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Sagas & Stories
The people in West Iceland are generally very attached to their land and that is not strange because even though the land and nature can be harsh and ruthless is also have a character of its own.
Every stone has its story and some stones even hide elves, dwarfes, trolls, sometimes called the hidden people. But not only the stones have stories because West Iceland host most of the old Icelandic Sagas, like Egils Saga, Laxdaelas Saga and Eyrbyggja Saga to name a few.
Here we relive some of those stories which have been told by the people from the settlement to the present day.
The Tunga Bluff - Elf storyIn olden times, many hundred years ago, a very rich farmer lived at thefarm Tunga in Saelingsdalur in West Iceland. He had several children, of whom two sons appear in this story, Arnor and Sveinn. Both were men of promise, though each in his own way. Arnor was brawny, spirited youth, while Sveinn was quiet and reserved and no stalwart at all. They were equally different in temperament.
The Night-TrollIt happened at a certain farm in West Iceland that the person who was left to guard the house on Christmas Eve while the others were at evensong was found either dead or mad the following morning.
The Evil Whale of HvalfjordurHvalfjordur (Whale Fjord) cuts into the land from Faxafloi bay right between Akrens and Kjalarnes. It is about 30 km long, 4 - 5 km across and around 80 m deep at its deepest. The origins of the placenames, Hvalfjordur, Hvalfell (Whale hill) and the Hvalvatn (Whale lake) are explained in an old folk tale.
Laxdaela SagaThe Saga of the People of Laxardal (Laxdaela Saga) is vast in conception. Its story includes important characters from other major sagas, and its time span is well over a century. This is a family saga, descriping the line of Ketil Flat-nose, and more particularly that of his daughter Unn the Deep-minded, the matriarchal settler of Dalir, in West Iceland.
Eirik the Red's SagaErik's Saga is part of a bigger saga named Vinlands Saga and contain the oldest descriptions of the North American continent and tell the story of several voyages undertaken by people from Iceland and Greenland to North America around the year 1000, the first document voyages across the Atlantic in which the peoples of Europe and America met for the first time.
Egil's SagaEgil' Saga (Egils Saga Skallagrímssonar) is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of the genre, a magnificently wrought portrait of poet, warrior and farmer Egil Skallagrimsson.
"You're Lucky, God, That I Can't Reach You"A man and his wife lived on a farm in Borgarfjordur, West Iceland. One summer thay had a great deal of hay in the field, most of it half-dry or more, but it looked like rain.
