ABSTRACT
Within the corpus of medieval Icelandic literature the genre of the kings’ sagas is unique. Whereas the family sagas chronicle distinctly Icelandic events and history, the kings’ sagas give accounts of events which took place outside of Iceland. The kings’ sagas were composed earlier than the family sagas. Not surprisingly, the greatest variety and number of foreign sources can be detected in the great compendia Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla. Eduard Sievers, Andreas Heusler, and Anthony Faulkes all discussed the importance of English genealogies to later Scandinavian authors of history such as Snorri, but other Insular sources were clearly used by the authors of those compendia as well. The type and number of literary sources discernible in the kings’ sagas show that there was a marked change over time in the availability of different source materials, as well as a change in the literary sophistication of the saga authors.
