Orkneyinga Saga

Author:
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140443837
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Written around AD 1200 by an unnamed Icelandic author, the Orkneyinga Saga is an intriguing fusion of myth, legend and history. The only medieval chronicle to have Orkney as the central place of action, it tells of an era when the islands were still part of the Viking world, beginning with their conquest by the kings of Norway in the ninth century. The saga describes the subsequent history of the Earldom of Orkney and the adventures of great Norsemen such as Sigurd the Powerful, St Magnus the Martyr and Hrolf, the conqueror of Normandy. Savagely powerful and poetic, this is a fascinating depiction of an age of brutal battles, murder, sorcery and bitter family feuds. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Orkneyinga Saga and Magnus Saga, with Appendices

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 542

Book Description

The Orkneyinga Saga

Author: Alexander Burt Taylor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Orkney (Scotland)
Languages : en
Pages : 492

Book Description

Orkney Folk Tales

Author: Tom Muir
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750955333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The Orkney Islands are a place of mystery and magic, where the past and the present meet, ancient standing stones walk and burial mounds are the home of the trows. Orkney Folk Tales walks the reader across invisible islands that are home to fin folk and mermaids, and seals that are often far more than they appear to be. Here Orkney witches raise storms and predict the outcome of battles, ghosts seek revenge and the Devil sits in the rafters of St Magnus Cathedral, taking notes! Using ancient tales told by the firesides of the Picts and Vikings, storyteller Tom Muir takes the reader on a magical journey where he reveals how the islands were created from the teeth of a monster, how a giant built lochs and hills in his greed for fertile land, and how the waves are controlled by the hand of a goddess.

Morkinskinna

Author:
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501720619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 574

Book Description
Morkinskinna ("rotten parchment"), the first full-length chronicle of the kings of medieval Norway (1030-1157), forms the basis of the Icelandic chronicle tradition. Based ultimately on an original from ca. 1220, the single defective manuscript was written in Iceland ca. 1275. The present volume, the first translation of Morkinskinna in any language, makes this literary milestone available to a general readership, with introduction and commentary to clarify its position in the history of medieval Icelandic letters. The book is designed to be used by readers with no knowledge of Icelandic. The translation is keyed to, and may be used in conjunction with, the existing diplomatic editions. Notes on the manuscript problems, as well as introductory and appended matter, augment the text. Above all, Kari Ellen Gade's edition of the skaldic stanzas provides a substantial initial step toward a future edition of the Icelandic text: Morkinskinna is the first large-scale repository of skaldic verse. Morkinskinna also includes many semi-independent tales that recount the adventures of individual Icelanders at the Norwegian court. These tales, with their often humorous or ironic inflections, shift the focus of the chronicle from the deeds of the kings to the Icelandic perception of Norwegian royalty.

Sagas, Saints and Settlements

Author: Gareth Williams
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004138072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Book Description
This volume contains seven papers relating to Norse history and literature. Two cover issues of saga genre, two explore the relationship between sagas and medieval hagiography, and three consider aspects of the Norse settlement in Scotland from an interdisciplinary perspective. With contributions by Svanhildur Oskarsdottir, Phil Cardew, Haki Antonsson, Gareth Williams, Barbara Crawford and Simon Taylor.

Dating the Sagas

Author: Else Mundal
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763538997
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
The Icelandic genre known as the Family Sagas, Sagas of Icelanders, or Sagas about early Icelanders consists of anonymous works, and the genre, as well as the individual sagas, are therefore difficult to date. This literature is also difficult to date since sagas are stories that were transformed both during oral and scribal transmission. The authors of the present book address methodological problems and discuss the dating of individual sagas and the genre itself. Focusing their attention on an important period in the history of Icelandic literature, the authors are particularly concerned with the several new written genres which developed in Iceland in the thirteenth century, of which the Sagas about early Icelanders is regarded as the most important. The articles gathered in this volume show that the dating of the beginning of this written genre and of individual sagas belonging to it is crucial to the understanding of the development of literary history in thirteenth-century Iceland.

Else Mundal is professor of Old Norse Philology at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bergen. She has published widely on Old Norse saga literature, Eddic and skaldic poetry, on Old Norse mythology, women in Old Norse society, as well as on the relationship between the oral and the written literature and the impact of Christianization on the Old Norse culture.

The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180-1280)

Author: Theodore Murdock Andersson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801444081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
Andersson introduces readers to the development of the Icelandic sagas between 1180 and 1280, a crucial period that witnessed a gradual shift of emphasis from tales of adventure and personal distinction to the analysis of politics and history.

David I

Author: Richard D. Oram
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 1788852567
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 491

Book Description
David I was never expected to become king, but on succeeding to the Scottish throne in 1124 he quickly demonstrated that he had the skills, ruthlessness and ambition to become one of the kingdom's greatest rulers. Drawing on the experiences and connections of his youth spent at the court of his brother-in-law, Henry I of England, and moulded by the dominant personality and intense piety of his mother, St Margaret, he set out to transform his inheritance and create a powerful and dynamic kingship. After neutralising all challengers to his position and building a new powerbase that drew on support from both Scotland's native nobles and the English and French knights whom he settled in his realm, David emerged as a power-broker in mid twelfth-century Britain as England descended into civil war. He pursued his wife Matilda's lost inheritance in Northumbria, gaining control over much of northern England and giving him access to economic resources that allowed him to invest in patronage of the reformed monastic orders, and in the reconfiguration of the secular Church in Scotland. The peace and stability of his kingdom, coupled with the economic boom brought by burgeoning population during an era of benign climate conditions, secured him a reputation as a saintly visionary who achieved the cultural and political transformation of Scotland.

The Stewart Earls of Orkney

Author: Peter David Anderson
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857906720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
For almost a century the islands of Orkney and Shetland were under the rule of the Stewart earls, father and son, a rule remarkable for its infamous reputation in island history. Robert Stewart was an illegitimate son of James V, king of Scots, who seized power in Orkney in the 1560s and was created earl of Shetland in 1581. Robert's son was the extraordinary and ill-starred Earl Patrick, 'Black Patie', whose execution for treason in 1615 brought the era to a close. This book has its foundations in two previous books by Peter Anderson, one on each character.