A highlight of the 125th anniversary year of the S. Fischer Verlag is the new translation of the medieval Icelandic sagas, which will be presented at the 2011 Book Fair. The sagas are unique in European literature: nowhere else but in Iceland did such exciting prose literature, written in the vernacular, emerge. Dashiell Hammett listened to their dialogues, Borges admired their cynical realism, and their relevance today is astonishing: when one enters the landscapes of their settings, it seems that only the old heroes are missing. The 64 sagas of the new S. Fischer edition tell the stories of the first settlers in Iceland, their land claims, the founding of their farms, family feuds, and legal disputes – and of course their journeys that took them to Scotland, England, and even Rome, contributing to the legendary rough reputation of the Icelanders, as these travels were not always peaceful.