Composed at the end of the fourteenth century by an unknown author, The Saga of Grettir the Strong is one of the last great Icelandic sagas. With a mesmerizing combination of pagan ideals and Christian faith, it relates the tale of Grettir, an eleventh- century warrior struggling to hold on to the values of a heroic age as they are eclipsed by Christianity and a more pastoral lifestyle. Unable to settle into a community of farmers, Grettir becomes the aggressive scourge of both honest men and evil monsters—until, following a battle with the sinister ghost Glam, he is cursed to endure a life of tortured loneliness away from civilization, fighting giants, trolls, and berserks.
Prose Edda is a work without predecessor or parallel. Snorri Sturluson feared that the traditional techniques of Norse poetics, the pagan kennings, and the allusions to mythology would be forgotten with the introduction of new verse forms from Europe. Prose Edda was designed as a handbook for poets to compose in the style of the skalds of the Viking ages. It is an exposition of the rule of poetic diction with many examples, applications, and retellings of myths and legends. The present selection includes the whole of Gylfaginning (The deluding of Gylfi)--a guide to mythology that forms one of the great storybooks of the Middle Ages.
"Kormaks saga is one of the Icelanders' sagas. It tells of the 10th century Icelandic poet, Kormkr Ogmundarson, and Steingerdr, the love of his life. The saga preserves a significant amount of poetry attributed to Kormakr, much of it dealing with his love for Steingerdr. Though the saga is believed to have been among the earliest sagas composed it is well preserved. The unknown author clearly relies on oral tradition and seems unwilling to add much of his own or even to fully integrate the different accounts he knew of Kormakr. Often he does little more than briefly set the scenes for Kormakr's stanzas.
Heimskringla is the best known of the old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (1179 - 1242) ca. 1230. The name Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts (kringla heimsins - the circle of the world).
Gunnlaug answers, "Neither Onund nor Thorfin are men as good as my father. Nay, thou thyself clearly fallest short of him--or what hast thou to set against his strife with Thorgrim the Priest, the son of Kiallak, and his sons, at Thorsness Thing, where he carried all that was in debate?"
