Dr. Emily Lethbridge of Cambridge University is on a year-long research trip to document the settings of Icelandic Sagas. The short documentary Memories of Old Awake beautifully captures those dramatic landscapes, and you can read more about her research on her blog The Saga-Steads of Iceland: A Twenty-First Century Pilgrimage. (via) (previously)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Sep 27, 2011 - 9 comments

While the rest of Europe was expressing itself mainly in the medium of poetry¹, focused largely on romantic exploits of the aristocracy, the people of early Iceland were trying something different. At the Icelandic Saga Database you can read of the explots of the late Viking era, in Icelandic or English translation. If you seek a more direct experience, you can view scans of original collections at Saganet. [more inside]
posted by kaibutsu on Aug 30, 2010 - 28 comments

Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-45) was an Icelandic Romantic poet and natural scientist. Dick Ringler, a professor at The University of Wisconsin, has a site that contains 50 poems and prose texts by Jónas in parallel English/Icelandic versions. Also on the site, a guide to traditional Icelandic verse, a biographical sketch of the poet and a map of Iceland with places Jónas wrote about marked. Here's his short Above the Ford: The cliffs on life's swift current/are cleft by shallow valleys./Masses have queued to cross there ---/crowds of billy-goat milkers./We'll go upstream, God willing,/to walk the hawk-high ridges/and pitch ourselves --- impetuous ---/plumb in the roaring torrent! [Today is Iceland's Independence Day]
posted by Kattullus on Jun 17, 2007 - 13 comments

EGIL: The Electronic Gateway for Icelandic Literature. Digitised texts related to Iceland.
posted by plep on Mar 16, 2005 - 8 comments