Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri by Gisli Sursson
I would hardly consider these two sagas to be the best way to introduce someone to the great Icelandic “literary” of the Middle Ages. Other sagas, like Burnt Njal, have a stronger sense of coherence and character development, and are therefore legitimately regarded as “pieces of art.” More often than not, Gisli Sursson’s Saga is a type of historical DNA, or what Richard Dawkins has dubbed a “meme” – a unit of cultural memory. The most prized possessions of an Icelander during most of its isolated and poor history were his DNA and his ancestry. Today’s geneticists believe that DNA is just as valuable as iridium, and nearly every narrative starts with a chapter or two on family history.
Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri by Gisli Sursson
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Gisli’s Saga starts off with a bevvy of names, almost all of which are variations of Thor. This makes for pretty dull reading for someone looking for an exciting adventure story. Gisli’s Saga eventually becomes just that, a wild story of outlawry and a valiant last fight; if it were set in Japan, it would make a fantastic samurai movie. Once the family connections have been made, Gisli does a great job of illustrating the themes of conflicting loyalties.
The Saga of the People of Eyri, which was written by a different author at a different time, shares some of the same events and people as Gisli Sursson’s Saga. The history of the settlers in one area of Iceland is extensive and complicated; it reads more like a necklace of short stories than a novella in the style of some of the most enjoyable sagas. The Saga of Eyri as a whole is less than the sum of its literary components, however, some of the short stories would make good standalone works.
The Icelandic sagas’ greatest literary achievement is ex post facto; history is their primary subject of fascination. These two sagas make a good historical pair when discussing how Christianity replaced the old faith of Thor and Odin in Iceland and throughout Scandinavia. The writers of these two sagas appear to have been less entranced by the new faith than the bulk of later scribes, despite the fact that all of the existing sagas were created by Christian writers many generations after the events they chronicle.
These sagas have been expertly translated by Martin Regal and Judy Quinn into English which is more lively and idiomatic than that of some of the other translators in the Penguin series. They have a talent for keeping some of the Old Icelandic grit. What do you think “elf-frighteners” would mean? A multi-generational conflict results from the men of another family’s purposeful placement of “elf-frighteners” on the sacred grounds of one family’s temple. To discover the gritty truth, you must read The Saga of the People of Eyri.
