From: evc@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Edward Van Cura)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: re: pagan fiction
Date: 26 Aug 92 04:27:34 GMT

Has anyone mentioned the dozens of sagas written in the 12th-14th 
centuries? Of the Icelandic sagas it can be said that in terms of
factual accounts, they ranged from lying sagas to family sagas. 
Of course, even in the more "factual" accounts, the authors improvised
at will. This is the stuff of which legends are made.

*The Saga of the Volsungs* --- This is a book of the highest importance.
No one should attempt to teach about Viking society or claim to
understand it without being familiar with this chilling and enduring
myth. This story has it all: intervening gods, fertility apples, sorceress,
dragons, treasure, valkyries, runes, love, betrayal, rites of passage,
were-wolves, shape-changing, incest, magical weapons and helms, heros
and heroines, revenge, and a sword in the tree (The King Arthur
legend has an Icelandic variant). Both Tolkien and Wagner drew from 
this mythical saga.

*Grettir's Saga* --- Many parts of this saga have been shown to be 
accurate. The question remains, what about the encounters with 
Glamr the revenant and the troll. There is a textbook example of
how to do rune-magic, and the teacher is a woman.  

*Njal's Saga* --- describes a 50 year blood feud from its violent
beginnings to its tragic end. It is actually 3 sagas about Gunnar,
Njal, and Kari. There is a sorceress queen and a heroine who just say no.
There is a very funny line about Gunnar's spear.

*The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America* --- two versions of
how the Norse did it 500 years before Columbus. There is a wonderful scene
where the manly Norse men run away from a Native American artillery 
barrage (thrown hornet nests). They abandon a pregnant Norse woman 
who calls them all dishonorable cowards and then picks up a sword, bares
her breasts, turns to her attackers, beats her breasts with the sword, 
and roars in defiance. The manly Native American men freak out and 
run away in fear. 

*Egil's Saga* --- offers a panoramic view of the Viking world from the
middle of the 9th century to the end of the tenth. The saga is dominated
by the demonic presence of its hero, Egil Skallagrimsson, and the influence
of his god, the many-faced Odin, shape-changer and rune-master.

*Laxdaela Saga* --- has stirred the European imagination most profoundly
of all the great Icelandic sagas. Romantic in style, in taste and in theme,
it culminates in that most enduring and timeless of human
relationships in storytelling, the love triangle. Gudrun
Osvif's-daughter, the imperious beauty who is forced to marry her
lover's best friend, is one of the great romantic literary heroines.

...and many more.

I have been told that there are also many Irish Sagas which should be
checked out. In fact some of them have not yet been translated (so I
am told). We Celts and Germanic peoples have a very interesting past.


Thorfinn Einarsson

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"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process 
 he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, 
 the abyss looks into you."  --- Nietzsche
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