Iceland in the saga age: Eric Brighteyes, the strongest man in the south, loves Gudruda the Fair, whose father will not have him; Swanhild, her half-sister and a witch, will have him or no one. Haggard wrote this in 1891 after reading the Icelandic sagas in translation and tried to write as they do — flat, fated, unamazed. It is the least Victorian book he produced and the one Icelanders themselves respected.