New translations of The Sagas of Icelanders

“This edition is intended for readers,” says Kristof Magnusson of a new German translation of The Sagas of Icelanders, due out this fall with the publishing house S. Fischer Verlag.

The edition will contain new translations of all The Sagas of Icelanders in four volumes, as well as an accompanying volume of annotations. Magnusson is one of 15 translators working on this momentous project, which is one of the central events of Iceland's appearance as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Magnusson's job was to translate The Saga of Grettir the Strong– the last Icelanders' saga to be written, and in many ways the most peculiar. “I always found Grettir an especially interesting character,” he says. “He doesn't fit into his era. If Grettir had been born in another time, he could have become a real hero, but according to the values of his contemporaries he was just too wild and unruly.”

The sagas are also simultaneously being translated into Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and due to be published in those languages in 2012. Jóhann Sigurðsson of the publishing house Saga oversees the project. He was also behind the 1997 complete English translation of the Icelanders' sagas, which laid the groundwork for the upcoming German translation.

“We feel that the sagas are world literature,” says the scholar Örnólfur Thorsson, who was involved in publishing the 1985 complete edition of the sagas in Icelandic. He then went on to collaborate with Jóhann on organizing a nine-volume Penguin edition of 23 sagas. Örnólfur now serves on an advisory board for the Nordic translations currently underway. Other members of the board are Vésteinn Ólason and Jónas Kristjánsson, former directors of the Árni Magnússon Institute; Viðar Hreinsson, editor of the English translation; and Gísli Sigurðsson, publishing director of the new Scandinavian translations.

Composition: Þorsteinn J.

Music: Einar Scheving, Cycles.

Subtitles: Steingrímur Karl Teague.