Seven Viking Romances (Penguin Classics)

By Anonymous

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140444742
• ISBN13: 9780140444742
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.7" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Anthology of Short but Classic and Important Sagas

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 humor 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.

Sly Rogues Are Nothing New

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 humor 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".

Ian Myles Slater on: Vikings As They Should Have Been!

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 attempt 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 seri

Maybe better called Seven Fanciful Viking Adventures

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.

WONDERFUL!!

It seems to me that the stories in this book are parodies of the more serious sagas that were in circulation in the twelfth century. At any rate, they are funny, sometimes outrageous, chauvinistic, and give an excellent picture into Viking life. The writers of these tales were very witty people indeed. I loved reading 'em! Definitely buy this one! Ten thumbs up!