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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.610308
EAN num: 9780140444742
ISBN number: 0140444742
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: January 07, 1986
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 174443
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Combining traditional myth, oral history and re-worked European legend to depict an ancient realm of heroism and wonder, the seven tales collected here are among the most fantastical of all the Norse romances. Powerfully inspired works of Icelandic imagination, they relate intriguing, often comical tales of famous kings, difficult gods and women of great beauty, goodness or cunning. The tales plunder a wide range of earlier literature from Homer to the French romances as in the tale of the wandering hero Arrow-Odd, which combines several older legends, or Egil and Asmund, where the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops is skilfully adapted into a traditional Norse legend. These are among the most outrageous, delightful and exhilarating tales in all Icelandic literature.
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Rated by buyers 
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This anthology includes various heroic sagas from the Icelandic Middle Ages, written at a time when Icelandic work was more open to European influences. Hence the translators prefer to call these "Romances" referring to the European influences than "Sagas."
At the same time, there are a great many important tales here. Gautrek's Saga, for example, is included here. On the basis of comparisons between the deaths of Vikar in this saga and Baldr in Snorri's Edda, de Vries drew important conclusions about the nature of initiation rites among the Norse.
The one thing I think the translator could have done to make this better would have been to add footnotes explaining some of the elements of the translation (particularly the names). Some of the humour of the writers fo the sagas has thus been lost in translation. For example, in Arrow-Odd, it is helpful to know that 'Odd' means 'point' and thus there is a pun on his nickname that is not evident from the translation.
Having said this, these are all quite enjoyable to read and important for serious Norse studies. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
The Icelandic Sagas rank among the greatest treasures of world literature, though even Scandinavians find their original language daunting. Fortunately the Penguin Classics series includes a dozen or so excellent English translations of some of the most imposing sagas, as well as some of the most frivolously amusing. The seven "Viking Romances" included in this book lean toward the latter category.
In English and without the geneologies incorporated in many sagas, an extended work like Njal's or Hrafnkel's Saga can read remarkably like a modern novel, while some of the most naturalistic short sagas are reminiscent of stories of family strife by Alice Munro. No other Medieval literature approaches the grim realism of violence in these sagas, and in my opinion no other literature before the Spanish picaresque displays their sardonic humour or acknowledgement of the attractiveness of rogues.
Colorful rogues are the mainstay of these so-called romances, which were plainly told and then written for entertainment rather than edification. There are touches of naturalism even here, amid encounters with trolls, berserkers and giants and the casting of spells, but the fun is in the obvious mockery of everything pious or credulous. Arrow-Odd, the antihero of the longest tale in this volume, is a spiritual ancestor of Harry Flashman and Davy Crockett. Whoever composed these tales was no backwoods illiterate; there are shameless plunderings of stories and of graphic details from Greek and chivalric sources. Iceland in the Middle Ages was unquestionably an outpost, Ultima Thule, but the Norse and Swedish peoples were travelers, with travelers' sophistication about others.
You may come to the sagas for valid reasons of historical scholarship, or with fantastic expectations based on Tolkien and such, but once you begin to look at them, you'll discover how compelling they are as "good reading".
Rated by buyers -
The sagas (prose narratives) from medieval Iceland are more diverse in subject than would be indicated by the more readily available translations. Of course, the major "Islendingasogur" ("Sagas of the Icelanders") are, alongside the series of Kings' Sagas (mainly in Snorri Sturluson's "Heimskringla"), and the lives of the Earls of Orkney, among the great glories of medieval literature, and deserve the attention they have received. The stories of Icelandic families, conflicts and legal disputes, poets, outlaws, and lawyers, are unlike anything in Europe before the modern novel, and the accounts in the Kings' and Earls' sagas of both dynasty-builders and feckless rulers also deserve the praise they get.
