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The Sagas of the Icelanders is a thick, Penguin paperback with a Preface by Jane Smiley, who wrote a novel some years ago called The Greenlanders, another in a long list of books that take their brooding tone from the original sagas.

Sagas includes the major works from Iceland, prose histories that sometimes dip into fantasy.  Histories of specific families and people, their feuds, their loves, their alliances, their travels and adventures.

There are plenty of battles and a poem or two:

Like bees, arrows flew

from his drawn bow of yew.

Eirik fed flesh

to the wolf afresh.

Or, if you aren’t into battle, perhaps a little daily, self-help advice:

The wielder of iron must rise

early to earn wealth from his bellows . . .

I let my hammer ring down . . .

on precious metal of fire.

Reading the prose parts, one gets a keen sense of the network of friendship, loyalty, alliances, gift-giving, conflict, rivalry and sometimes outright feuding that made up Icelandic society.  There was no king.  There was no sheriff.  If a person felt wronged, he could take his case to the Althing, a yearly gathering to make laws and try cases.  Winning depended as much upon points of law as it did upon collecting allies to enhance your position.

One also gets a sense of how hard these folks worked, when they were not off doing the hard work of raiding.  They were farmers and herders and fishermen, and their conflicts were not over magic rings, but over the grazing field that sat between two estates or one guy roughing up another’s hired help.

I count sixteen tales:  Egil’s Saga, The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal, The Saga of the People of Laxardal, Bolli Bollason’s Tale, The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi, The Saga of the Confederates, Gisli Sursson’s Saga, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, The Saga of Ref the Sly, The Saga of the Greenlanders, Eirik the Red’s Saga, The Saga of Thorstein Staff-struck, The Tale of Halldor Snorrason II, The Tale of Sarcastic Halli, The Tale of Thorstein Shiver, The Tale of Audun from the West Fjords and The Stale of the Story-wise Icelander.

ISBN 0141000031

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe:  Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions by H. R. Ellis Davidson is that rare animal, a truly fascinating and scholarly work.  Just about every claim made is backed up with a reference to archaeological or literary primary sources.  Not only can you learn about valkyries, for example, but you can learn how we know anything at all about them, the poetic references, the ancient art works showing them, etc.  Davidson shows the often close parallels between Norse and Celtic religion, and isn’t afraid to note what we do not know.