Egil's Saga
The humorous, shocking, informative, and often magical Egil's Saga took hold of my thoughts.
The work, like much of the Icelandic Sagas, is a merger of historical chronicles recounting the origins and deeds of families with significant magical and cultural digressions that inform the viewer much of the time they were written. While most of the sagas were written in the 13th and 14th centuries, during a time of Christianization of Iceland, they still provide valuable insights into the customs of the ancient Pagan culture. 
Egil's Saga recounts the origins of Egil's family who are drawn back to Kvedulf (Night Wolf) a berserker and hamrammr (shapeshifter) who supposedly became crazed during evenings and battles, similar to a werewolf. He had sons who embodied these traits and soon his family became embroiled in a feud with Harald Fairhair of Norway whose greed coupled with Kvedulf and his family's obstinacy and reckless behaviors led to the eventual death of Kvedulf's son Thorolf. Skallagrim; Kvedulf's bald, tall, ogre-like, berserker son continued the feud and had a son with Bera: Egil.
Egil was as ugly and warlike as his father, but equally demonstrated poetic and oratory talents. When his father refused to bring him to a feast, the 3-year-old Egil mounted a horse and showed up uninvited with a thirst for beer and composed beautiful poems to the nobility. His poetry would put him in danger and save his life equally throughout the saga.
His father, equally imposing and insane, ends up beating up one of Egil's friends to death during a wrestling match.
Egil's magnificent Viking mentality transcends modern morality. On a raid in the Baltics, Egil and his men get captured and tied up in a barn. Eventually, they manage to escape retrieve their weapons, and steal some silver but something is weighing on Egil's conscious. They have escaped and taken from these people but they don't even know they are being robbed. So Egil under protestation of his men returns to the farmhouse where the Courlanders (Estonians) are partying and burns the barn down because it would be shameful if they did not know what happened to them.
More and more of these events occur throughout the story. Much too much to be accounted in this post. But the odd humor, customs, and violence of Egil's world are sure to leave an imprint.
A family tree can be seen here
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