I’ve just returned from a trip to Iceland. The country was every bit as astonishingly beautiful as I’d hoped.
I was there on a tour of locations from one of the best-known, best-loved and (to this day) most controversial of the Icelandic Sagas, Njals Saga.
If you’ve not tried the sagas before, Njals Saga is as fine a place to start as any: it’s got an exemplary mix of the brutal action, legal wrangling, exotic superstition, tantalizing historical insight and pitch-black humour that all the sagas possess, with more besides. But if the prospect of leaping straight into the real thing is a bit intimidating, here are a few stepping stones that might help…
The Ghost of Shadow Vale by Jonathan Stroud (a Barrington Stoke book) retells one of the most well-known episodes in the sagas, namely the titanic fight between eponymous hero Grettir and the undead Glam from Grettis Saga. Stroud narrates this classic monster smackdown with gusto. Give it a wallop.
Northlanders by Brian Wood is a ongoing comics series about Vikings. The stories are new, and Wood takes the brave step of using modern dialogue (with lots of swearing!) as a means of plunging the reader further into the mindset and experiences of the characters, but his research and historical detail give the whole thing plenty of crunchy authenticity. Opening volume Sven the Returned (illustrated by Davide Gianfelice) is still the standout of the series for me so far, but Northlanders is well worth checking out.
Bloodtide by Melvin Burgess, and the follow-up Bloodsong, retell Volsunga Saga, transporting this bloody epic of family and vengeance to a fabulously weird post-apocalyptic future. I don’t want to spoil two wild and jaw-dropping reads by telling you too much about the story in advance. I’ll just say that Burgess is one of the finest authors writing for young people today, and these books are among his very best work.
I stumbled across them by accident as part of my university degree (I’d originally applied to study something else!) but I consider finding out about the Sagas of the Icelanders to be one of the greatest reading experiences of my life. I heartily recommend you discover them for yourself.
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