Sagas of Warrior-Poets

Description

Lovers, poets, and dragon-slaying heroes populate the gripping Icelandic sagas included in this collection. Part of Penguin Classics’ eight-volume Icelandic Saga collection, this volume includes stories that were composed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and are set more than two hundred years earlier-a time when the old Viking ethos of honor and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation. Set in the farmsteads of Viking-age Iceland, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands. In her informative introduction, Diana Whaley highlights these important themes and reveals how the authors used these tales to entertain, to preserve and shape traditions about the past, and to explore vital social issues.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Sagas of Warrior-PoetsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Translations
Sagas of Warrior-Poets

Kormak’s Saga (trans. Rory McTurk)
The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-poet (trans. Diana Whaley)
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue (trans. Katrina Attwood)
The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People (trans. Alison Finlay)
Viglund’s Saga (trans. Marianne Kalinke)

Notes
Plot Summaries
Reference Section:
Maps
Chronology
Rulers
Social, Political and Legal Structures
The Farm
Early Icelandic Literature
The Techniques of Skaldic Poetry
Glossary
Index of Characters

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