The Sagas of the Icelanders

The Sagas of the Icelanders PDF Author: Jane Smilely
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141933267
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

The Sagas of the Icelanders

The Sagas of the Icelanders PDF Author: Jane Smilely
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141933267
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

An Introduction to the Sagas of Icelanders

An Introduction to the Sagas of Icelanders PDF Author: CARL. PHELPSTEAD
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813080680
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Combining an accessible approach with innovative scholarship, Carl Phelpstead draws on historical context, contemporary theory, and close reading to deepen our understanding of Icelandic saga narratives about the island's early history.

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Including 49 Tales: An epic : Njal's saga

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Including 49 Tales: An epic : Njal's saga PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Old Norse literature
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
The set contains "the first complete, coordinated English translation of The sagas of Icelanders, forty in all, together with forty-nine of the shorter Tales of Icelanders."--Preface.

Icelanders in the Viking Age

Icelanders in the Viking Age PDF Author: William R. Short
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786447273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The Sagas of Icelanders are enduring stories from Viking-age Iceland filled with love and romance, battles and feuds, tragedy and comedy. Yet these tales are little read today, even by lovers of literature. The culture and history of the people depicted in the Sagas are often unfamiliar to the modern reader, though the audience for whom the tales were intended would have had an intimate understanding of the material. This text introduces the modern reader to the daily lives and material culture of the Vikings. Topics covered include religion, housing, social customs, the settlement of disputes, and the early history of Iceland. Issues of dispute among scholars, such as the nature of settlement and the division of land, are addressed in the text.

The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga

The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga PDF Author: Margaret Clunies Ross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492640
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time. Its multiple sub-genres - including family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas and sagas of knights - are described and discussed in detail, and the world of medieval Icelanders is powerfully evoked. The first general study of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga to be written in English for some decades, the Introduction is based on up-to-date scholarship and engages with current debates in the field. With suggestions for further reading, detailed information about the Icelandic literary canon, and a map of medieval Iceland, this book is aimed at students of medieval literature and assumes no prior knowledge of Scandinavian languages.

Comic Sagas and Tales from Iceland

Comic Sagas and Tales from Iceland PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141975520
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Comic Sagas and Tales brings together the very finest Icelandic stories from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a time of civil unrest and social upheaval. With feuding families and moments of grotesque violence, the sagas see such classic mythological figures as murdered fathers, disguised beggars, corrupt chieftains and avenging sons do battle with axes, words and cunning. The tales, meanwhile, follow heroes and comical fools through dreams, voyages and religious conversions in medieval Iceland and beyond. Shaped by Iceland's oral culture and their conversion to Christianity, these stories are works of ironic humour and stylistic innovation.

The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas

The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas PDF Author: Ármann Jakobsson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131704147X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
The last fifty years have seen a significant change in the focus of saga studies, from a preoccupation with origins and development to a renewed interest in other topics, such as the nature of the sagas and their value as sources to medieval ideologies and mentalities. The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas presents a detailed interdisciplinary examination of saga scholarship over the last fifty years, sometimes juxtaposing it with earlier views and examining the sagas both as works of art and as source materials. This volume will be of interest to Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian scholars and accessible to medievalists in general.

Feud in the Icelandic Saga

Feud in the Icelandic Saga PDF Author: Jesse L. Byock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520082591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Byock sees the crucial element in the origin of the Icelandic sagas not as the introduction of writing or the impact of literary borrowings from the continent but the subject of the tales themselves - feud. This simple thesis is developed into a thorough examination of Icelandic society and feud, and of the narrative technique of recounting it.

Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland

Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland PDF Author: Oren Falk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192635573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Historians spend a lot of time thinking about violence: bloodshed and feats of heroism punctuate practically every narration of the past. Yet historians have been slow to subject 'violence' itself to conceptual analysis. What aspects of the past do we designate violent? To what methodological assumptions do we commit ourselves when we employ this term? How may we approach the category 'violence' in a specifically historical way, and what is it that we explain when we write its history? Astonishingly, such questions are seldom even voiced, much less debated, in the historical literature. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland: This Spattered Isle lays out a cultural history model for understanding violence. Using interdisciplinary tools, it argues that violence is a positively constructed asset, deployed along three principal axes - power, signification, and risk. Analysing violence in instrumental terms, as an attempt to coerce others, focuses on power. Analysing it in symbolic terms, as an attempt to communicate meanings, focuses on signification. Finally, analysing it in cognitive terms, as an attempt to exercise agency despite imperfect control over circumstances, focuses on risk. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland explores a place and time notorious for its rampant violence. Iceland's famous sagas hold treasure troves of circumstantial data, ideally suited for past-tense ethnography, yet demand that the reader come up with subtle and innovative methodologies for recovering histories from their stories. The sagas throw into sharp relief the kinds of analytic insights we obtain through cultural interpretation, offering lessons that apply to other epochs too.

The Saga of Þórður Kakali

The Saga of Þórður Kakali PDF Author: D.M. White
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1953035272
Category : Fiction
Languages : is
Pages : 323

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Book Description