Egil’s Saga

Name: Egil’s Saga
Rating: 4.7 (279 reviews)

by Leifur Eiriksson

First published 2004

Amazon

4.6(279)

Egil Skallagrimsson grows from a violent and precocious child into one of the most formidable warrior-poets of the Viking Age. His family leaves Norway after a conflict with royal authority and settles in Iceland, but Egil’s own life repeatedly draws him back into the politics and warfare of Norway and England. Feuds with Eric Bloodaxe and Queen Gunnhild place him in mortal danger, while his service to King Æthelstan carries him into campaigns in Britain.

The saga combines family history, feud, travel, battle and skaldic poetry across several generations. Egil’s capacity for violence is matched by his skill as a poet, most powerfully when verse becomes a means of survival or an expression of grief. Although written down centuries after the events it describes, the work preserves a rich literary portrait of tenth-century Icelandic society and the wider Norse world.