Grettir the Outlaw: A Story of Iceland

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
389K words
Chapters
39

Tags

English Originals Historical FictionFolk Literature Fate and FortuneHeroismOutlaw TaleSagaNordic Setting

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Grettir the Outlaw: A Story of Iceland by S. Baring-GouldAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Mar 31, 2015

Editor's review

Grettir the Outlaw: A Story of Iceland is an English retelling by Sabine Baring-Gould, drawing on Icelandic folklore and material from Grettis saga, and released free through Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in scholarly rigor but in preserving, in relatively accessible English, the narrative rhythm of the Icelandic wilderness, outlaws, and family feuds; readers can feel the cold severity and sense of fate characteristic of saga literature. As a public-domain ebook, it works well as a light entry point into Norse legend: read the story first, then return to the saga original, and the relationships and geography become easier to grasp. Note that the Gutenberg edition is an English electronic text with simple formatting and no modern introduction or detailed notes; place names and personal names come thick and fast for newcomers, so a map or character list is advisable. Overall it suits general reading and background expansion for literature lovers and English readers rather than use as a scholarly history of Iceland.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Look up a concise table of Icelandic place names and saga character relationships, and keep it at hand while reading.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter; after each chapter, retell the events in two or three sentences to avoid confusing the names.
  3. After finishing, compare with a summary of Grettis saga to see how the retelling differs from the legend.
  4. For English study, mark archaic expressions and proper names and review them in batches rather than looking up every word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39

FAQ

Is this book a translation of the original Icelandic saga? Not strictly a translation of the saga original. It is an English retelling by Baring-Gould based on Icelandic legend and saga material, with a more continuous narrative and relatively accessible language. It is best for getting a sense of the characters and events before returning to the saga original.
Does the Gutenberg edition have notes and an introduction? Project Gutenberg provides a public-domain electronic text, usually with only the main text and basic bibliographic information, without a modern scholarly introduction, detailed place-name notes, or character list. Readers who need background explanation must consult saga scholarship or encyclopedia entries themselves.
How difficult is the English? It is nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English narrative prose, with long sentences and dense proper names, but not academic in style overall. Readers with college-level English who are willing to look up proper names can make progress; beginners should pair it with a Chinese summary and character list.
Why is Grettir called an "outlaw" in the title? In the Icelandic saga tradition, a person sentenced to outlawry lost legal protection, could be treated arbitrarily, and was often forced into exile in the wilderness. The title highlights this status, and the story revolves around his situation, struggles, and fate; specific plot details should be based on the book's own narrative.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.