''Kormáks saga'' () is one of the

Icelanders' sagas The sagas of Icelanders ( is, Íslendingasögur, ), also known as family sagas, are one genre of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early e ...

. The saga was probably written during the first part of the 13th century. Though the saga is believed to have been among the earliest sagas composed it is well preserved. The unknown author clearly relies on oral tradition and seems unwilling to add much of his own or even to fully integrate the different accounts he knew of Kormákr. Often he does little more than briefly set the scenes for Kormákr's stanzas. The only complete version of the saga is found in the Icelandic manuscript

Möðruvallabók __NOTOC__ Möðruvallabók () or AM 132 fol is an Icelandic manuscript from the mid-14th century, inscribed on vellum. It contains the following Icelandic sagas in this order: *''Njáls saga'' *''Egils saga'' *''Finnboga saga ramma'' *''Bandamanna ...

br>AM 132 fol
''Kormáks saga''
Store norske leksikon The saga tells of the tenth-century

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

ic poet Kormak Ogmundsson (

Kormákr Ögmundarson Kormákr Ögmundarson (Old Norse: ; Modern Icelandic: ) was a 10th-century Icelandic skald. He is the protagonist of ''Kormáks saga'' which preserves a significant amount of poetry attributed to him. According to ''Skáldatal'' he was also the c ...

) and of the love of his life, Steingerd Torkelsdatter (Steingerðr Þórkelsdóttir), to whom he is betrothed. Due to a curse, he arrives too late for his wedding with Steingerðr, who marries another. Kormak then follows King

Harald Greycloak Harald Greycloak (Old Norse: ''Haraldr gráfeldr'', lit. "Harald Grey-hide"; Norwegian: ; Danish: ; c. 935 – c. 970) was a king of Norway from the Fairhair dynasty. Harald acquired his nickname "Gray-hide" after an encounter with the crew of ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Later, in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, he loses his life in a battle with a wizard. The saga preserves a significant number of poems attributed to Kormak, many of them dealing with his love for Steingerd.

Kormákr's love poems

The following stanzas, in which Kormak recalls the first time he met Steingerd, represent the style and content of his love poem
Read aloud.

References

Other sources

Einar Ól. Sveinsson Einar is a Scandinavian given name deriving from the Old Norse name Einarr, which according to Guðbrandur Vigfússon is directly connected with the concept of the einherjar, warriors who died in battle and ascended to Valhalla in Norse mytholo ...

(Ed.) (1939). ''Íslenzk fornrit VIII - Vatnsdœla saga''. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag. * Hollander, Lee M. (Ed.) (1949). ''The Sagas of Kormák and The Sworn Brothers''. Princeton: Princeton University Press. * Viðar Hreinsson (Ed.) (1997). ''The Complete Sagas of Icelanders'', Volume 1. Reykjavík: Leifur Eiríksson Publishing. .

External links

Full text of the saga in the original languageFull text and translations at the Icelandic Saga Database
*W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, ''The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald'', Viking Club Translation Series, 1 ( lverston: Holmes, 1902, available as a pdf a
http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Cormac%20the%20Skald.pdf
and as text a

*Russell Poole, ttp://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/7kormak.pdf "Composition Transmission Performance: The First Ten ''lausavísur'' in ''Kormáks saga''" ''Alvíssmál'' 7 (1997): 37–60.
Full text of the saga in English
at The Medieval and Classical Literature Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Kormaks Saga Sagas of Icelanders Works of unknown authorship