The legendary adventures of Norse heroes, dragons, princesses and
destiny.
The tales of the medieval Norse kings were originally sung or told as
'sagas'. These were legendary adventures full of exciting episodes in
which the hero fought wicked enemies or even dragons in order to win the
hand of a princess or to fulfill a great destiny.
The two sagas in this book date from the twelfth to the fifteenth
centuries. The Danish ruler known as King Ragnar Goatskin was famous for
fighting a dragon which had captured the princess Tora, and so won her
hand in marriage. She died after giving him two sons and he then married
Kraka, a beautiful maiden of royal birth disguised as a farm girl. Their
struggle against the evils of war and witchcraft are vividly narrated in
the stories that follow.
The Dream of King Alfdan tells the adventures of the brave princess
Ragnild and her brother Guthorm after the death of their father King
Sigurd, and how Alfdan's dream that he will have a son to rule over all
Norway comes true in the end.
These stories of Norse kings, beautifully retold by the renowned
storyteller Isabel Wyatt, are drawn from the sagas recorded by the
historian Saxo Grammaticus and other Scandinavian writers of the Middle
Ages.