Saga: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND
by Jeff Janoda JANODA
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeff Janoda JANODAEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-04-15
ISBN: 0897335325
Number of pages: 370
Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
Book Reviews of Saga: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND
Book Review: Powerful
Summary: 5 Stars
As a lover of the Icelandic sagas, and fiction that aims to emulate them, I awaited my copy of this novel from amazon.com with a burning impatience. It finally came and I plunged right in. I was not disappointed.
Jeff Janoda has written a fine piece of fiction, moving and powerful and true to the feel and spirit of the old sagas. As a writer of this sort of fiction myself (well, I've written one novel along these lines, anyway), I came to this one with some preconceptions, some personal prejudices. Indeed, I would not have approached the material as Janoda did, preferring to hew a closer line to the original saga voice. But Janoda won me over. While writing with a markedly modern sensibility and retaining the modern novelistic conventions, many of which stray far afield from the old saga techniques, Janoda brilliantly evoked the older saga form from which this novel arises.
Here is the story of two Icelandic chieftains as Arnkel Thorolfsson struggles to increase his influence and standing at the expense of another chieftain, Snorri Thorgrimsson, known as Snorri the Priest in the literature, that sly Icelander who appears in so many of the great sagas (Njal's Saga (Penguin Classics), Laxdaela Saga (Penguin Classics)). This particular tale is from Eyrbyggja Saga (Penguin Classics) and is only one of several interwoven plots found there. But Janoda has teased it out and put flesh on the bare saga bones, creating a rich and compelling modern novel of real human beings contending with one another in a harsh and unforgiving land. In the process he has recreated that world in all the rich detail and grim coloration that is only limned in the traditional sagas.
The beauty of what he's done is seen from the start as we enter the mind and heart of Ulfar Freedman, former slave of a local farmer who ekes out his livelihood on a holding that lies precariously adjacent to Arnkel Thorolfsson's steading and that of Arnkel's father, the brutal and vindictive Thorolf Lamefoot. Arnkel has his chieftainship as the result of a deal in which his father, Thorolf, sold Ulfar his property in order to buy Arnkel his position (chieftainships could be bought and sold in old Iceland). But Arnkel, who is not only proud and fierce but a good deal cleverer than his father, sees that his chieftainship came at a very great cost, the break-up and diminution of Thorolf's land holdings, thus impairing Arnkel's future inheritance. Arnkel is not prepared to pay that price and wants his full inheritance back. In fact, Thorolf, Arnkel's father, actually gained his formerly vast landholdings by killing Arnkel's grandfather in a duel after brutalizing and abandoning Arnkel's mother, the old man's proud and arrogant daughter, Gudrid. Gudrid, for her part, desperately wants her father's lands back in their entirety, too, wishing only ill on Thorolf, her former husband and tormentor, and has raised Arnkel with these things in mind.
And thus the hapless and somewhat timid Ulfar finds himself an unwitting pawn in a struggle that pits Arnkel against his father, and both of them against Ulfar's own former master, Thorbrand and his six sons. Though neighbors of Arnkel godhi, the Thorbrandssons are aligned with the famous Snorri of Helgafell, in hopes of counterbalancing Arnkel's growing strength in the district. Old Thorbrand, Ulfar's former master, also has designs on Ulfar's farm since, under Icelandic law, it reverts to him as the former master, if Ulfar dies without an heir. But Ulfar has found himself a wife and has thus inadvertently set in motion the wheels that will grind him into dust between these harsh men.
The story unfolds with much greater focus and depth than is found in the original sagas and this is part of its genius. Janoda has found what may very well be the true story of human struggle, in its endless complexity, that lay beneath what is merely a brief sub-plot in the original Eyrbyggja Saga. There the story is tersely told. It's not always clear who has done what to whom, or why. But Janoda has fleshed out the events with real people including Auln, Ulfar's betrayed wife and Halla, the arrogant daughter of Arnkel who has inherited the domineering persona of her grandmother Gudrid but who can't help desiring Thorbrand's youngest son, Illugi.
The complex game plays out as these people strive for primacy over one another, destroying lives and hope for those around them in the process. The sagas are wonderful in the richness of the stories they have to tell and it's Janoda's great strength that he has found the rich vein of human greed, folly and striving that is buried deep within the best of them. Here he has dug out the ore and refined it to purest narrative gold. If you like sagas and the novels that derive from them, this is one of the best.
SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga
Summary of Saga: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND
When a nameless Norseman sat down to write the "Saga of the People of Eyri" in the 13th century, the brutal story was already centuries old. Today this ancient tale is masterfully retold in Jeff Janoda?s SAGA: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND, a rich historical novel of the first Icelandic settlements.SAGA tells the story of the savage rituals of feud and sacrifice brought by the settlers from their Norwegian motherland as well as their new, competing beliefs in a democratic legal assembly and a code of restraint.
When Thorolf the Viking trades away his valuable family lands to spite his son, Arnkel, the ruthless Norse chieftain vows to regain them at all costs. Robbed of his rightful inheritance, Arnkel begins a venomous feud with his neighbors and with rival chieftain Snorri, a lawless dispute destined to end in betrayal and death.
Janoda?s characters are eloquently wrought, their passions and pagan beliefs brought to life in a tale over a thousand years old. His delicate hand renders fantastical elements like spirits and elves as vividly as their human counterparts, illuminating the harshness of life in a society on the brink of modernity, yet isolated in the farthest reaches of the planet.
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