Weekend Blog Hops - 20 March 2020

Hi all! It's time for those weekend blog hops once again!
   
If you could add one interactive feature to reading books, what would it be?
That's a fascinating question!
I guess it would be cool to have a way to share comments and thoughts as you read. Or else to have a way to view extra content at certain key moments, such as related artworks or background information the author wrote but which didn't make it into the book. That sort of thing would interest me.
 

Opening sentence:
Two are the heroes from the Vestfirthir that have gained the greatest renown: Thorgeir Hávarsson and Thormóthur Bessason, sworn brothers, of whom, as we might expect, much is told in Ísafjarthardjúp, where they grew up, as well as in the Jökulfirthir and Hornstrandir.




From page 56:
More than one peasant said that it cost him nothing to believe in whatever gods the rulers chose, as long as he was left in peace to worship the crags and rocks, bluffs and peaks, hills and mounds that his forefathers had occupied when they died.

My Current Read

Wayward Heroes
Halldór Laxness
 
Published in 1952, Wayward Heroes is part of the body of works for which Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1955. It is a masterfully written tragicomedy about the oath-brothers Thorgeir and Thormod, inspired by the old Icelandic sagas "Saga of the Sworn Brothers "and "Saga of Saint Olaf." The brothers fight for glory, raid for treasure, and seduce women against the backdrop of a new cult of Christianity. But where the old sagas depict their heroes as glorious champions, Laxness does the opposite. As Thormod avenges Thorgeir's death, he demonstrates the senselessness of violence and the endlessly cyclical nature of obsession.