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Best norse & icelandic sagas according to redditors

We found 22 Reddit comments discussing the best norse & icelandic sagas. We ranked the 9 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

Top Reddit comments about Norse & Icelandic Sagas:

u/ColloquiaIism · 15 pointsr/tolkienfans

Here is a link to the hardcover version on Amazon. :)

u/glial · 14 pointsr/answers

For anyone who's interested, there's a newly released translation by JRR Tolkien out. I've only read excerpts so far, but it seems more lyrical than Heaney's translation.

u/SSkorkowsky · 10 pointsr/Fantasy

Non-fantasy?

Kinda fantasy, but not really would be Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton. It was made into the movie The 13th Warrior.

u/FHeimdal · 8 pointsr/Iceland

Hi,
I have been trying to learn a bit Icelandic myself, as a Norwegian, I do see some similiarities between the two languages, but belive me when I say that Icelandic is crazy difficult. It's not to put you off, but you have to be prepeared.

I bought a nice little book to get me started, I haven't read so many "learn-languages-yourself books" so I can't really comparere, but I found this to be helpful (looks like it's sold out :( )

Icelandic have, as you pointed out, grammatical genders, wich means that you will have to learn what "gender" a noun have. Icelandic have 3 genders, masculin, feminin and neuter. You will have to learn the genders with the nouns. The difficult thing with grammatical genders is that it does not seem to follow any rules. (In Norwegian for instance, "Pike", wich means "little girl" is a masculin noun)

Some nice websites

u/Yahspetsnaz · 5 pointsr/TumblrInAction

I bought it at Barnes and Noble, but it is also available on Amazon here.

u/Hestrakona · 3 pointsr/Norse

There's húsabœr or staðr. Both can mean "farmstead" or "farm" but húsabœr gives the connotation of the buildings that make up the farm or the dwellings for people/animals while staðr is closer to the English "-stead", meaning more of the land/location. Its also used widely to mean "place" or "spot."

There's also bú which means "farming" (like the action or business of farming) or "household" but is used for a lot of other things as well.

If you wanted to be a bit dramatic with the river bluff feature, you could use nes, which is "headland". So, for example, in Landnámabók, there's a "Herjólfsnes", which is the land taken by a man named Herjolf. I've seen a lot of personal names incorporated into geographical terms to make place names. So if your name was Aaron, say, you could then have "Aaronsnes" or "Aaron's Headland."

Edit: You could also do the same with staðr, so: "Aaronsstaðr".

You can look at Zoëga's dictionary to see more details on the terms.

In modern Icelandic, I found býli or kot (for a small cottage farm). See here and here.

Good luck and congrats on getting a farm!

u/I_grow_beards · 3 pointsr/Iceland

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0781811910/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1397625371&amp;sr=8-1&amp;pi=SY200_QL40

Beginner's Icelandic by Helga Hilmisdóttir Is a good resource. It comes with discs with examples of pronunciation. The pronunciation guide is written for Brits which it's only evident in one example. It gives a simple overview of the language.

Other than that I would say that pretty much everyone you will meet will speak English. Almost to the point of frustration if you are trying to learn icelandic.

u/AceScout · 3 pointsr/learnIcelandic

I've used Hippocrene's Beginner's Icelandic as well as Complete Icelandic. I fell off the wagon and haven't devoted any time recently to learning, but both books were helpful when I was trying to learn. If I had to choose only one of them, I'd probably choose Complete Icelandic, but they were useful to me in tandem because each covered little things that the other didn't.

I've also heard that Icelandic Learning is very useful. IIRC, you have to pass the entire course before you can apply for citizenship/visas. I could be wrong on that, it's been a few years.

u/jgtengineer68 · 3 pointsr/vikingstv

they are all rather short. Tolkien has a book he wrote the story fo sigurd and Gedrun ( seigfreid and brunhilde des ringes des neibelungs)

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Sigurd-Gudr%C3%BAn-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0547273428/ref=sr_1_25?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1480607861&amp;sr=8-25&amp;keywords=Tolkien

then there are these
http://sagadb.org/

and others online

u/gianisa · 2 pointsr/pics

I just happened to end up at a university that had a professor of Old Norse. Modern Icelandic and Faroese are pretty close and there is an Old Norse dictionary (Zoega's concise dictionary - it's concise because he was going to make a larger one but died before he could). My old norse professor has two textbooks you can get on amazon (textbook 1 and textbook 2) but I don't know how good those are because he was writing them while I was taking his courses. There's also this textbook which I've never used but has good reviews.

