The Greenland saga
The Greenland Saga is an epic novel by Jane Smiley . He describes the decline of the Greenlandic settlement of the Vikings between around 1345 and 1415.
- English edition: The Greenlanders (1989) published by A. Knopf Verlag, New York, ISBN 044991089X
- German edition: The Greenland Saga , translated by Karin Rausch, (1990) by S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-10-074409-8
The novel tells the story of the family and descendants of Asgeir Gunnarsson, who at the beginning of the story is one of the richest and proudest farmers on the island.
Like the entire settlement, the family experienced one stroke of fate after another and even lost their farm to a hostile neighbor family. Fewer and fewer ships from distant Europe visit the settlement. In 1369 the regular ship connection between Norway and Greenland breaks off. The plague and its aftermath rule in Europe . Interest in Greenland, its people and their products is decreasing. The novel describes how the Greenlanders try to cope with the isolation and the cold climate. They also gradually lose their faith in God. In their distress, some even get involved with the indigenous people of Greenland, the Skraelingers , who are considered terrible demons by the settlers.
The extensive novel (over 700 pages) shows with considerable accuracy the difficult life of the Greenlanders. You can also learn a lot about the way of life of the other Nordic peoples. Jane Smiley, who studied Scandinavian languages and folklore, was able to spend a year in Iceland for source studies in 1976/77 thanks to a Fulbright scholarship. Her novel incorporates the few documented facts and names from the late Greenland Viking settlements into the broad plot, e.g. For example, the marriage of Thorstein Olafsson and Sigrid Björnsdottir in Hvalsey in 1408 was the last documented official act of a Norwegian clergyman on the island.
The linguistic style approximated to their originals and the lack of detailed characterization of individual persons contribute to the fact that Smiley's work reads like a chronicle or an old saga over long stretches. The novel The Greenland Saga , however, has nothing to do with the Greenland Saga , a historical account of the discovery and settlement of Greenland by the Vikings from around 1200 in Iceland.