Sounds really cool, actually. I took two Old Icelandic courses about a million years ago; they included some of the funniest and most interesting sagas I've ever read.

Wasn't sure whether to classify this as fiction or non-fiction. Stunning photographs of Iceland coupled with tales from the Icelandic Sagas, put together as almost a travelogue. The Sagas are more like American tall tales than Nordic myths, they seem to be based on real people but are rather extraordinary tales. Not as readable as I had hoped, but the photos make up for that.

Gorgeous photography. That is where my three-star rating comes from. Although the information was interesting, it’s written in a way that makes reading it a bit of a slog.

Reading about the different Icelandic sagas was fun and the history was good. Was disappointed with the photographs though impossible to tell if the photos weren't good or if the prints in the book were poor quality. It was an older book.

Beautiful island, fascinating history.

I always try to read a book related to a place I'm going to travel to instead of just watching youtube videos and reading articles online; so I ordered this book from Amazon in anticipation of my trip to Iceland.

First off, if you are like me and order too quickly sometimes, this book is 8x11 inches (about), not your standard paperback size (5 1/8 inch x 7 3/4 inch according to google). There's nothing wrong with that, since a large part of the 153 pages are photographs. I did not know this though, and I did not know that the text would be by David Roberts, not Jon Krakauer (I loved "Into the Wild" and did not read closely enough again, that these are photographs by Jon Krakauer, not written by him).

The title of this book is: "Iceland: Land of Sagas". Ok. So that justifies that most of this book is going through the Sagas of Iceland and then comparing it to the landscape. It's interesting idea, but it could be compressed, and unless you have read the Sagas you will probably find it redundant.

The main things I took away from this book are:

According to Roberts Iceland shares quite a few things in common with Ireland such as myths including trolls and geography; if you are like me and didn't really look too closely at a map then look again, you'll realize how close Ireland is to Iceland, so like Ireland (I suppose) there are Moors and lots of green and waterfalls. According to this book, Irish monks also lived in Iceland for some time, Irish people are not something I would associate with Iceland before reading this book.

Also, Roberts says like Greece, Iceland is a place where you can see places described in historical text (even places where human sacrifices were thought to be performed), which makes me want to go to Greece next.

Overall, not a bad book, but not great either.

Great stories and history of iceland

The book is a pretty interesting story of iceland. The author takes the reader on a tour of Iceland by way of telling stories of Iceland's sagas, which are stories documenting events of the 10th and 11th centuries in Iceland. As the author moved the reader around the county, the author explains what occurred, or allegedly occurred, in each location, and gives background information on the characters in the sagas. The book is filled with great photographs of Iceland to accompany the text. I generally found the book interesting and liked the layout. My only complaint is that it could at times become difficult to follow as the author moves around the county and in and out of various stories. I think it would be great if the author had a little map of Iceland at the bottom of each page with a star showing the location he was describing. Maybe a note as to which saga he was in would also be helpful. Otherwise, it was a good book!

Perfect book to read before my Iceland trip!

A lovely book and a nice introduction to the Sagas. Read it in preparation for travel to Iceland, it was a recommendation from Icelandic descendants. Beautiful photographs. I like the sagas connection to real places that just there in the countryside. Those old Vikings were tough birds.

David Roberts and Jon Krakauer traveled all over Iceland, experiencing its culture and history to the fullest. The result is this beautifully written and photographed coffee table book. Every place they went to, if it had some sort of connection to Iceland’s history or their sagas, by the end of the chapter you’d know all about it and see great pictures of the place where it happened. This is a book I’m going to be reading again and again. It was so entertaining and I felt like I was right there with them.

It's no Jon Krakauer :(