You can also learn modern Icelandic and then study Old Norse because they very similar. It may be easier to do it that way. We also read the sagas in the original Old Norse which was very interesting.

u/ThorinRuriksson · 2 pointsr/asatru

I understand completely. Sometimes the book itself just has an intrinsic value that transcends the information on it's pages. One of my prized possessions is a copy of the Elder Edda published around 1870, and it's written in Old Danish. I can't read Danish of any age, but that doesn't stop the book from having great value to me.

That said, if I were looking for reasonably priced physical copies of the Sagas and Eddas, I'd go with Sagas of the Icelanders published by Penguin, The Poetic Edda translated by Lee M. Hollander and maybe The Prose Edda By Snorri Sturlusson translated by Jesse L. Byock. Good translations, good editions.

u/General_Aetius · 1 pointr/grandorder

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Sigurd-Gudr%C3%BAn-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0547273428/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1468172385&amp;sr=8-1-fkmr2&amp;keywords=the+lay+of+sigurd+and+gudrun

Ive always felt there was a slight disconnect between the fate version of her and her mythos. fate (as far as I know) kinda skips over her righteous fury over being tricked and lied to.

u/MilesZS · 1 pointr/rpg

A bit OT (you might already know this, other readers might not), but Tolkien was so into Beowulf he penned his own translation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0544442784?pc_redir=1412081864&amp;robot_redir=1

u/MikeTheDestroyer · 1 pointr/lotrmemes

It’s a fantastic read, by the way. The commentary is good if you’re into that sort of thing, but there’s also some other writing in their that’s a lot of fun.

Amazon link

u/ReallyEvilCanine · 1 pointr/Iceland

Why would you ask a question about taxes without asking what those taxes pay for? They pay for the shit everyone needs.

As for learning the language, there are two decent books I can recommend: Colloquial Icelandic and Beginner's Icelandic. But nothing is going to save you from the fuckton of grammar you have to learn within the first 40 pages or so. Spend the extra on the companion CDs.

u/MiaVisatan · 1 pointr/languagelearning

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Icelandic-Two-Audio-CDs/dp/144410537X

https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Icelandic-Audio-CDs-Hippocrene/dp/0781811910

https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Icelandic-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/1138949736

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Icelandic-idiosyncrasies-delights/dp/993592985X/

u/Johtoguy · 1 pointr/Norse

Are these 2 good sources?

https://www.amazon.com/Prose-Edda-Tales-Mythology-Editions/dp/0486451518/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1525074361&amp;sr=1-3-spell

And

https://www.amazon.com/Heimskringla-Perfect-Library-Snorri-Sturluson/dp/1512237922/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1525074361&amp;sr=1-2-spell&amp;keywords=Edda+and+Heimskringl

u/skadipress · 1 pointr/MedievalNorseStudies

This book is now published, and you will be able to order a copy if you like. Here's an Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0957612044/

u/count_olaf_lucafont · 1 pointr/learnIcelandic

That was the first and only thing that came to mind when I tried to think of one. I was thinking only of Geir T. Zoëga, the apparently quite well-known guy who compiled my Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic. (Spoiler alert: it's not very concise.)

u/andro1ds · 1 pointr/MedievalHistory

Best norse & icelandic sagas according to redditors

1. Beginner's Icelandic with 2 Audio CDs (Hippocrene Beginner's)

2. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

3. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic (Dover Language Guides)

4. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

5. From the Sagas of the Norse Kings

6. The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection

7. Stories from Saxo: The Other Norse Myths

8. The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology (Dover Value Editions)

9. Eaters of the Dead

Top Reddit comments about Norse & Icelandic Sagas: