The Enigma of the Icelandic Saga

Abstract

The people of Iceland enriched the literature of the Middle Ages with a genre of epic prose that is found nowhere else in Europe. It takes the form of narratives depicting people and events belonging to a period of about one century, which begins in 930 and extends up to 1030. The Icelandic people had established themselves along the entire shore of the deserted island, and the settlers had divided among themselves the arable soil. During the first hundred years the population, composed of wealthy landowners who had left their native soil of Norway, bold adventurers and Vikings, tired of their unstable life of pillage, were looking for the stability that would be conducive to a permanent and ordered society. The settlers were rude, ambitious and avid for power; hence there were many instances of embittered and sometimes bloody clashes. This period abounds in personalities of great stature, fighting for their real or usurped claims. It can well be described as a heroic period, which gave men the opportunity to utilize all of their physical and mental faculties. Later on, in the thirteenth century, when the people of Iceland attempted to revive the memory of their ancestors from the earliest years of the country's history, their conception of them was magnified by the admiration of a generation of men who believed themselves to be the epigones of true heros.