It’s time to begin our series on Ljósvetninga Saga! In this episode, we introduce the saga and work our way through the first four chapters.

While Ljósvetninga Saga focuses on the career of Guðmundr inn ríki (Gudmund the Powerful), he plays a small role in this episode. Instead, we focus on a conflict between Thorgeir Lawspeaker and his sons over the fate of an outlaw. This one is the apéritif served to get you in the mood for an expansive and rather interesting saga that puts the elite chieftains of medieval Iceland on trial.

If you’re curious about the locations, here’s a useful little map to show you who is living where in chapters 1-4. The image is adapted from the site locations map on the Icelandic Saga Map page.

Throughout this series, we’ll be making reference to Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland by William Ian Miller and Theodore M. Andersson. It is the translation we’re using and it’s full of valuable footnotes and discussion.

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Music Credits

Intro Music – “Prelude and Action” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music – “Stormfront” by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/