But there are also "Fornaldarsogur," the "tales of olden times," retelling ancient Germanic and Scandinavian legends (notably "Volsunga Saga," "Heidrek's" or "Hervarar Saga," and "Hrolf Kraki's Saga"). Only a few of them are as well-known as they deserve, and then often because of associations with other works (the Sigurd / Siegfried legend, "Beowulf"). And there are accounts of bishops and saints, translations and imitations of Arthurian romances and Carolingian chansons de geste ("riddarasogur," "knightly tales,"), and fantastic stories ("lying sagas") of adventure and romance among supernatural beings or in distant lands. "Sturlunga Saga" is a compilation of partisan reports of contemporary events, somewhat cloaked in the objectivity of the saga style. These are largely under-represented in English translation, or at best such translations usually are available only in large or specialized libraries.
The great period of saga-writing was the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but stories in the native style continued to be written in later times. There has been tendency to date "good" sagas early, and "inferior" sagas late, and reject the "late" works. But most of the genres (if not specific surviving examples) seem to have been around from the beginning, at least as oral tales. There are close parallels to some of the more extravagant attested before 1220, in the "Gesta Danorum" of Saxo Grammaticus. The present volume was an interesting endeavor to make examples of some of the more neglected kinds of saga more familiar to ordinary readers, without worrying overmuch about their relative age or degree of literary sophistication.
The contents will be less surprising to those not directly familiar with great sagas, however. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the distinctions were not at all clear, and the thin antiquarian veneer of (the now obviously fictional) "Frithjof's Saga" was treated with immense seriousness, and even accorded great political importance. Boosted by a retelling by the poet Tegner, it achieved European celebrity when a masterpiece like "Njal's Saga" was just a name (at best). Quotations from its late medieval and hyperbolic version of Viking life are still found in circulation in popular accounts, treated as serious evidence. (For this, and much else, Andrew Wawn's "The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain" is illuminating.)
The confusion is understandable. After all, among the realistic tales, "Eyrbyggja Saga" includes a dramatic haunting -- although the exorcism takes the form of a properly executed legal eviction notice! Visions of the dead, prophetic apparitions, witches, marauding reanimated corpses, trolls, and (in foreign parts) more vaguely conceived monsters may play small roles -- or large ones in "Grettir's Saga," and some other accounts of famous outlaws. But these were, for the most part, matters of contemporary belief, and in any case the "Sagas of the Icelanders" were set mainly between about 850 and 1050, when, it was held, Christianity had yet to drive out the pagan powers, and odd things might be likely to have happened on familiar ground. (Not that the supernatural ceased to be a menacing presence in Icelandic life -- accounts through the nineteenth-century make that clear enough.)
The "Seven Viking Romances" in this volume fall somewhere between the mainly realistic "Sagas of the Icelanders" and the most extravagant of the "lying sagas." Some at very first seem to come close to being "Sagas of the Icelanders," and some may properly be considered "legendary sagas," albeit with more than a little extra-traditional elaboration. And they are particularly interesting because they don't quite fit expectations. They are examples both of literary invention and of the preservation of archaic beliefs. Sorting these out has been a problem for scholars, but not the sort of problem that should prevent a reader from enjoying the stories.
How does this work? Some of these seven involve notable Icelandic families or their ancestors in the "Old Country" (Norway), and they all rely to some extent on the standard stylistic devices of the saga literature. Characters ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
Arrow-Odd went to Permia and was remembered forever.
I read Arrow-Odd once and will never forget it.
Far from what we might consider a hero, Arrow-Odd kills, rapes, and piliages without reason. Yet for its hero's downfalls, Arrow-Odd is an interesting tale that involves trips to Giantland, the conquering of several viking hoardes single-handedly, and Arrow-Odd's brief stint as "Bark-Man". This tale could be likened to the comic books of today, but with no pictures and in verse.
I would recommend this collection, particulary the reading of Arrow-Odd, to anyone interested in the cultures of old, the evolution of the hero, or a kooky trip into viking lore.
Rated by buyers -
The term "Romances" in the title refers to the style not the content of these stories. These are really fantastic adventures. There are a couple lengthly ones and some short ones, but most all of them are great reading. I would say that even if you don't find the legalistic/feud-based Icelandic sagas particularly appealing, these are a quite different. These seem much more like mythical stories, although the Norse gods play only a limited role in them. In some ways they are like Beowulf because they portray Norse dealing with fantastic creatures and magic. They would make great movies, but not really for children.
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