The Northmen Talk: A Choice of Tales from Iceland

Translated and with introduction by Jacqueline Simpson. Foreword by Eric Linklater.
The aim of this anthology is to offer a selection from the many tales and narrative poems of medieval Iceland, choosing, on the whole, either complete works or self-contained passages which suffer little loss when removed from their contexts. The greatest of the sagas, therefore, are missing from these pages; the great Sagas of the Kings of Norway and the major Family Sagas are masterpieces of large-scale construction, and it would be as grave a mutilation to represent them by extracts as it would be to offer isolated chapters of "Emma" or "Middlemarch". Fortunately such outstanding achievements as the works of Snorri Sturluson or the sagas telling of Njal, Grettir, Egil, Hrafnkel, the men of Laxdal, and many others, have been frequently translated and are readily available to English readers. But the Icelanders worked on the scale of the short story as well as on that of the novel, and their aptitude for prose narrative is as clear in the brief as in the more complex form.