The Icelandic sagas, composed between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries, are one of the world's great literary treasures. After an extended and lively introduction to the genre, Ralph O'Connor provides new translations for five of the greatest of these sagas. We encounter a humble Icelandic scholar dreaming of a Viking past, a royal adventurer evading the horrible lusts of troll-women, a demon popping out of a lavatory, the death spasms of the old Northern gods and unnatural acts in Muslim Germany.

The sagas are evocatively illustrated by Anne O'Connor.