The Sagas of Icelanders: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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Book Summary Information
Introduction: Robert KelloggIntroduction: Various
Introduction: Jane Smiley
Edition: Roughcut
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-03-01
ISBN: 0141000031
Number of pages: 848
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Sagas of Icelanders: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Book Review: A Different World, Not a Libertarian's Fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
This review is largely a response to David Heinrich's strange two-star review (see below).
Where to begin????
First, Mr. Heinrich's remarks represent a peculiar crackpot strain of libertarian thought that imagines Viking Age Iceland as a social and political model for contemporary America. Give me a break! Viking Age Iceland was an agrarian society with a tiny, homogeneous population working extremely marginal land. It should be needless to say that the forms of political organization and conflict resolution that worked for medieval Icelanders will not work for a huge, diverse population working within a complex, increasingly post-industrial economy. But then, by my observation, libertarians tend to live in a fantasy world of one-on-one interactions on which other relations--e.g. power, economic--do not impinge.
As for the representativeness of this anthology, it's hardly biased. Kellogg et al. gather a rich selection of sagas that offer a wide range of plots and character types: e.g. explorers, farmers, pioneers, poets, men, women, bad warriors, noble warriors, on and on. Njal's Saga is by far the longest of the sagas, too big to include here. Even so, there's plenty of lawspeaking in this anthology, not just blood feud and violence.
Finally, this reviewer refers to per capita violence in medieval Iceland. Where did he get that information? Did medieval Icelanders keep such records? Did he derive them from the sagas themselves? If so, that's a problem because they are literary productions, written 100+ years after the Viking Age; they are not court records, mortality statistics, or any other such documents. They tell us much about how medieval Icelanders saw themselves and their past. As sources, however, they get problematic at best if one starts trying to pull from them specific biographical or historical fact.
All this said, The Sagas of Icelanders is a rich, representative, and absorbing selection of some the world's greatest writings.
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