Discovering America...

These sagas (Eirik's and Graenlendinga) were most interesting to me because I remembered that there were maps in the back of the book, so I followed the vikings along their journeys. I thought that the footnotes were insightful too, about how historians and scholars would argue that one thing or another couldn't have possibly been the way the saga describes and years later someone would dig up a ruin just where the saga said it ought to be. For example, Thjodhild's church, which was built "not too close to the farmstead" (p86). The church makes me think of something else I thought a lot about while reading. This saga contains much more...Christianity, if I can just call it that. Not only do the characters talk about being Christian more, but there are many more "Christian" characteristics they live out as well (at least in comparison to Njal's saga). Gudrid became a nun when she was an old woman, for example (p 71). Thorbjorn refuses to participate in the reception of the prophetess and has a messenger fetch him when she leaves his home (p 83). That scene and many others show the struggle between Christianity as it was preached to them, and the religious traditions they had known for centuries before. We see many times the ways of the old world - Thorstein Eiriksson comes back to life and tells Gudrid her future, Leif Eiriksson is considered lucky, which according to Magnusson in the footnote means much more than we mean by the word today. I found the change in the religious nature of viking life during these specific times much more interesting than the brief introduction to Christianity in ch 100-105 of Njal's saga. Much more interesting and much more...believable? Yes.