The sagas of the Fornaldar Sögur

One of the most neglected saga groups in the Icelandic literary corpus is that known as the fornaldar sogur, or Sagas of Ancient Times. Although they include such frequently translated classics as The Saga of the Volsungs and The Saga of Hrolf Kraki, the vast majority of these sagas have yet to be rendered into English. This despite the fact they are some of the most purely entertaining stories in the whole of saga literature; of less literary worth than The Saga of Burnt Njal or The Saga of Kormak the Skald, they are nevertheless as important a resource for mythological material as Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Danes, with which they frequently overlap.
Providing a major inspiration for William Morris and other pioneers of modern fantasy fiction, they were composed by saga writers with imaginations as unrestrained as any twentieth century fantasy writer. ; More popular in the romantically-inclined nineteenth century than the twentieth, they were often translated by our forefathers; The Saga of Fridthjof the Bold and The Saga of Thorsteinn Vikingsson, wild tales of warriors and lovers, are also available elsewhere on the site. In these tales, mighty Viking warriors embark on wild quests to fight trolls and dragons, giants and wizards, to rescue fair maidens and defeat the forces of evil. Were they to be filmed today, their director would be Rafaela De Laurentis. In fact, that seminal classic of Viking cinema, The Vikings, was actually based on The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok itself. This is the kind of saga we're talking about here; not great literature, not great history, but pure Northern entertainment, for the most part sadly inaccessible to those without an understanding of Old Icelandic. 'Not great literature', I say, although in fact Beowulf inhabits much the same world, and of course The Saga of the Volsungs is the greatest of all fornaldar sogur.

Here at the Northvegr there is already an extensive collection of Northern lore, from the Eddas and Sagas to more recent works of criticism. I have already made an attempt to translate two fornaldar sogur, The Saga of Hromund Gripsson and The Saga of Ketil Trout. Thanks to Sean Crist, Alfta Óðinssen, Weyland, and Tom Wulf, Geir T. Zoega's Concise Icelandic Dictionary is available in its entirety. (See also Sean Crist's site, Indo-European Language Resources) The following link will take you to the Fornaldar Sogur Nordurlanda. A better version can be found at http://server.fhp.uoregon.edu/norse/. What else do you need?

My proposition is that those members of the Heathen community (and others with similar interests) who wish to ensure that these incredible tales of Vikings and dragons, gods and wizards are made available to the English-speaking world should use the resources at hand to translate these sagas, and send them to Nortthvegr to be posted here. This way, we will be able to render these incredible and inspiring sagas accessible to those speakers of English who find Old Icelandic a stumbling block in their understanding of the Lore, and make a major contribution to contemporary literature.

Wassail! Get translating!

Gavin Chappell.