then I finished reading The Complete Sagas of Icelanders!

After 2,260 pages, I've unlocked the achievement of reading all five volumes of The Complete Sagas of Icelanders!

I cannot pass judgment or literary review on the Sagas as a whole.† There's just too much, and the corpus itself is too important historically to come at it as though one had just read a novel or non-fiction book. What I will do instead is (in very brief) tell you the main facets & merits of reading saga literature if you're so much of a hardcore NorsePlayer as to be compelled to read them all.

Like Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla's dominant historical pattern of acquisition, conflict, kingship, there's a general interpersonal narrative pattern that emerges with many of the sagas: offence, retribution, vengeance, resolution. Often feud & vendetta are the operative driving forces between these Settlement Era Icelanders' stories, which quickly amplify past whose sheep trespass to graze on another's land and escalate into the societal stakes of personal honor & reputation. Potential conflict situations are then either informally settled/legally compensated, or instead responded to with force, sometimes passing from failures of one path into the other, and often handing that obligation onto subsequent generations or allies. The cyclical plot of that might sound predictable, but the sequence of building tension to violent release, the spectrum of differing personalities involved, clever kenning wordplay & stoic Scandi-deadpan delivery, social maneuvering & legal gamesmanship, all hits differently and as a reader will keep you fascinated with its gradations and variances.

Much like seeking NorsePlay material after the Eddas, the Sagas will give you more Viking Era stories to feast on. You'll root, cheer, boo, flinch, goggle in amazement, be saddened, and sigh in relief. In contrast to being up in Asgard with the Gods in the Eddas, we're instead on Midgard with their believers, and we get to see how one lives, at least in a medieval context, as an Arch-Heathen.

And there's a matter-of-factness to the style in which these were written, a near-authorless presentation which makes it feel documentary, but then within this straight framing we also have draugr, trolls, wizards, witches, seers, alfar, and other supernatural occurrences just as factually told to us as its generational counts, or as the hard numerical financials in a lawsuit settlement, and that makes both the mundane & the legendary ring true, which is the transportive wonder of the Icelandic Sagas.

[† Hey, I've got other things to write about and a massive map project to finish! I also won't because the Saga Thing podcast has already done much of this heavy lifting over the past ten years, so I would recommend John & Andy's 'cast for a fun saga-by-saga evaluation.]

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Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.