The Greenland Saga (Grænlendinga saga) has more information on the journey if you can read Icelandic, but there is no English translation in this database at the moment.
The actual discovery was not by Erik but by an earlier voyage around 985 by Bjarni, who navigated the coast but decided not to enter the unknown land. The later voyage was inspired by his information.
The vikings considered the journey from Greenland to Vinland the most dangerous journey in their trading network, navigating storms and icebergs in their open boats. However, Vinland provided a source of valuable wood, a scarce resource around their homes in Greenland.
There is archeological evidence of their visits on Newfoundland. You can visit their site in L'Anse aux Meadows with distinct viking houses and metal artefacts:
Man there are a lot here. I got to read a few of these sagas (in English) years ago and many of them are fun. Think crazy soap opera but with swords, boats and bows and all before 1000AD. Somebody else recommended the Saga of Erik the Red and the Greenland Saga. Those are great.
For an early look at democracy vs mob rule the The Story of Burnt Njal is great.
For great poetry[1], adventurism and, well, funny-shaped heads, Egil's Saga is also great.
If I remember, a lot of the Sagas will reference other ones, and the style definitely gives you the sense that they were spoken for centuries before they were written down. It's also worth noting that many (most?) were written down by Christians based on the tellings. Some people think the outlook of the Christians writing down these mostly-pagan tales comes through a little more than the original telling. Sorry I don't have a source for that.
If I remember correctly many Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the subjects of some of these Sagas.
If you decide to read some, what I found was that I was mostly lost in the first saga, but by the third or fourth in a row the style started making more sense. It gets immersive.
[1] Old Norse poetry doesn't easily translate into English but a lot of the style still comes through. They relied heavily on kennings. There's a good description on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
History is the only source you need. It would have been considered heresy to to otherwise, and it was common at the time for Christian scholars to reframe pagan gods as wicked sorcerers or demons and the like. In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson states the gods are human descendants of Trojan heroes. It's also likely the descriptions of "light elves" and "dark elves" (basically angels and demons) along with Ragnarok (Apocalypse) and Baldr's death and resurrection (Christ motif) were retooled if not fabricated entirely to turn these 'dangerous pagan lies' into useful Christian metaphors.
Unfortunately we'll never know how much was changed, but we can be absolutely certain things were changed.
Christian translators did that quite far into the modern era. An uncensored, fully unabridged translation of The Count of Monte Cristo didn't appear in English until 1996, over 150 years after the book was written.
I read some of these in school. But haven’t returned to most of them. Of medieval icelandic literature I’m much more fond of Völuspá and Snorra-Edda simply because the fantastic nature of them appeals more to me than the soap-opera style of the Sagas. Of the Sagas them selves, I remember Laxdæla being my favorite, it has been a while though I don’t remember what specifically I liked about it.
That said, I came across a reading Brennu-Njálssaga a year or two ago, read by Árman Jakobsson (a medieval literature expert; and a brother of the Prime Minister) and it sparked a new interest in these stories. These stories are written to be read out loud. They were first authored to be remembered and recited, and when they were written down in books the common practice was still for one reader to read them out loud to a group of people as entertainment. Reading was a social event, not private like it is today. If your are interested in the sagas, for sure try to find a recording of a good reading and listen, as opposed to reading your self.
This is a useful resource, but it is a pity that the Icelandic originals are in a spelling based on Modern Icelandic, not the standard used in Old Norse scholarship. For example, writing the nominative singular ending -r as -ur, and the letter ö for a certain low vowel instead of ǫ.
Consequently, anyone learning Old Norse from a textbook published in the last century will have some mental conversion to deal with when using this site.
Some of them are available in Old Norse. Just click on the flag that says "ON".
Or see a list of them by language here: https://www.sagadb.org/index_az
The spelling is welcomed from my perspective. I am in the process of learning to read Icelandic for an upcoming trip (also speaking at a basic level, but I love reading other languages) and was looking for something to practice with. Since the sagas are a big part of cultural history, maybe I should use this database? Any thoughts on this resource from fellow learners or native speakers are welcome.
The sagas abound in obsolete vocabulary, things that are never said in spoken language today and unrecognizable to Icelanders without a commentary. Icelandic is conservative in some vocabulary, due to a decision since the 19th century to revive some old words and coin new native terms instead of borrowing from other languages. However, plenty of other old words fell by the wayside. It makes no more sense to read the sagas in preparation for a trip to the modern country, than for a foreigner to read Shakespeare or Chaucer in preparation for being a tourist in the UK.
