Reddit reviews Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics)

For Norse sagas, Penguin classics has some fantastic editions:

• The Saga of Icelanders
  
  
• Njals Saga
  
  
• Prose Edda
  
  
• Volsungs saga
  
  
• Kalevala
  
  For eastern mythology, you'll want:
  
  
• Bhagavad Gita
  
  
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
  
  
• The Arabaian Nights Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
  
  
• Journey to the West Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4
  
  For Celtic mythology:
  
  
• The Mabinogion
  
  
• Arthurian Romances
  
  
• Early Irish Myths and Sagas

I have only read these in Icelandic but the crime books by Arnaldur Indridason are suspenseful and I think all happen in Reykjavik. Njal's Saga is a classic.

> As far as worldbuilding, this is a novel more focused on that than the actual plot. If anything, the book is almost all story and worldbuilding and very little plot. I think it fits with LHoD being more "speculative anthropology" than science fiction (which is actually how I normally describe it to people). I'm OK with it because I generally enjoy masterful worldbuilding and postmoderny plotless books, but I can see how it would gall.

I read "Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Dispossessed" one right after the other, and then for a change of pace instead of another SF novel I read the 10th-century "Njal's Saga" in Robert Cook's excellent translation - and was surprised to find it a rather similar experience.

After two novels in which the author defines an arbitrarily different world and then bounces characters around in it to see how the change shapes them, "Njal's Saga" seemed very much in the same vein: I enjoy the wish-fulfillment aspect of libertarian utopianism (more than the political/economic dogma that goes with it) and here in "Njal" it seemed as if someone like LeGuin had asked "What would a culture look like that had no concept of sin or of criminal law?" (10th-century Iceland had only a civil law system; other than witchcraft, male homosexuality, or practicing law for money(!), their law was entirely to do with contracts, oaths and mutual obligations.)

Part of what makes LeGuin's work so enjoyable for me is the detailed immersion in her worlds. Character arcs and natural dialog aren't her strongest suit IMHO but those aren't the only features I look for - sometimes I want to try on a different way of thinking and see what happens. LHoD and similar novels enable that.

TL;DR: I agree LHoD is more about the culture of Winter than about the characters - I got the same impression from "The Dispossessed" - and, if you liked that, you may really enjoy "Njal's Saga."