met a man in Reykjavik who introduced us to his diplomat friend, and before it was all said and done we spent most of that trip with the Icelander and the Frenchman in front of a much more rudimentary CNN, watching the war.

While I’ve been back to Iceland a number of times since, that first trip, the instant friendships, and the very odd experience of watching war in the desert from up at the Arctic Circle, sealed the deal for me about visiting the far north, and indirectly led to my own later book.

Halldor Laxness is the greatest of Icelandic authors and Independent People is very nearly… show more.

To read this book was such a pleasurable experience.

I truly loved the idea of a mythical creature mixing it with the modern world and trying to fit in. In some places, it resonated with me and some of my prior experiences, which made the book even more enjoyable. I read it twice, both times on long trips to Europe, and it made my journey easy and fulfilling.

This is an inspiring story that became personal to me and, in a way, served as inspiration for me to try my own hand in writing. I keep this book as one of the several that I take on my trips.

No contemporary Icelandic literature without crime. Despite being one of the safest countries on the planet with hardly any crime, Icelandic crime authors are among the most successful representatives of Scandinavian noir, and Yrsa is the undisputed queen of Icelandic crime. While mostly know for her series featuring investigator Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, I Remember You is one of her standalone novels, a supernatural thriller set in the remote Westfjords of Iceland in winter and the perfect read when the wind and snow are howling outside. Or just the wind. 

Ragnar is one the most successful contemporary crime authors hailing from Iceland, also as his series featuring rookie policeman Ari Thór Arnarson is not set in the urban sprawl of the Icelandic capital Reykjavík but instead in the small town of Siglufjörður on the north coast and provides fascinating insight into Icelandic topography, history, and culture of the remote regions of the country. Snowblind is the first of the series, a slow-burning but gripping whodunnit set in a Siglufjörður cut off from the rest of the country by avalanches and snowstorms...  

Poetry remains very important for Icelanders, also as an everyday practise. There are farmers in the country today who compose poetry based on the landscape of their home and the sagas that played here hundreds of years ago, and about 40% of all published books in Iceland each year are poetry collections. Gerður is a highly successful poet and playwright, and her long poem Bloodhoof is an outstanding example of how contemporary Icelandic writing is still firmly rooted in the literary heritage of the country. The poem retells the classic Norse tale of the abduction of beautiful giantess Gerdur by the god Freyr, but from the perspective of the giantess in a distinctly feminist voice.  

I loved the entire series, but this book stands out, at least for me, as the most entertaining of them all.

The idea that Thor can be separated from his hammer was what really caught my interest. I especially loved how Thor assembled a diverse team to search for the hammer.

What was especially interesting and appealing to me was the mix between Norse mythology and the world and how they interacted. It made me laugh hard at some point, and I especially loved the personality of the characters. I really enjoyed the mixing of humor and adventure against the Norse mythology background. 

This is the last of the 4 books that Stephen Fry wrote about the Greek myths, and probably the best of the series. I devoured the book!

If you love history (folktale) and humor, look no further than this book; it has plenty of both! It is also the one that gave me the inspiration to write my take on history and folktales from an absurd and funny perspective.

I absolutely loved this book: being well familiar with the classic tale of The Odyssey, reading modern versions of the story, and having seen at least 3 different movies, I have to say this is the best version! I can only wish that somebody makes it into a movie! 

Nancy Marie Brown’s book came into my life at a most prescient time in my own horse history. I discovered her book at just the moment I was discovering this then rare breed, the Icelandic horse. In the late 1990s, Brown goes to Iceland searching for the perfect horse (gaedingur in Icelandic). The country was very different from the tourist magnet it is today. It was wilder, more isolated, less traveled. Brown is there in pursuit of a horse or two to bring home. She first arrives with her husband and eight-year-old son after a family trauma. They stay in a broken-down house, “a concrete box” without modern amenities. She tries her best to learn and converse in the native tongue with the local farmers. As she tests drive all the horses, the reader learns all about Icelandic horses and horse-buying. What adds such depth to this book is… show more.

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.