Classification of Saga

By: Nabila Fazia (E1D018073)

Norse sagas are generally classified as: the Kings' sagas (Konungasögur), sagas of Icelanders
(Íslendinga sögur), Short tales of Icelanders (Íslendingaþættir), Contemporary sagas
(Samtíðarsögur or Samtímasögur), Legendary sagas (Fornaldarsögur), Chivalric sagas
(Riddarasögur), Saints' sagas (Heilagra manna sögur) and bishops' sagas (Biskupa sögur).

1. King’s Sagas
After Sæmundr Sigfússon, Icelandic and Norwegian authors continued to explore the
history of Scandinavia in terms of rulers and royal families, some of them writing in Latin
and others in the vernacular. Broadly speaking, the kings’ sagas fall into two distinct groups:
contemporary (or near contemporary) biographies and histories of remoter periods. To the
first group belonged a now-lost work, written circa 1170 by an Icelander called Eiríkr
Oddsson, dealing with several 12th-century kings of Norway. Sverris saga describes the life
of King Sverrir (reigned 1184–1202). The first part was written by Abbot Karl Jónsson under
the supervision of the king himself, but it was completed (probably by the abbot) in Iceland
after Sverrir’s death. Sturla Þórðarson wrote two royal biographies: Hákonar saga on King
Haakon Haakonsson (c. 1204–63) and Magnús saga on his son and successor, Magnus VI
Law-Mender (Lagabǫter; reigned 1263–80); of the latter only fragments survive. In writing
these sagas, Sturla used written documents as source material and, like Abbot Karl before
him, also relied on the accounts of eyewitnesses. Works on the history of the earlier kings of
Norway include two Latin chronicles of Norwegian provenance, one of which was compiled
circa 1180, and two vernacular histories, also written in Norway, the so-called Ágrip (c.
1190) and Fagrskinna (c. 1230). The Icelandic Morkinskinna (c. 1220) deals with the kings of
Norway from 1047 to 1177; an outstanding feature of it is that it tells some brilliant stories of
Icelandic poets and adventurers who visited the royal courts of Scandinavia.

The kings’ sagas reached their zenith in the Heimskringla, or Noregs konunga sǫgur
(“History of the Kings of Norway”), of Snorri Sturluson, which describes the history of the
royal house of Norway from legendary times down to 1177. Snorri, a leading 13th-century
Icelandic poet, used as sources all the court poetry from the 9th century onward that was
available to him. He also used many earlier histories of the kings of Norway and other written
sources. Heimskringla is a supreme literary achievement that ranks Snorri Sturluson with the
great writers of medieval Europe. He interpreted history in terms of personalities rather than
politics, and many of his character portrayals are superbly drawn. Two of the early kings of
Norway, Ólaf Tryggvason (reigned 995–1000) and Ólaf Haraldsson (Ólaf the Saint; reigned
1015–30), received special attention from Icelandic antiquarians and authors. Only fragments
of a 12th-century Ólafs saga helga (“St. Ólaf’s Saga”) survive; a 13th-century biography of
the same king by Styrmir Kárason is also largely lost. (Snorri Sturluson wrote a brilliant saga
of St. Ólaf, rejecting some of the grosser hagiographical elements in his sources; this work
forms the central part of his Heimskringla.) About 1190 a Benedictine monk, Oddr
Snorrason, wrote a Latin life of Ólaf Tryggvason, of which an Icelandic version still survives.
A brother in the same monastery, Gunnlaugur Leifsson, expanded this biography, and his
work was incorporated into later versions of Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar. Closely related to the
lives of the kings of Norway are Færeyinga saga, describing the resistance of Faeroese
leaders to Norwegian interference during the first part of the 11th century, and Orkneyinga
saga, dealing with the rulers of the earldom of Orkney from about 900 to the end of the 12th
century. These two works were probably written about 1200. The history of the kings of
Denmark from circa 940 to 1187 is told in Knýtlinga saga.

2. Sagas of Icelanders
The Sagas of Icelanders (Icelandic: Íslendingasögur), also known as family sagas, are
prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the 9th,
10th, and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age. They are the best-known
specimens of Icelandic literature.

They are focused on history, especially genealogical and family history. They reflect the
struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic
settlers.

