As I wrote to a friend: I find the saga thrilling and comical as well. In its pith I've found existential rootstocks that crop up in ancient Iceland as well as in classical America, which in turn remind me of the Icelanders I've known - a folk not cwite Scandinavian yet not cwite New World. And my thoughts cross over to Americans too, giving them greater heed for their mindset and deeds, which the yielding and life-spurning masses of Europe resentfully nip at.
Spirit and strength drive the saga. The more I read the more it reminds me of Wild West literature and comics than Dark Age Germanic literature. I remember the overdrawn rehash of Cormac McCarthy's words about modern European literature: that he doesn't think it literature as it's not about life and death - it's tied up with form-experiment rather than content. This makes me think of the unfolding of the Western World: the USA is the young, driving, and forward-looking nation whose continued strength the West stands upon; and Europe has become the decadent and demented nation - a weakened old man who's drawn away from the world and hides with a thousand years of culture in his castle-library while spending his days looking out over the Rhine and comforting himself, all through his uncomfortable retirement, with ideas and motives that have been severed from reality and spirit.
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Icelandic saga and the American West - where a man was a man. I can see that. I've often seen the cliche'd phrase "A Saga of the Old West"
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