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Wikipedia / Sagas of Icelanders

The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the Saga Age. They were written in Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse, primarily on calfskin. They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature.

They are focused on history, especially genealogical and family history. They reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic settlers. The Icelandic sagas are valuable and unique historical sources about medieval Scandinavian societies and kingdoms, in particular regarding pre-Christian religion and culture and the heroic age.

Eventually, many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The 'authors', or rather recorders, of these sagas are largely unknown. One saga, Egil's Saga, is believed by some scholars to have been written by Snorri Sturluson, a descendant of the saga's hero, but this remains uncertain. The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is produced by Hið íslenzka fornritafélag ('The Old Icelandic Text Society'), or Íslenzk fornrit for short.

Historical time frame

Among the several literary reviews of the sagas is the Sagalitteraturen by Sigurður Nordal, which divides the sagas into five chronological groups (depending on when they were written not their subject matters) distinguished by the state of literary development:

  • 1200 to 1230 – Sagas that deal with skalds (such as Fóstbrœðra saga)

  • 1230 to 1280 – Family sagas (such as Laxdæla saga)

  • 1280 to 1300 – Works that focus more on style and storytelling than just writing down history (such as Njáls saga)

  • Early fourteenth century – Historical tradition

  • Fourteenth century – Fiction

This framework has been severely criticised as based on a presupposed attitude to the fantastic and an over-estimation on the precedence of Landnámabók.

List of sagas

It is thought that a number of sagas are now lost, including the supposed Gauks saga Trandilssonar – The saga of Gaukur á Stöng. In addition to these, the texts often referred to as the "Tales of Icelanders" (Íslendingaþættir) such as "Hreiðars þáttr" and "Sneglu-Halla þáttr" of the kings' saga Morkinskinna could be included in this corpus, as well as the contemporary sagas (written in the 13th century and dealing with the same period) incorporated into Sturlunga saga.

See also

References

Further reading

  • Arnold, Martin (2003). The Post-Classical Icelandic Family Saga. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press

  • Ármann Jakobsson (2013). Nine Saga Studies: The Critical Interpretation of the Icelandic Sagas. Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press. .

  • Bampi, Massimiliano, Carolyne Larrington and Sif Rikhardsdottir (eds.) Studies in Old Norse Literature 5. D. S. Brewer. Woodbridge, 2020

  • Falk, Oren. 2021. Violence and Risk in Medieval Iceland: This Spattered Isle. Oxford University Press.

  • Karlsson, Gunnar (2000). The History of Iceland. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

  • Liestøl, Knut (1930). The Origin of the Icelandic Family Sagas. Translated by Jayne, Arthur Garland. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. .

  • Miller, William Ian (2009). Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. .

  • Mundal, Else (ed.) Dating the Sagas: Reviews and Revisions. Museum Tusculanum, 2013.

  • Smiley, Jane; Kellogg, Robert Leland (2001). The Sagas of Icelanders: a selection. New York: Penguin Books. .

  • Viðar Hreinsson (eds.) (1997). The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. 5 vols. Reykjavík: Leifur Eiriksson Publishing. . – see