Eventually many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. The 'authors', or rather recorders of these sagas are largely unknown.
One saga, Egils saga, is believed by some scholars to have been written by Snorri Sturluson,
a descendant of the saga's hero, but this remains uncertain. The standard modern edition of
Icelandic sagas is known as Íslenzk fornrit.
In the sagas of Icelanders justice, rather than courage, is often the primary virtue, as
might be expected in a literature that places the success of an individual below the welfare of
society at large. This theme is an underlying one in Njáls saga, the greatest of all the sagas. It
is a story of great complexity and richness, with a host of brilliantly executed character
portrayals and a profound understanding of human strengths and weaknesses. Its structure is
highly complex, but at its core is the tragedy of an influential farmer and sage who devotes
his life to a hopeless struggle against the destructive forces of society but ends it inexorably
when his enemies set fire to his house, killing his wife and sons with him.

3. Short tales of Icelanders

The þættir (Old Norse singular þáttr, literally meaning a "strand" of rope or yarn)[1][2]
are short stories written mostly in Iceland during the 13th and 14th centuries.

The majority of þættir occur in two compendious manuscripts, Morkinskinna and

Flateyjarbók, and within them most are found as digressions within kings' sagas. Sverrir
Tómasson regards those in Morkinskinna, at least, as exempla or illustrations inseparable
from the narratives that contain them, filling out the picture of the kings' qualities, good and
bad, as well as adding comic relief.
4. Contemporary Sagas
Sturlunga saga (often called simply Sturlunga) is a collection of Icelandic sagas by
various authors from the 12th and 13th centuries; it was assembled in about 1300. It mostly
deals with the story of the Sturlungs, a powerful family clan during the Age of the Sturlungs
period of the Icelandic Commonwealth.

Sturlunga saga covers the history of Iceland between 1117 and 1264.It begins with
Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns, the legend of Geirmundr heljarskinn, a regional ruler in late
9th-century Norway, who moves to Iceland to escape the growing power of King Harald
Finehair.The more historical sagas commence in 1117 with Þorgils saga ok Hafliða. Other
sagas included in the collection are Sturlu saga, Prestssaga Guðmundar Arasonar,
Guðmundar saga biskups, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, Þórðar saga kakala, Svínfellinga
saga and Íslendinga saga, composed by Sturla Þórðarson, which constitutes almost half of the
compilation and covers the period 1183–1264.The compiler assembled the components in
chronological order, added þættir including Geirmundar þáttr and Haukdæla þáttr and
genealogies, and endeavoured to combine them into a single work, usually replacing the
beginning and the ending with a linking passage.In some cases he broke up sagas to achieve
chronological order.

Sturlunga saga is the main source of Icelandic history during the 12th and 13th centuries
and was written by people who experienced the internal power struggle which ended in
Iceland's loss of sovereignty and submission to Norway in 1262–64; the descriptions of
wounds in Íslendinga saga are so detailed that they may be based on eyewitness accounts
used in compensation claims.It is also indispensable for the details of social history which it
contains.Indirect evidence suggests that it was compiled by Þórðr Narfason (d. 1308),who
may also have written Geirmundar þáttr and Haukdæla þáttr and possibly also Sturlu þáttr.

The work is preserved in somewhat differing versions in two defective Western Icelandic
parchments dating to the second half of the 14th century, the Króksfjarðarbók and the
Reykjafjarðarbók (AM 122 a fol. and AM 122 b fol.),and in 17th-century paper manuscripts
derived from these. The former also contains material from Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar; the
latter contains interpolations from Þorgils saga Skarða and also contains Sturlu þáttr and two
sagas which are not usually counted as part of Sturlunga saga, Jartegna saga Guðmundar
biskups and Arna saga biskups.

5. Legendary Sagas
A legendary saga or fornaldarsaga (literally, "story/history of the ancient era") is a Norse
saga that, unlike the Icelanders' sagas, takes place before the colonization of Iceland.There
are some exceptions, such as Yngvars saga víðförla, which takes place in the 11th century.
The sagas were probably all written in Iceland, from about the middle of the 13th century to
about 1400, although it is possible that some may be of a later date,[2] such as Hrólfs saga
kraka.
 The term legendary sagas also covers a number of stories the antecedents and models of
which are not exclusively native. These sagas are set in what might be called the legendary
heroic age at one level and also vaguely in the more recent Viking age at the other, the action
taking place in Scandinavia and other parts of the Viking world, from Russia to Ireland, but
occasionally also in the world of myth and fantasy. It is mostly through valour and heroic
exploits that the typical hero’s personality is realized. He is, however, often a composite
character, for some of his features are borrowed from a later and more refined ethos than that
of early Scandinavia. He is in fact the synthesis of Viking ideals on the one hand and of codes
of courtly chivalry on the other. Of individual stories the following are notable: Egils saga
einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana, which skillfully employs the flashback device; Bósa
saga ok Herrauðs, exceptional for its erotic elements; Friðþjófs saga ins frækna, a romantic
love story; Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar; Gǫngu-Hrólfs saga; and Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar.
There are many more. The legendary sagas are essentially romantic literature, offering an
idealized picture of the remote past, and many of them are strongly influenced by French
romance literature. In these sagas the main emphasis is on a lively narrative, entertainment
being their primary aim and function. Some of the themes in the legendary sagas are also
treated in the Gesta Danorum of the 12th-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, who
states that some of his informants for the legendary history of Denmark were Icelanders.

