SOURCE: Magnussen, Magnus. Introduction to Laxdaela Saga, translated by Magnus Magnussen and Hermann Pálsson, pp. 9-44. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1969.

In the following excerpt, Magnussen summarizes the plot, theme, style, and historical and literary contexts of the Laxdaela Saga.

Of all the major Icelandic sagas, Laxdæla Saga has always stirred the European imagination the most profoundly. More than any other of the classical prose sagas of medieval Iceland it is essentially a romantic work; romantic in style, romantic in taste, romantic in theme, culminating in that most enduring and timeless of human relationships in story-telling, the love-triangle. Gudrun Osvif's-daughter, the imperious beauty who married her lover's best friend against her will and then, in a rage of jealousy, forced her husband to kill her former lover and forfeit his own life thereby, is enshrined for all time in the gallery of great tragi-romantic heroines in world...