/lit/ - Literature

>where should i start?
By Vinland Saga

>>14560839
don't do this

>>14560839
yikes

Saga of the Volsungs is probably the most influential saga and also the best starting place. Personally, I really like the shorter sagas like “Hrafnkel, Frey's Godi” which plays out like a Mount and Blade Game in its second half. The actual Vinland Sagas are also really interesting; it's crazy to me to think that Europeans were telling stories about America centuries before Columbus. Don't expect much in the way of prose though, sagas are famously direct in terms of storytelling, but they are very interesting insights into Old Norse life and culture.

the sagas are allright

but if you want the best early medieval writings it's my man alfred

this guy taugh him self to read and write when he was an adult and went on to author and collate the most important works of his time.
and he put the vikings in their place.

I'm under the impression that (Burnt-)Njál's Saga is commonly acknowledged as the best. Regardless of that it's top 10 material for me, and I heartily recommend it. It can seem very disjointed at first, but you got to realize (a good introduction helps) that it's tied together by its theme, which is the conflict between traditional pagan honour and Christian love and mercy. Honestly, a lot of /lit/ folks could get quite a bit out of it as this board seems to have similar issues with their imagined past values colliding with secular humanist present.

As for the other well-regarded sagas, Laxdaelar Saga and Gísli Súrssons' Saga are very good. I didn't enjoy all that much Egil Skallagrímrsson or Grettir the Strong, although they are still okay, but were too much in the action flick category for me. That said, Egil either was the best Old Norse poet or he just translates much better to my language. Orkneyar Saga is another favourite, as it becomes a weird mix of genres. It's basically a history of the Earldom of Orkney in the form of a saga with the requisite saga trappings following all the way through, but turns into a saint's life or a chivalric romance depending on the earl discussed.

Of the lesser known and shorter sagas, Hrafnkell Freyrgoði, Killer-Glúmr and the Bloodbrothers are fun. Hrafnkell is probably the most interesting of these, because of the weird religious stuff in it. Killer-Glúmr is an odd choice for a protagonist and thus interesting; there's some scholarly attempts at explaining him and also Egil Skallagrímrsson as having been "godless men", but I found Egil to be that much more conventionally heroic that I preferred Glúmr in this respect. The Bloodbrothers is just kind of mindless fun much like an action flick with a main character whose attitude to women is like James Bond's. I mean, it's worse written than Egil or Grettir, but maybe because the introductions I read extolled those two whereas put the Bloodbrothers down, I ended up enjoying it a lot more.

Gunnlaugr Serpent-tongue's saga is also a short and okay tragic romance if that's your cup of tea. Of the legendary sagas, which are also short, several are also fun in the even more mindless action flick kind of way. Heðinn & Högn, Yngvar Far-traveller and Bósi were probably my favourites in that category, but as they all were rather short and similar, I mix them up.

>>14560826

>>14560826
>where should i start?
Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s The Long Ships

>>14560999
>Saga of the Volsungs
This and The Poetic Edda are must reads.

These are poems about the Norse gods. It includes prophecies and sayings by the Norse gods as well as stories about them. It also includes some poems about Norse heroes and their adventures.

It's probably not the best choice if you're looking to learn about vikings but is fantastic if you're interested in Norse mythology.

i only read njals of the actual sagas and it was great
prepare to learn the names of ten billion people and get imbroiled in neverending feuds that someone always has to pay off just to stop everyone from killing each other

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings

>>14561332
Based. More people should read Alfred. The pre-frank'd anglo-saxon-jutes are underrated.

>>14562062
REEEE THIS IS NOT A SAGA. It's a very, very, good book and I do recommend it, but sagas in this context refer to the prose literature written by medieval Norse people around the 13th century.