6. Chivalric Sagas
The riddarasögur (literally 'sagas of knights', also known in English as 'chivalric sagas',
'romance-sagas', 'knights' sagas', 'sagas of chivalry') are Norse prose sagas of the romance
genre. Starting in the thirteenth century with Norse translations of French chansons de geste
and Latin romances and histories, the genre expanded in Iceland to indigenous creations in a
similar style.

While the riddarasögur were widely read in Iceland for many centuries they have
traditionally been regarded as popular literature inferior in artistic quality to the Icelanders'
sagas and other indigenous genres. Receiving little attention from scholars of Old Norse
literature, many remain untranslated. The most comprehensive guide to the manuscripts,
editions, translations, and secondary literature of this body of sagas is Kalinke and Mitchell's
1985 Bibliography of Old Norse-Icelandic Romances.

The production of chivalric sagas in Scandinavia was focused on Norway in the thirteenth
century and then Iceland in the fourteenth. Vernacular Danish and Swedish romances came to
prominence rather later and were generally in verse; the most famous of these are the
Eufemiavisorna, themselves predominantly translations of Norwegian translations of
Continental European romances

7. Saints' Sagas
Saints' sagas (Old Norse heilagra manna sögur) are a genre of Old Norse sagas
comprising the prose hagiography of medieval western Scandinavia.
 The corpus of such sagas and their manuscript attestations was surveyed by Ole Widding,
Hans Bekker-Nielsen, L. K. Shook in 1963. Their work revealed over 100 different saints'
lives, mostly based on Latin sources. Few are of Icelandic saints, with only Jón Ögmundarson
(d. 1121), Þorlákr Þórhallsson (d. 1193), and Guðmundr Arason (d. 1237) being candidates.
In the words of Jonas Wellendorf:
While the sagas of the Icelanders might be the unique contribution to world literature that
clearly demarcates Old Norse-Icelandic literature from other literary traditions in the Middle
Ages, and indeed other periods as well, the lives of saints connect the very same literature
with the rest of Western Europe.
These sagas are preserved in many medieval manuscripts. Two notable collections are
Kirkjubæjarbók, which is exclusively concerned with female saints, and Codex Scardensis
which gathers together lives of the apostles.

8. Bishops' Saga
The bishops' saga (Old Norse and modern Icelandic biskupasaga, modern Icelandic plural
biskupasögur, Old Norse plural biskupasǫgur) is a genre of medieval Icelandic sagas, mostly
thirteenth- and earlier fourteenth-century prose histories dealing with bishops of Iceland's two
medieval dioceses of Skálholt and Hólar.

Sagas about Skálholt bishops

- Hungrvaka (short biographies of the first five bishops of Skálholt, 1056-1176)
- Þorláks saga helga (three redactions, including the earliest of the biskupa sögur)
- Páls saga biskups (the saga of Þorlákr's successor Páll Jónsson, d. 1211)
- Árna saga biskups (composed c. 1300 about Árni Þorláksson, d. 1298)

Sagas about Hólar bishops

- Jóns saga helga (about Jón Ögmundsson, 1052–1121, in several different versions)
- Guðmundar saga biskups (about Guðmundur Arason, 1161-1237, in several different
versions)
- Laurentius Saga (the latest of the biskupa sögur, about Lárentíus Kálfsson, 1267-31)

REFERENCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings%27_sagas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagas_of_Icelanders
https://www.britannica.com/art/saga#ref50970
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9E%C3%A1ttr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturlunga_saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendary_saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalric_sagas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints%27_sagas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishops%27_saga