Underappreciated: <em>Egil’s Saga</em>

For this week’s Underappreciated segment, novelist Jane Smiley discusses the anonymously authored Egil’s Saga, an Icelandic saga dating back to 1240 AD, which follows the family history of Egil Skallagrímsson, a skaldic poet with a hot temper. Predating Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales by almost a century, the saga is part of the rich Viking literary tradition often overlooked by American readers. Jane Smiley wrote the preface of Sagas of Iceland.