ABSTRACT
The sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur) are often mentioned in the same breath as the Vikings. It is true that the sagas dramatise events and vividly portray the lives of people that hypothetically lived in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries in the Viking diaspora, and by noting the Norwegian king who is in power at the time of events the saga’s narration seems to be anchored in time. The listing of genealogies of many of the saga characters, some stretching back to their Scandinavian, Irish or British ancestors, and the evocation of well-known locations in the northern region, Iceland, Scandinavia and the British Isles, renders a further air of historical truthfulness to the narrative. But can we evaluate the factual evidence of the sagas of Icelanders as regards their depiction of the settlement period, the migration from Norway and the British Isles to Iceland, and their representation of the period in which the pagan religion was practised? The sagas of Icelanders have caught the imagination of the modern reader not least their portrayals of the pagan period, but these portrayals are borne out of, and modified by, a culture which is certainly closely rooted in the scholastic and Christian learned traditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe. The complex relationship between the orally transmitted memories of the past and the literary culture of the Christian Middle Ages draws attention to the challenge of using the sagas as reliable sources for the Viking period.
