Egil's Saga

The Saga of Egil the Bald Grimm is not just a classic of Icelandic sagas. It is a model of the archaic culture of medieval Scandinavia, brought to us by both ecclesiastical and secular figures who devoted themselves to the work of organizing and recording the sagas, the events of which took place in the 9th–12th centuries, and not only in Iceland, but almost throughout the entire northern hemisphere.

The authorship of this saga was once attributed to the legendary author of the Younger Edda, Snorri Sturluson, and not in vain. After all, the main character himself is a distant ancestor of Snorri himself. The plot is based on the biography of Egil Skalla-Grimsson, an outstanding warrior, adventurer, sorcerer and poet. The text opens the reader with a retrospective of the settlement of Iceland, the emergence of the phenomenon of skaldic poetry, the formation of the Norwegian monarchy, and simply allows, as if in a time machine, to be transported to a world where the Icelandic poet not only composed poems, but also defeated fairy-tale monsters, went on Viking campaigns, and through witchcraft and personal feats could overthrow or put on the throne the king of Norway.

This text is the key to understanding all saga literature, a text-pass, ultimately, a text-enigma, because it still causes heated discussions among researchers today. And some of Egil's poems, which you will find in this edition, have come to you, carefully translated, after more than a thousand years - from the middle of the 10th century.