A review by miocyon
The Sagas of Icelanders by Jane Smiley

4.0

It’s a bit of a slog at times (I started this this summer when I was in Iceland) but it’s at times fun, and is always interesting. These were some of the first prose (not verse) stories ever written down, and they have a feel of peeking into a different time. All the names can get challenging, although you can often ignore the long pedigrees and just enjoy the stories. The writing is ‘simple’ for lack of a better word, although that’s only in sentence structure. In themes and issues, they are as complex as anything today. My favorite bits were the sagas and stories about coming to North America (Vinland in the books). If you don’t want to commit to the whole book, find a translation of one of the sagas, like Egil’s Saga, to get a taste.