Saga Stories #3: Flóamanna Saga

This is the third in the ‘Saga Stories’ series from the Reykjavík Grapevine. Join Dr Matthew Roby on a trip to south east Iceland, as he walks you through three tales from Flóamanna saga. Set around the year 1000, this saga is thought to have been composed around 1300, and is first attested in manuscripts from about a century after that. It is the story of the Odyssey-like voyages of a recent Christian convert named Þorgils, whose perilous adventures in the North Atlantic test his new faith to the limit.

This episode retells three stories: Þorgils’s fight with the god Þórr at his farm Traðarholt, about 15km south of modern-day Selfoss; Þorgils’s tribulations in Greenland in which his wife is murdered and he is forced to breast-feed his own son; and the tragic death of his son off the coast of south Iceland.

To watch, listen, and read more about the sagas, you can find Dr Matthew Roby’s blog at http://www.matthewroby.com

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