Comic Sagas And Tales From Iceland

Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141975520
Total Pages : 375 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Comic Sagas and Tales from Iceland written by and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comic Sagas and Tales brings together the very finest Icelandic stories from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, a time of civil unrest and social upheaval. With feuding families and moments of grotesque violence, the sagas see such classic mythological figures as murdered fathers, disguised beggars, corrupt chieftains and avenging sons do battle with axes, words and cunning. The tales, meanwhile, follow heroes and comical fools through dreams, voyages and religious conversions in medieval Iceland and beyond. Shaped by Iceland's oral culture and their conversion to Christianity, these stories are works of ironic humour and stylistic innovation.

Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141961422
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories written by and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-03-31 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written around the thirteenth century AD by Icelandic monks, the seven tales collected here offer a combination of pagan elements tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics. They take as their subjects figures who are heroic, but do not fit into the mould of traditional heroes. Some stories concern characters in Iceland - among them Hrafknel's Saga, in which a poor man's son is murdered by his powerful neighbour, and Thorstein the Staff-Struck, which describes an ageing warrior's struggle to settle into a peaceful rural community. Others focus on the adventures of Icelanders abroad, including the compelling Audun's Story, which depicts a farmhand's pilgrimage to Rome. These fascinating tales deal with powerful human emotions, suffering and dignity at a time of profound transition, when traditional ideals were gradually yielding to a more peaceful pastoral lifestyle.

Author : Jane Smilely
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141933267
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sagas of the Icelanders written by Jane Smilely and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-02-24 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world’s great literary treasures – as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.

Author : J.M. Bedell
Publisher : Interlink Books
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hildur, Queen of the Elves and Other Stories written by J.M. Bedell and published by Interlink Books. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of the country’s fascinating geography and history emerge a plethora of poetic and imaginative Icelandic legends that hold a particular wary respect of nature, and a wry wisdom at turns gentle and sharp: that we human beings are mere tenants on earth, with no control over weather or ghosts or wild. On the one hand, these stories come out of the great wellspring of Scandinavian tales that have so influenced the Western imagination: Here are elves and trolls, ghosts, goblins, and monsters; drama and mystery and moral. But Iceland’s particular geography, its long nights and savage weather, also led to the development of a unique oral tradition, from which grew the famous Icelandic family sagas and stories.

Author : Jón Karl Helgason
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1780237731
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Echoes of Valhalla written by Jón Karl Helgason and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tolkien’s wizard Gandalf, Wagner’s Valkyrie Brünnhilde, Marvel’s superhero the Mighty Thor, the warrior heading for Valhalla in Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” and Donald Crisp’s portrayal of Leif Eriksson in the classic film The Viking—these are just a few examples of how Icelandic medieval literature has shaped human imagination during the past 150 years. Echoes of Valhalla is a unique look at modern adaptations of the Icelandic eddas (poems of Norse mythology) and sagas (ancient prose accounts of Viking history, voyages, and battles) across an astonishing breadth of art forms. Jón Karl Helgason looks at comic books, plays, travel books, music, and films in order to explore the reincarnations of a range of legendary characters, from the Nordic gods Thor and Odin to the saga characters Hallgerd Long-legs, Gunnar of Hlidarendi, and Leif the Lucky. Roaming the globe, Helgason unearths echoes of Nordic lore in Scandinavia, Britain, America, Germany, Italy, and Japan. He examines the comic work of Jack Kirby and cartoon work of Peter Madsen; reads the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Gordon Bottomley; engages thought travelogues by Frederick Metcalfe and Poul Vad; listens to the music of Richard Wagner, Edward Elgar, and the metal band Manowar; and watches films by directors such as Roy William Neill and Richard Fleischer, outlining the presence of the eddas and sagas in these nineteenth- and twentieth-century works. Altogether, Echoes of Valhalla tells the remarkable story of how disparate, age-old poetry and prose originally recorded in remote areas of medieval Iceland have come to be a part of our shared cultural experience today—how Nordic gods and saga heroes have survived and how their colorful cast of characters and adventures they went on are as vibrant as ever.

