The medieval Norse-Icelandic saga is one of the most important European vernacular literary genres of the Middle Ages. This Introduction to the saga genre outlines its origins and development, its literary character, its material existence in manuscripts and printed editions, and its changing reception from the Middle Ages to the present time. Its multiple sub-genres - including family sagas, mythical-heroic sagas and sagas of knights - are described and discussed in detail, and the world of medieval Icelanders is powerfully evoked. The first general study of the Old Norse-Icelandic saga to be written in English for some decades, the Introduction is based on up-to-date scholarship and engages with current debates in the field. With suggestions for further reading, detailed information about the Icelandic literary canon, and a map of medieval Iceland, this book is aimed at students of medieval literature and assumes no prior knowledge of Scandinavian languages.

Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, the Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still part of the Viking world, beginning with their conquest by the kings of Norway in the ninth century. The saga describes the subsequent history of the Earldom of Orkney and the adventures of great Norsemen such as Sigurd the Powerful, St Magnus the Martyr and Hrolf, the conqueror of Normandy. Savagely powerful and poetic, this is a fascinating depiction of an age of brutal battles, murder, sorcery and bitter family feuds. 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.

Written in the thirteenth century, the Icelandic prose sagas, chronicling the lives of kings and commoners, give a dramatic account of the first century after the settlement of Iceland—the period from about 930 to 1050. To some extent these elaborate tales are written versions of traditional sagas passed down by word of mouth. How did they become the long and polished literary works that are still read today? The evolution of the written sagas is commonly regarded as an anomalous phenomenon, distinct from contemporary developments in European literature. In this groundbreaking study, Carol J. Clover challenges this view and relates the rise of imaginative prose in Iceland directly to the rise of imaginative prose on the Continent. Analyzing the narrative structure and composition of the sagas and comparing them with other medieval works, Clover shows that the Icelandic authors, using Continental models, owe the prose form of their writings, as well as some basic narrative strategies, to Latin historiography and to French romance.

Njáls saga is the best known and most highly regarded of all medieval Icelandic sagas and it occupies a special place in Icelandic cultural history. The manuscript tradition is exceptionally rich and extensive. The oldest extant manuscripts date to only a couple of decades after the saga’s composition in the late 13th century and the saga was subsequently copied by hand continuously up until the 20th century, even alongside the circulation of printed text editions in latter centuries. The manuscript corpus as a whole has great socio-historical value, showcasing the myriad ways in which generations of Icelanders interpreted the saga and took an active part in its transmission; the manuscripts are also valuable sources for evidence of linguistic change and other phenomena. The essays in this volume present new research and a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on the Njáls saga manuscripts. Many of the authors took part in the international research project "The Variance of Njáls saga" which was funded by the Icelandic Research Council from 2011-2013.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Magnus Magnusson relates the world-famous Icelandic sagas to the spectacular living landscapes of today, taking the reader on a literary tour of the mountains, valleys, and fjords where the heroes and heroines of the sagas lived out their eventful lives. He also tells the story of the first Viking settler, Ingolfur Anarson.

Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga is the first book to investigate both the relation between gender and violence in the Old Norse Poetic Edda and key family and contemporary sagas, and the interrelated nature of these genres. Beginning with an analysis of eddaic attitudes to heroic violence and its gendered nature through the figures of Guðrún and Helgi, the study broadens out to the whole poetic compilation and how the past (and particularly the mythological past) inflects the heroic present. This paves the way for a consideration of the comparable relationship between the heroic poems themselves and later reworkings of them or allusions to them in the family and contemporary sagas. The book's thematic concentration on gender/sexuality and violence, and its generic concentration on Poetic Edda and later texts which rework or allude to it, enable a diverse but coherent exploration of both key and neglected Norse texts and the way in which their authors display a dual fascination with and rejection of heroic vengeance.