My first sagas. I chose them because they are the two that mention Gudrid (the Far Traveler), and while I liked them a lot they didn't pull me in and hook me the way I hoped. The section at the beginning with a side-by-side comparison of The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Eirik the Red was especially helpful in seeing how these two tales overlapped and how certain elements could have gotten mixed up in the oral repetitions through the centuries. ( )

A couple of ho-hum sagas. Some guys sail to Greenland in the fog, end up in Nova Scotia. They love the place, overwinter there, return home and talk it up. Some interesting bits where they trade and then fight with the natives: refusing to trade weapons (the locals have no steel, only stone), they will only trade milk and red-dyed cloth. When the fighting comes the travellers are greatly outnumbered, but again the advantages of steel come into play as their boats and buildings are constrcuted from timber, and therefore provide decent protection against arrows. ( )

I liked these two short sagas.
It is fascinating to read stories that are this old and find that they are very readable. They are at times a bit short, I tend to think that details in this version/the original/the story that survived were left out, because the people that read them knew them already, living in the same area in the same time fame.
I liked it also, that there were quite a few descriptions of the characters in the saga, and what others thought of their actions.
All in all a nice getting to know this kind of stories. ( )

Let's start with the good aspects of this volume. Firstly, it is a quite convincing document of the discovery of America by the Icelandic Norsemen over a thousand years ago. This is not that well known an event, and is interesting for historical and cultural reasons. Secondly, there is a good introduction that sets the two sagas in their historical context and provides useful background information.
What lets this volume down however is the two sagas themselves, which describe roughly the same events but with some differences. Both of these have interesting points, and some good stories within them, yet the majority of each of these just isn't gripping storytelling and contains a lot of similar and dull genealogical details. When we think of the idea of a Norse Saga, we perhaps imagine blood-thirsty tales of adventures and exploration told around the fire and fueled by mead. To some degree this is what they were – and these do contain a bit of bloodshed and some heroics, but the manner of telling them does not carry a lot of excitement with it. It lacks the literary quality associated with other ancient texts of comparable feats. Fortunately however neither of the two sagas is that long, and so they can still be quite easily read despite their shortcomings.
This is a volume that I would recommend to those interested in this period of history and this topic, however this recommendation comes with the warning that the texts are not as interesting as might be expected. ( )

about the North American settlements. fabulous notes, maps, and intro. ( )