Also, don’t expect to speak Icelandic as a tourist in Iceland. The local people are well known for keeping aloof from tourists (tourists most often interact with a foreign workforce brought in from Poland etc. to serve them), and unless you have already gone through a course of the language that has prepared you to handle a full conversation, they will simply immediately switch to English; otherwise they would feel you are just wasting their time.
On the contrary Icelanders are very friendly and will talk to you in Icelandic if you ask. People mostly switch because their English is excellent and they want to be accommodating. They’re also not being deliberately aloof from tourists there’s just waaaay more jobs than there are native Icelanders to fill them, particularly in construction and seasonal work like tourism.
> otherwise they would feel you are just wasting their time.
I don't think this is a fair characterization. Icelandic people have however gotten very used to speaking English in their day-to-day lives because there are so many immigrants that don't speak Icelandic. Practically every time you go to a store and talk to a clerk, you'll have to speak English.
Yeah I can't speak for everyone, but it's not feeling like they're wasting their own time. It's more out of concern for wasting your time.
It is often very welcomed when you ask to speak Icelandic and are learning. People will take the time, slow down their speech and offer words of encouragement like "you are doing really well"
My interactions around language switching were always pleasant. My group was always greeted in English, then everyone would switch to Icelandic for me -- and I know very little. Sometimes I could fake a sentence or two, but generally there was a laugh and switch to English as it became apparent I was not native.
> The local people are well known for keeping aloof from tourists
A friend of mine tells the story of being in a bar in Reykjavik minding his own business, when two young ladies approached him and after a little small talk asked, "Do you know how to make love to an Icelander?" When he answered, "no", they replied, "You just ask." He turned beet red and left as quickly as possible, but... that doesn't sound aloof to me ;-)
It's not like it was a situation he was going to try and take advantage of, and on a little reflection he figured they were probably working a scam on him.
Depends when it was but Iceland has always had a very raucous and drunken nightlife. Hookups from bars are not at all uncommon, it’s how I met my wife! A lot of relationships start through serial hookups on nights out. Packed, tiny bars also means you’ll almost certainly have someone offering to buddy up to pee of either gender just to speed things along.
Honestly, they probably weren't. My experience in Iceland around 8 years ago was very similar to that. I actually took a step back because it was too easy, and skeeved me out a bit.
Me too. In fact Garden (dev tooling for the Kubernetes)[0] is a Berlin start-up with three Icelandic founders.
And if I'm not mistaken, two of us worked briefly with @halldorel (commented below) at an earlier Icelandic start-up. It's a small world (if you're Icelandic).
Edit: Scratch that, three Gardeners worked with @halldorel.
These are the Icelandic Sagas, which means stories taking place on Iceland.
In addition there exist a number of sagas written in Icelandic which takes place before the settlement of Iceland. These are often more fantastic and with more supernatural elements and sometimes guest appearances by the Norse Gods (although the authors are always quick to point out that they are not actually Gods, but just Turks.)
I took my name "rugnir" from a compination of two names from a of names mentioned in the icelandic saga. I love these kinds of old mythological epics. I recommend the epic of gilgamesh, beowulf too
The Icelandic Sagas are not really mythological though. They generally describe realistic historic events. The characters are probably all historical, although the events likely have been dramatized.
You can read about it in two sagas:
The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks saga rauða) has a description of Erik's son Leif leading an expedition to Vinland:
https://www.sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en
The Greenland Saga (Grænlendinga saga) has more information on the journey if you can read Icelandic, but there is no English translation in this database at the moment.
The actual discovery was not by Erik but by an earlier voyage around 985 by Bjarni, who navigated the coast but decided not to enter the unknown land. The later voyage was inspired by his information.
The vikings considered the journey from Greenland to Vinland the most dangerous journey in their trading network, navigating storms and icebergs in their open boats. However, Vinland provided a source of valuable wood, a scarce resource around their homes in Greenland.
There is archeological evidence of their visits on Newfoundland. You can visit their site in L'Anse aux Meadows with distinct viking houses and metal artefacts:
https://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/top-destinations/lanse-...