Sagas of Icelanders

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 so-called Saga Age.

They reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic settlers.

[1] 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.

The standard modern edition of Icelandic sagas is produced by Hið íslenzka fornritafélag ('The Old Icelandic Text Society'), or Íslenzk fornrit for short.

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