I've been reading the Byock translation of The Volsung Saga recently. As a translation, it is fairly faithful to the source and clearly written, though perhaps less artful because it largely ignores the verse structure of the saga. It also contains a good deal of insight and explanation in the translation notes, which is useful if you haven't read much Norse saga before.
That's fantastic. I haven't read The Volsung Saga yet, but I've been on a Saga binge over the past month or two: The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey's Godi, Gisli Surrson's Saga, Saga of the Confederates, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, these are all kind of shorter sagas, of course. Currently reading Saga of Ref The Sly. Up next, Saga of the Greenlanders and Saga of Erik the Red.
I noticed something kinda interesting. All the authors of the "Family Sagas" are anonymous, except Egil's Saga it is assumed to be Sturli Sturlusson. There are 48 Family Sagas, I believe. It is also assumed that no two Sagas is written by the same person. So it is interesting how similar all the Sagas are despite these factors. I also notice how characters from different sagas will show up in each other's saga. Egil's daughter is Thorgerd, she marries Olaf Peacock from the Laxardal Saga. It's only briefly mentioned in Egil's saga, but shown in more detail in the Laxardal saga.
An individual saga, itself, generally speaking, involves more than one generation of family. In the Laxardal saga, we must go through at least 4 generations. The generations parallel each other. Sons parallel fathers, as do brothers, uncles, grandfathers. Egil is ugly his brother is handsome just like Egil's dad is ugly and his uncle is handsome. So generations parallel and reveal other generations. Put it all together and you get a Saga. Read several Sagas, and you see, also, that the Sagas, themselves, parallel and reveal each other. Put it all together and you get the entire body of the Family Sagas. Besides the Family Sagas, you have The Kings Sagas and others. All of these more generally reveal the body of Sagas. Put it all together and you have the Age of the Sagas. And what does all of this reveal all together? The Norsk people themselves.
This parallels metal. Riffs work together to parallel and reveal each other. Then you get the song. Then you get the album. Put enough albums together and maybe you get something like Norwegian black metal. The Norwegians bands are distinct (Emperor, Darkthrone, Immortal, etc) and yet in parallel with each other enough, to reveal the greater entity Norwegian black metal. And did not some of these guys show up in smaller or bigger roles in each others' bands/projects at various points? Just like Egil, Thorgerd, and Olaf Peacock.
Then you might even say, broadly speaking, Norwegian black metal reveals something about the Beherit/Blasphemy black metal, and vice versa. Now we have black metal generally. Black metal reveals death metal and vice versa. Put all the "genres" together, that are worthy enough to be called a genre, and you have Metal. 50 years of metal, the saga continues.