Jade Heslin's Reviews > Egil's Saga

This is the oldest and most boring thing I have ever read. Reading Egil’s Saga was like sitting next to a really annoying mithering person on the train – but it’s an 8 hour journey and they are the king of never missing a detail and never getting to the point. Every chapter begins with a completely unnecessary family history. The very first sentence of the book is a great indicator of what you have in store: “There was a man named Ulf, son of Bjalf, and Hallbera, daughter of Ulf the fearless; she was sister of Hallbjorn Half-giant in Hrafnista, and he the father of Kettle Hæing.”

So you try to remember these alien Icelandic names, figuring that these characters are probably going to be important. You store about 100 different names, 40-odd of them being Thor-something: Thorgild, Thorolf, Thorsson, Thort-your-fucking-life-out-mate - and the majority of them never reappear!

The reviews I had seen prior to reading this made me think it was going to be a good story. Egil sounded really bad-ass. He doesn’t arrive 'til page 50 though and by that point I was too mind-numbingly jaded to take even the slightest bit of interest in him. I understand that the story of Egil was first written in the 13th Century, and god knows how many years the tale had been told by word-of-mouth, before this, but surely that gave storytellers the perfect opportunity to jazz it up a bit. Get rid of all the crap names and dally with the truth a little bit.

Nothing actually happens of any note. The back of the book suggested that there would be friction between two brothers who loved the same woman. This wasn’t really the case. Egil married his brother’s bride after his death. That might be some scandalous Jeremy Kyle shit these days, but 800 years ago it was just the done thing, especially in a small Icelandic community.

I got absolutely nothing from reading this. Usually if I find a book dull, I will have at least picked up a few nuggets of knowledge along the way. All this has taught me is to never go near an Icelandic saga again.