HOUSE OF BRAGI: THE SPRY OBSERVATIONS — Sagas

As lovers of literature in all its many forms and flavors, somewhere in our homes is a neglected bookcase or two fortified with oft-forgotten titles we just haven't gotten around to yet. It might be graphic novels yearning for some love, enticing biographies shouting for attention, a horror novella screaming to be noticed, or an anthology of sci-fi tales trembling with anticipation in hopes of drawing interest as its owner passes by once more without as much as a mere nod.

Well, as summer enters its waning dog days and autumn looms quietly just over the horizon, let’s all make a point of pulling out at least one of these deserving volumes which we’ve been saving for just the right moment and plunge into the pages with unbridled enthusiasm.

For me, my humble Mexican Pine bedroom bookcase has a top shelf of carefully curated editions that I’ve been waiting to read or re-read that includes such delightful diversions as Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (his best novel in my estimation), vintage collections of Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm fairy tales, Seamus Heaney’s award-winning Beowulf translation, Kenneth Grahame’s classic The Wind in the Willows, and Fantastic Tales by the Italian Edgar Allen Poe, I.U. Tarchetti. All of these forsaken denizens get dusted regularly but are rarely pulled out and carried to my favorite coffee shop bakery to read.

But perhaps the big book I’ve been most excited to eventually dive into is the extraordinary 700+ page collection of blood-rousing medieval Norse stories titled The Sagas of Icelanders. It’s a remarkable volume of over a dozen translated yarns and tales that plunge deep into the heart of the Viking culture of those violent, courageous, and noble Norwegian clans that settled in what’s now known as Iceland in the latter half of the 9th century and spread their seeds into Greenland and later to the very shores of North America.

With a preface by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres), this Penguin Deluxe Edition was published in 2000 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of explorer Leif Eriksson’s historic voyage to the New World and it’s a wonderful release.

As the front cover blurb colorfully describes, The Sagas of Icelanders is “deeply rooted in the real world of their day, concise and straightforward in style, the Sagas explore perennial human problems: love and hate, fate and freedom, crime and punishment, travel and exile.”

May my motivation to select and start this massive volume of heroic Viking stories inspire you to pick out a book you’ve been procrastinating about reading. Praise yourself for your bravery!

Jeff