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501720619
Total Pages : 574 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Morkinskinna written by and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-11 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morkinskinna ("rotten parchment"), the first full-length chronicle of the kings of medieval Norway (1030-1157), forms the basis of the Icelandic chronicle tradition. Based ultimately on an original from ca. 1220, the single defective manuscript was written in Iceland ca. 1275. The present volume, the first translation of Morkinskinna in any language, makes this literary milestone available to a general readership, with introduction and commentary to clarify its position in the history of medieval Icelandic letters. The book is designed to be used by readers with no knowledge of Icelandic. The translation is keyed to, and may be used in conjunction with, the existing diplomatic editions. Notes on the manuscript problems, as well as introductory and appended matter, augment the text. Above all, Kari Ellen Gade's edition of the skaldic stanzas provides a substantial initial step toward a future edition of the Icelandic text: Morkinskinna is the first large-scale repository of skaldic verse. Morkinskinna also includes many semi-independent tales that recount the adventures of individual Icelanders at the Norwegian court. These tales, with their often humorous or ironic inflections, shift the focus of the chronicle from the deeds of the kings to the Icelandic perception of Norwegian royalty.

Author : Carl Phelpstead
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813057566
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Introduction to the Sagas of Icelanders written by Carl Phelpstead and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining an accessible approach with innovative scholarship, An Introduction to the Sagas of Icelanders provides up-to-date perspectives on a unique medieval literary genre that has fascinated the English-speaking world for more than two centuries. Carl Phelpstead draws on historical context, contemporary theory, and close reading to deepen our understanding of Icelandic saga narratives about the island’s early history. Phelpstead explores the origins and cultural setting of the genre, demonstrating the rich variety of oral and written source traditions that writers drew on to produce the sagas. He provides fresh, theoretically informed discussions of major themes such as national identity, gender and sexuality, and nature and the supernatural, relating the Old Norse-Icelandic texts to questions addressed by postcolonial studies, feminist and queer theory, and ecocriticism. He then presents readings of select individual sagas, pointing out how the genre’s various source traditions and thematic concerns interact. Including an overview of the history of English translations that shows how they have been stimulated and shaped by ideas about identity, and featuring a glossary of critical terms, this book is an essential resource for students of the literary form. A volume in the series New Perspectives on Medieval Literature: Authors and Traditions, edited by R. Barton Palmer and Tison Pugh

Author : Halldor Laxness
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0679767924
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Independent People written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-01-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, a magnificent, epic novel—"funny, clever, sardonic and brilliant" (Annie Proulx)—at last available to contemporary American readers. Set in the early twentieth century, Independent People recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

Author :
Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 9780141397863
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue written by and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In two I'll slice the hair-seat / of Helga's kiss-gulper' In this epic tale from the Viking Age that ranges across Scandinavia and Viking Britain, two poets compete for the love of Helga the Fair - with fatal consequences. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. The Icelandic Sagas were oral in origin and written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Other Icelandic Sagas available in Penguin Classics include Njal's Saga, Egil's Saga, Sagas of Warrior-Poets, Gisli Sursson's Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale, The Vinland Sagas and Comic Sagas from Iceland.

Author : Heidi Herman
Publisher : Hekla Publishing LLC
ISBN 13 : 0998281603
Total Pages : 133 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Guardians of Iceland and other Icelandic Folk Tales written by Heidi Herman and published by Hekla Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trolls and Hidden Folk are a part of daily life in Iceland. This collection of Icelandic folklore and legends comes from the days of the Vikings. The twenty-five short stories are centuries old and have been updated for today's readers of all ages. Children and adults alike will love to delve into this fantastic collection of traditional Icelandic fairy tales and legends. These short stories of trolls, elves with magical powers, and Hidden People have been passed down from generation to generation. First written down hundreds of years ago, the stories are now brought together and updated for a modern audience, so now you too can read about the trolls who freely roamed Iceland, the race of Hidden People with strong magical powers and of the four powerful beings who still protect Iceland from invaders to this day. Packed full of fascinating myths, this collection of folklore is a must for anyone wanting to discover a world of mermaids and mermen, giants, shape-shifting seals and dragons in disguise. 2017 Book Excellence Award Winner for Multicultural Fiction 2018 International Book Awards - Award Winning Finalist in the Category "Fiction: Short Story"