Sagas of Imagination

The Norse men and women who sailed to Iceland brought stories with them—stories of their lives and their ancestors passed down for centuries going back in time to great Vikings legendary heroes and even the ancient gods and goddesses. A new wave of stories entered with Christianity—stories of exotic lands and beasts of saints and holy men facing demons and monsters. A third wave of stories came to Iceland via Norway whose king had commissioned translations of tales of chivalry—of the courtly love of gallant knights and beautiful ladies. And all of these blended together in Iceland creating swashbuckling sagas unlike any other medieval literature. This book presents eleven sagas and six shorter texts tracing the growth of these sagas of adventure from Norse legends of King Half and Asmund Champion’s Bane to the life of the Apostle Bartholomew to tales of Parceval and King Arthur to the sagas of heroes like Vilmund the Outsider and Yngvar the Far-Traveler and Samson the Fair.