Icelandic Sagas English

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: We fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and their healthy outdoor lifestyle; we glut ourselves on their crime fiction. Even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavia, and how accurate is our picture of life in Scandinavia today?

From the translator of the best-selling Poetic Edda comes a gripping new rendering of two of the greatest sagas of Old Norse literature. Together the two sagas recount the story of seven generations of a single legendary heroic family and comprise our best source of traditional lore about its members - including, among others, the dragon slayer Sigurd, Brynhild the Valkyrie, and the Viking chieftain Ragnar Lothbrok.

Over 400 years before Columbus "discovered" the New World, it is believed that someone else already had - Icelander Bjarni Herjolfsson. Over the years 985-986, Herjolfsson was attempting to reach Eirik the Red's colony on Greenland when he was blown off-course. He sighted a coastline covered with woods, and thus was the first to glimpse a piece of North America.

Step into the world of the Vikings with "Kron's Honor" by Bjorn Wolfe, a gripping retelling of the classic Icelandic saga. This timeless tale transports you to a time of fierce warriors, epic battles, and larger-than-life heroes, where honor and glory are the only things worth fighting for. From the opening scene, you'll be drawn into the story of a fearless warrior with a troubled past, as he struggles to find his place in a world that is both brutal and beautiful. As you turn each page, you'll be swept away by the sweeping vistas of the Icelandic landscape, the richly drawn characters, ...

Growing up in extreme poverty as a shepherd, Bjartur has a deeply felt ambition to become a farmer in his own right, however hard the road, however challenging the decisions he has to make along the way. Fate throws storms of all kinds in his path, from natural upheavals which, however, terrible, he can take in his stride to political changes which he is less able to understand and confront. We are with him every step of the way, understanding his choices, sympathising with what he has to face; and with his young wife Rósa and her baby girl, Ásta Sóllilja whom he accepts as family.

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From Lord’s to the Fjords is the uproarious tale of cricket in Iceland: how the national press believed a stag party from Oxford were the official England team, how Sky Sports accidentally sent a crew to televise an Icelandic Cricket Cup final that didn’t exist, how the lead singer of Iron Maiden flew a passenger jet into a match under the midnight sun, how Henry Blofeld umpired in a blizzard on top of an ice cap, how the Iceland team was sold to the world’s public and became a viral Twitter sensation (incurring the wrath of Jofra Archer)....

After committing an audacious act of revenge for her brother's murder, Disa flees with her son, Sindri, through the fjords of Iceland. She has already endured the death of her loved ones. Now she must run to save her son and her honour. In a society where betrayals and revenge killings are rife, all Disa has is her pride and her courage. Will it be enough for her and her son to escape retribution?