The Schemers and Viga-Glum: Bandamanna and Viga-Glum's Saga

The University of Toronto Quarterly
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Book Description
A masterful rendition of two sagas by George Johnston, the internationally recognized translator of the Icelandic saga. The Schemers and Viga-Glum were composed during the thirteenth century in Iceland and have come to be accepted as classics of European literature. They are soberly told stories, with an air of authenticity, so they were taken as history until comparatively recently when scholars studied them more closely. They are now recognized as achievements of the story-teller's art, literary in the sense that they were given in written form, but composed mostly of orally-preserved stories that had their origins in fact.


About the Author
George Johnston studied Old Icelandic at University College, London, England. His translations of Icelandic sagas have earned him an international reputation. Several volumes of his own poetry have been published in Canada including a Collected Poems, Endeared by Dark (The Porcupine's Quill 1990).


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George Johnston, renowned for his fine translations of Old Icelandic tales such as The Saga of Gisli and Thrand of Gotu, takes a look at two orally-preserved stories from the middle of the ninth to the eleventh century. The first, 'The Saga of the Schemers', is unique in that the work is wholly imaginative and its mood is comic whereas most are weighted on the side of passion and tragedy. The second, 'The Saga of Viga-Glum', leans more traditionally on the story of a known Icelandic chieftain of the tenth century. Yet it cannot be read as history; fictional and folktale motifs have been worked into reports of actual events, and supernatural elements, belonging to pagan mythology and worship, have held their place in the telling. This is an accurate and thoughtful translation executed by a master.


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