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The Icelandic sagas are, to not just Iceland but also to all Scandinavia, what Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are to the Greeks. The sagas are part of their cultural heritage. J.R.R. Tolkien borrowed many of the names from the sagas for his dwarves in The Hobbit. He and C.S. Lewis and their friends at Oxford used to read the sagas aloud to each other in the old Norse language. The literary value of these sagas is high. Allen French, in The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow, tells his own work of fiction but has drawn on these sagas in much the same way that Tolkien did. French tries to recreate the flavor of the sagas in the language that he uses. The book is set in the days that the sagas are dated from, around 1000 AD, when Christianity had come to Iceland but when the character of the Icelanders was still influenced by their pagan past. It is a stirring tale, good for middle school and high school readers.
Grettir the Strong, also by Allen French, is a translation, in prose, and also a re-telling of Grettir’s Saga, for middle and high school children. Grettir was a Robin Hood type of character but more tragic than the English hero. The book is set around 1000 AD, about the time that the old beliefs in giants, witches, and the like were slowly fading away in the light of the Gospel. I will quote French to give you a taste for what this thrilling story is all about. Page one starts with: “Grettir the Strong, Grettir the Outlaw, was born, men say, in the year 997, at Biarg in Iceland. A man of great heart and high spirit was he, yet unlucky, doomed to a sad end. His foes were many and his misfortunes great, but he lived like a man, and like a man he died.” This book is a rich, exciting story and provides a good feel for what Iceland was like in those days when Christianity and paganism were mixed. The reader will see why the Icelandic sagas are the Illiad and Odyssey of Scandinavia.