Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2019, Qupperneq 38

38The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07— 2019
Fractured Fairy
Tales: The Sagas
And Shit
Grapevine contributor
Grayson del Faro’s new book
Words: Andie Fontaine Illustrations: Elín Elísabet
Book
The Sagas And Shit' will be out in
late autumn, both on the shelves of
Icelandic bookstores and at
shop.grapevine.is
Tackling the Icelandic Sagas can
be a daunting task. Many of them
are prefaced with complex de-
scriptions of lineage and familial
relations, and the writing can—
in many parts—read as dry and
academic, even in modern trans-
lations. This can be discouraging
for those who want to delve into
these crowning achievements
of medieval literature, which
is a shame; along the way, these
tales recount plenty of drama,
intrigue, sex, violence, and im-
possible feats of human strength.
Perhaps this is why Saga Re-
cap—a series from the Grapevine
of short, funny summaries of the
Sagas which focuses only on the
best bits—has been so successful.
So successful, in fact, that not only
has Saga Recap creator Grayson del
Faro been tasked with applying the
same winning formula to the Ed-
das, Grayson’s delightful, snarky
recaps of the Icelandic Sagas have
at last been compiled in a book.
From porn to
apocalypse
' T he Sa ga s A nd
Shit: Icelandic Lit-
erat u re Cr udely
A br i d g e d ,' p u b -
lished by Forlagið,
promises to deliver
“the most famous
ma st er pieces of
Icelandic literature
alongside some of
the weirdest, most
f ucked-up saga s
and skips straight
to the good shit.”
If you were un-
der the impression
the Sagas contained little more
than one Viking battle after an-
other, wow are you ever in for a
surprise. Take a closer look, and
you will find gems like the down-
right pornographic Saga of Bosi
and Herrauður; the over-the-top
tall tales in the Saga of Gréttir
the Strong, whose feats put Paul
Bunyon and Pecos Bill to shame;
and the mind-bending weird-
ness of Völuspá, a Norse origin/
apocalyptic story that makes the
Book of Revelation read like the
terms of service on a housing loan.
Monsters from hell and
its suburbs
“Spoiler: they all die,” Grayson
wrote of that Saga for his recap.
“Óðinn’s hottest son, Baldur, gets
the kiss of death from his little
brother, who shanks him with
mistletoe. Then shit gets metal.
There is blood and weeping, be-
trayal and anarchy (the bad kind),
and the tree at the center of the
universe quivers in fear. There are
rivers of knives, beaches of corpses,
a black sun, and all kinds of mon-
sters from hell and its suburbs.”
Y o u
p r o b a b l y
s h o u l d n ’ t
u s e “ T h e
Sagas And
Sh it ” as a
study guide
i f y o u ’ r e
c ra m m i n g
for a t est
on the Ice-
landic Sa-
gas, but it is
worth men-
tioning that
these takes
are written by someone who actu-
ally studied them in an academic
setting, so we can guarantee the
summations are 100% accurate
albeit with Grayson’s characteris-
tic panache. For added goodness,
Grayson’s recaps are replete with
illustrations from the incompa-
rable Elín Elísabet Einarsdóttir.
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shit gets metal.”
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