Sagas Of Warrior-Poets

Lovers, poets, and dragon-slaying heroes populate the gripping Icelandic sagas included in this collection. Part of Penguin Classics' new eight-volume Icelandic Saga collection, this volume includes stories that were composed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and are set more than two hundred years earlier-a time when the old Viking ethos of honor and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation. Set in the farmsteads of Viking-age Iceland, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands. In her informative introduction, Diana Whaley highlights these important themes and reveals how the authors used these tales to entertain, to preserve and shape traditions about the past, and to explore vital social issues.

Diana Whaley is a reader in medieval studies at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.