Saga

A saga is a medieval literary tradition chronicling tales of heroic figures and family histories from Norway and Iceland. The sagas most likely began as oral accounts from the tenth and eleventh centuries and were recorded by unknown writers in Iceland about the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

The word saga in Old Norse means "what is said" or "story." They were written in straightforward language and mainly concern historical events, albeit with some exaggerated elements. Most of the sagas deal with genealogies and the experiences of early Norse settlers in Iceland. Others, however, recount tales of love, murder, adventure, and the deeds of kings and warriors. One of the more famous sagas influenced later works of music and literature, while two others contain accounts of Norse expeditions to North America centuries before Columbus.

Brief History

Iceland is an island nation in the North Atlantic that remained uninhabited until at least the seventh or eighth centuries C.E. Ancient rumors claim the Greek explorer Pytheas discovered the island about 400 B.C.E., but accounts of his journey are considered unreliable. Other tales tell of Celtic monks sailing to Iceland in the seventh century, however, no archaeological evidence supports the theory. The first recorded discovery of Iceland dates from the late ninth century and is credited to a man named Naddoddr who was blown off course on his way home from Norway to the Faroe Islands. Naddoddr named the island Snæland, or "Snowland," but did not settle there.

The first permanent settler of Iceland was believed to be a Norse chieftain named Ingólfur Arnarson. According to legend, Ingólfur was forced to leave Norway after killing the sons of a local noble in a dispute. In 874 C.E., as he sailed westward near the coast of Iceland, Ingólfur tossed two carven stone pillars overboard with the intent to settle where the pillars washed up. He discovered the pillars near the southwestern coast and made his home at the spot he named Reykjavík, or "Bay of Smokes" after the region's geothermal steam vents. Iceland's population grew rapidly in the decades that followed as scores of Norse, Scottish, and Irish immigrants settled on the island. In 930, Iceland's leaders established a legislative body called the Althing, one of the oldest parliaments in the world. While the original settlers worshiped the pagan Norse gods, Iceland converted to Christianity about the year 1000.

Overview

The sagas are sometimes referred to as Norse sagas or Icelandic sagas, but both of these terms are technically correct. Many of the sagas originated in Norway and concerned Norse legends and tales of Norse kings and nobles. These stories travelled with the original settlers of Iceland and were passed down through the generations by word of mouth. Writing and knowledge were valued in medieval Iceland and grew into a long-standing literary tradition. Sometime between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the legends, tales, and stories from centuries earlier were recorded and preserved by Icelandic authors. The sagas, as they were called, were written in Old Norse and demonstrated a matter-of-fact style that avoided flashy narrative elements. The sagas are often divided by subject matter, with the most well-known genres referred to as Sagas of Icelanders, Kings' Sagas, and Legendary Sagas.

The Sagas of Icelanders, also known as Family Sagas, concern the history and family lineages of the island's early settlers from about the mid-tenth to mid-eleventh centuries. The genealogical accounts and historical tales mentioned in the texts are believed to reflect real people and events, although the authors most likely exaggerated many of the stories' elements. One of the most popular is Njáls Saga, or the Story of Burnt Njál, a combination of legal drama, tragic romance, and family blood feuds. The saga weaves in tales of many characters with its two main heroes—the warrior Gunnar and his friend the lawyer Njáll. Gunnar meets his end when his wife, Hallgerda, refuses to give him two locks of her hair to string his bow to defend himself. Njáll and most of his family are burned alive in their home as vengeance for a feud started by Njáll's sons.

From an historical context, two sagas—the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red—were the earliest sources of information that Norse explorers were the first Europeans to set foot in North America. The Saga of the Greenlanders recounts the colonization of Greenland about 980 by Erik the Red. Despite its name, the Saga of Erik the Red is more concerned with other characters, including the tale of his son Leif Eriksson's landing on the coast of northern Canada about the year 1000.

The Kings' Sagas, as the name suggests, are meant to be historical accounts of the lives and deeds of the kings and nobility of Norway. The most famous, Heimskringla, was written about 1230 and is one of the few sagas to have a known author, Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson. The Heimskringla, or "circle of the earth," traces the lineage of Norse kings from its mythological beginnings with the god Odin through historical rulers ending with King Magnus Erlingsson in 1177.

The Legendary Sagas are heroic, mythical tales set in the distant past before the founding of Iceland. While some mention historical figures, they are not regarded as being historically accurate, and instead focus on more mythological elements. The most famous of these, and by far the most influential of all the sagas, was the Völsunga Saga. The saga follows the descendants of the Norse hero Völsung, himself a great-grandson of Odin. One of the main characters in the saga is Völsung's grandson Sigurd, who is tasked to defeat a poison-spewing dragon named Fafnir. Fafnir lives in a cave guarding a horde of cursed treasure. With the help of Odin, Sigurd kills the dragon and takes the treasure for himself, but later meets a tragic end. The saga inspired a famous series of nineteenth century operas called Der ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) by German composer Richard Wagner. Twentieth-century author J.R.R. Tolkien also used several of the saga's elements—a dragon guarding a treasure, the shards of a broken sword, and a cursed ring—in his epic fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Both novels were made into film series in the early twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Barraclough, Eleanor Rosamund. Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. Oxford UP, 2016.

Einarsdóttir, Gréta Sigríður. "A Guide to Reading the Sagas of the Icelanders." What's On in Reykjavík, 14 Mar. 2016, www.whatson.is/guide-reading-sagas-icelanders/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Grzybowski, Lukas Gabriel. “Fabricating Reality: Kristni Saga’s Historical Narrative and the Construction of Iceland’s Christianization.” Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos, no. 25, Dec. 2023, pp. 36–57, EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=177207403&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

"History of Iceland. Viking Times. Cod Wars. Age of Settlement. Christianisation of Iceland." Iceland4you.is, www.iceland4you.is/eng/History‗of‗Iceland/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Lovgren, Stefan. "'Sagas' Portray Iceland's Viking History." National Geographic, 7 May 2004, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0507‗040507‗icelandsagas.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Mitchell, David. "A Sublime Search for the Ancient Sagas in Iceland." The Independent, www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/a-sublime-search-for-the-ancient-sagas-in-iceland-7960165.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2017.

Short, William R. Icelanders in the Viking Age: The People of the Sagas. McFarland, 2010.

The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga), translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris, Read Books, 2012.

"Welcome to the Icelandic Saga Database." The Icelandic Saga Database, sagadb.org/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.