The Happy Warriors
Two sworn brothers of the eleventh century set out to make themselves worthy of poetry, one by killing whoever is available — a shepherd on a hillside, men who have done him no harm — and the other by following King Olaf the Stout across the north as his skald. Laxness retells Fostbraedra saga in flawless saga prose and lets the prose do the damage, reporting the heroic code exactly as its source reports it until it reads as lunacy. Written during the rearmament years, it is a repudiation of heroism aimed at the sagas and at the century that was quoting them.
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Lineage
- reworks ↑ Fostbraedra Saga
- influenced by ↑ Heimskringla
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 70% · 18 shared
- 48% · 10 shared
- 44% · 11 shared
- 43% · 12 shared
- 42% · 11 shared
- 42% · 11 shared