The Vinland Sagas

by Leifur Eiricksson

[wcs53]

I started reading this book on a flight to Iceland last month as I thought it would be appropriate reading for such a journey. The book contains two sagas - The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga. These are sagas concerning the first documented voyages across the Atlantic.

When I opened the book to discover that there were almost 50 pages of introduction I have to admit to being a bit worried. However, these pages proved to be very interesting and contained a lot of background about the writing and background of the two sagas, as well as comparing them and highlighting both the similarities and differences between them. The sagas themselves are full of colourful characters and offer a fascinating insight into the life of the Vikings round about a thousand years ago. There's a certain beauty, as well as some brutality, in the way they lived. The sagas themselves are not that long, but without the introduction and appendices it would be easy to miss much of what happens in them.

I have quite a few other books of sagas on my shelves and reading this little book has encouraged me to move them a little further up my mental TBR pile.