The Icelandic Sagas: A Traveller's Guide to the Medieval Stories

The Icelandic sagas are among the greatest literary achievements of the medieval world — prose narratives written in the 13th century describing the Viking-age settlement of Iceland and the lives of the first Icelanders with a realism, psychological depth and narrative sophistication that feels startlingly modern. They were written in a small, cold country at the edge of the known world, by unknown authors, about events 200 to 300 years in the past. They have shaped Icelandic identity more than any other cultural artefact, and reading them before visiting Iceland transforms the landscape from scenery into story.

What the Sagas Are

The sagas (Íslendingasögur, literally Sagas of the Icelanders) are prose narratives in Old Norse describing the lives, feuds, voyages and character of the families who settled Iceland in the late 9th and early 10th centuries. They are not myths — they contain fantastical elements but are fundamentally realistic in their portrayal of human psychology, social dynamics and legal procedure. The great saga scholar W.P. Ker described them as the first realistic fiction in European literature.

Approximately 40 major sagas survive, written anonymously in the 13th century. The most famous and most read are: Njáls saga (the longest and most complex, describing a 50-year cycle of law, honour and revenge in the South Iceland region); Egils saga (the biography of the poet and warrior Egill Skallagrímsson, believed by some scholars to be written by Snorri Sturluson); Laxdaela saga (a tragic love story set in the Dalir region); and Grænlendinga saga and Eiriks saga rauða (the account of the Norse discovery of North America).

Reading the Landscape Through the Sagas

The sagas are set in specific Icelandic locations that still exist and are still recognisable. Thingvellir — now a National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site — is the Althing of the sagas, the annual assembly where the events of Njáls saga reach their legal climax. Borg á Mýrum on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula is the farm of Egill Skallagrímsson, marked by a dramatic outdoor sculpture. The Dalir region in West Iceland is the landscape of Laxdaela saga. Berserker lava field (Berserkjahraun) on Snaefellsnes takes its name from a saga episode involving two berserker warriors.

The Sagas at Thingvellir

Thingvellir is the single most saga-saturated location in Iceland. The Althing was held here annually for almost nine centuries — from its founding in 930AD to 1798. The Law Rock (Lögberg), where the Lawspeaker annually recited the laws from memory, is marked. The Drowning Pool (Drekkingarhylur) in the Öxará river is where women convicted of crimes were drowned. The church and farm buildings occupy a site of continuous use since the saga age. Walking through Thingvellir with a knowledge of Njáls saga is a layered experience unavailable anywhere else.

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