Saga
Whereas the dominant language of history-writing in medieval Europe was Latin, sagas were composed in the vernacular: Old Norse and its later descendants, primarily Icelandic.
While sagas are written in prose, they share some similarities with epic poetry, and often include stanzas or whole poems in alliterative verse embedded in the text.
The main meanings of the Old Norse word saga (plural sǫgur) are 'what is said, utterance, oral account, notification' and the sense used in this article: '(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)'.
It can also be used of a genre of novels telling stories spanning multiple generations, or to refer to saga-inspired fantasy fiction.
While primarily set in Iceland, the sagas follow their characters' adventures abroad, for example in other Nordic countries, the British Isles, northern France and North America.
Contemporary sagas (samtíðarsögur or samtímasögur) are set in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland, and were written soon after the events they describe.
The main argument for this view on the reliability of these sources is that the audience would have noticed if the saga authors were slandering and not faithfully portraying the past.
"[9] Legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur) blend remote history, set on the Continent before the settlement of Iceland, with myth or legend.
[10]: 191 Chivalric sagas (riddarasögur) are translations of Latin pseudo-historical works and French chansons de geste as well as Icelandic compositions in the same style.
Most of the medieval manuscripts which are the earliest surviving witnesses to the sagas were taken to Denmark and Sweden in the seventeenth century, but later returned to Iceland.
[15] It was only recently (start of 20th century) that the tales of the voyages to North America (modern day Canada) were authenticated.
Early, nationalist historians argued that the ethnic characteristics of the Icelanders were conducive to a literary culture, but these types of explanations have fallen out of favor with academics in modern times.
Historian Gunnar Karlsson does not find that explanation reasonable though, given that other settler communities have not been as prolific as the early Icelanders were.
[21] Later (late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century) saga-writing was motivated by the desire of the Icelandic aristocracy to maintain or reconnect links with the Nordic countries by tracing the ancestry of Icelandic aristocrats to well-known kings and heroes to which the contemporary Nordic kings could also trace their origins.
[22][23] The corpus of Old Norse sagas is gradually being edited in the Íslenzk fornrit series, which covers all the Íslendingasögur and a growing range of other ones.
Among some well-known writers, for example, who adapted saga narratives in their works are Poul Anderson, Laurent Binet, Margaret Elphinstone, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Gunnar Gunnarsson, Henrik Ibsen, Halldór Laxness, Ottilie Liljencrantz, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, George Mackay Brown, William Morris, Adam Oehlenschläger, Robert Louis Stevenson, August Strindberg, Rosemary Sutcliff, Esaias Tegnér, J.R.R.
