The Vikings.
They're those bushy-bearded, brutal men from Scandinavia that grabbed booty
and sailed off on dragon-headed long-boats, right?
Oh, and they wore horned helmets.
This is the version that has been passed down the centuries,
but it's not the full picture.
Vikings didn't even wear horned helmets - that was an invention
of 19th Century German opera.
The real Vikings are far more interesting, and
a way to understand them better is to read the stories they have left behind.
Known as 'sagas', these tales
were first written down in Iceland
during the 13th and 14th Centuries.
But they record events, ideas and individuals
from the height of the Viking Age some two centuries earlier.
There's a clue to their origins in the name 'saga'. It means 'what is said'.
These tales were passed down orally from generation to generation.
While most of Europe was obsessed with gruesome deaths of saints preserved
in Latin, or romances full of chivalric knights on grail quests,
in the Scandinavian north they developed their own storytelling
in their own language - Old Norse.
Designed to be shared around a roaring fire with a cup of mead,
the sagas contain tales of heroes, warriors, epic adventures and travel.
But they are also full of insights into daily life.
In fact, their accessible prose style
and meandering storylines makes them more like a 'kitchen sink' drama.
When you next put on a soap opera like Dynasty,
just remember it all began with the Vikings.
There are farmers, slaves, lawyers, outlaws, men and women
of all backgrounds and ages blended together.
The sagas are family histories, concerned with
the day-to-day exploits of ordinary people:
who they fall in love with, where they built their homes,
how they survive in a harsh landscape, and who they get into feuds with.
One that has all this and more is 'Laxdaela Saga'.
It features a complicated love triangle between
the beautiful but vengeful Gudrun,
and life-long friends Bolli and Kjartan.
There are no heroes, but rather a cast of fabulous and flawed individuals,
each playing mind games with the other until
their bitter, blood-soaked demise.
Think 'Love Actually' meets 'Kill Bill'.
Laxdaela Saga also contains some excellent one-liners.
This saga tells real stories about real people in real locations.
Many Icelanders today can still pinpoint exact locations where events took place.
You can even bathe in the hot spring
where Kjartan seduced Gudrun a thousand years earlier.
The romance turns tragedy when Kjartan and Bolli leave for Norway.
While held hostage Kjartan falls in love with the king's daughter,
but Bolli returns home.
He tells Gudrun that her lover has been cheating on her
and asks to marry her in Kjartan's place.
She accepts, but soon Kjartan also comes back to Iceland.
He has brought Gudrun a priceless headdress,
but when he finds she's now married to Bolli he takes another wife
in anger and gives her the precious gift instead.
This leads to a showdown.
Eventually the two couples find themselves at the same feast.
Kjartan's wife's headdress goes missing
and everyone suspects the jealous Gudrun;
if she can't have it then no one can.
In revenge Kjartan blocks Bolli and Gudrun in their home,
meaning they can't even go outside to the toilet.
The furious Gudrun provokes her husband, telling him he should kill Kjartan.
Like the climax of a Western movie,
Bolli and his men hide on a hillside and surprise Kjartan.
After a brutal, bloody fight,
Bolli slays his foster-brother: 'Bolli caught him as he fell.'
'Kjartan died in Bolli's arms.'
'Bolli repented bitterly.'
Sex and death, revenge and tragedy, power and passion -
the Old Norse Sagas have it all. They weave webs of intrigue
with the sorts of real, identifiable characters
that wouldn't emerge until the novels of the 20th Century.
They were ahead of their time, and we are still living
in the literary world they created.