‘I woke up early with the birds – to hand up sturdy planks of words – to my speech-slave, my tongue, to build – echoing halls of praise, light-filled…’ A Viking poet from Iceland sails around the North Sea, fighting, escaping, and delivering unforgivable insults in thunderous verse. Egil is the greatest of the Viking poets, and his adventures and poetry are recorded in one of the greatest Icelandic sagas.