A review by lezreadalot
Icelandic Folk Tales by Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson

3.0

2.5 stars. This was fine. Not quite the folklore I was expecting; it seemed more like a collection of anecdotes that the author collected from his family over the years, with a few sprinklings of historical myths and folk tales. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself; it's great that it had such a personal slant and I did love getting to see Iceland through stories like this. But they just weren't told very interestingly? Or well? At least three times, the phrase 'to make a long story short' was used, and like, that's exactly what I don't want. So many of these stories felt flat, or ended abruptly, or felt a little pointless. Things did get interesting when the author slipped in historical titbits and real life figures or talked about actual places in Iceland and stories surrounding them, but there wasn't nearly enough of that to satisfy me. And what I did get was, again, flat. The writing was just okay; not really striking, and I guess it was going for a casual, whimsical tone? Didn't really get there.

So this wasn't bad at all, but sadly sort of a miss.