The bestselling saga of Eirik the Red, Leif the Lucky, and the first American explorers
The all-time bestselling of the sagas in Penguin Classics, The Vinland Sagas are published here in a vibrant new translation. Consisting of The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red's Saga, they chronicle the adventures of Eirik the Red and his son, Leif Eirikson, who explored North America 500 years before Columbus. Famous for being the first-ever descriptions of North America, and written down in the early thirteenth century, they recount the Icelandic settlement of Greenland by Eirik the Red, the chance discovery by seafaring adventurers of a mysterious new land, and Eirik's son Leif the Lucky's perilous voyages to explore it.
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.
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.
