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Sagas
Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia. The most famous saga-genre is the (sagas concerning Icelanders), which feature Viking voyages, migration to Iceland, and feuds between Icelandic families. However, sagas' subject matter is diverse, including pre-Christian Scandinavian legends; saints and bishops both from Scandinavia and elsewhere; Scandinavian kings and contemporary Icelandic politics; and chivalric romances either translated from Continental European languages or composed locally. Sagas originated in the Middle Ages, but continued to be composed in the ensuing centuries. Whereas the dominant language of history-writing in medieval Europe was Latin, sagas were composed in the vernacular: Old Norse and its later descendants, primarily Icelandic. While sagas are written in prose, they share some similarities with epic poetry, and often include stanzas or whole poems in alliterative verse embedded in t ...
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Legendary Saga
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 settlement of Iceland.The article ''Fornaldarsagor'' in ''Nationalencyklopedin'' (1991) 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,Einar Ól. Sveinsson, "Fornaldarsögur", in ''Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingtid til reformasjonstid, bd. 4'' (Copenhagen, 1959) such as ''Hrólfs saga kraka''. Description of the sagas In terms of form, ''fornaldarsögur'' are similar to various other saga-genres, but tend towards fairly linear, episodic narratives. Like sagas in other genres, many quote verse, but in the ''fornaldarsögur'' that verse is almost invariably in the metre of Poetic Ed ...
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Semi-legendary Kings Of Sweden
The legendary kings of Sweden (, ) according to legends were rulers of Sweden and the Swedes who preceded Eric the Victorious and Olof Skötkonung, the earliest reliably attested Swedish kings. The stories of some of these kings may be embellished tales of local rulers or chiefs that actually existed. For example, Hygelac (500 A.D.) is believed to have historical basis due to his name being attested in Frankish, English, Danish and Icelandic sources. But the historicity of most legendary kings remains impossible to verify due to a lack of sources.Dick, Harrison 2011 http://blog.svd.se/historia/2011/10/13/varfor-jag-inte-tror-pa-sagokungar/ The modern Swedish monarchy considers Eric the Victorious to have been the first King of Sweden. In medieval Swedish lists of kings, the figure generally represented as the first king of Sweden is Olof Skötkonung, the first Christian king of Sweden and the first Swedish king to mint coins. The earlier kings are for the most part only attes ...
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Íslendingasögur
The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic Saga, sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries, during the Saga Age. They were written in Old Icelandic, a western dialect of Old Norse, primarily on calfskin. 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. The Icelandic sagas are valuable and unique historical sources about medieval Scandinavian societies and kingdoms, in particular regarding pre-Christian religion and culture and the heroic age. Eventually, many of these Icelandic sagas were recorded, mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries. The 'authors', or rather recorders, of these sagas are largely unknown. O ...
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Kings' Sagas
Kings' sagas (, , ) are Old Norse sagas which principally tell of the lives of semi-legendary and legendary (mythological, fictional) Nordic kings, also known as saga kings. They were composed during the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, primarily in Iceland, but with some written in Norway. Kings' sagas frequently contain episodic stories known in scholarship as '' þættir'', such as the '' Íslendingaþættir'' (about Icelanders), '' Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa'', '' Hróa þáttr heimska'', and '' Eymundar þáttr hrings'' (about people from elsewhere). List of Kings' sagas Including works in Latin, and in approximate order of composition (though many dates could be off by decades) *A Latin work by Sæmundr fróði, , lost. *The older version of '' Íslendingabók'' by Ari fróði, , lost. *'' Hryggjarstykki'' by Eiríkr Oddsson, , lost. *'' Historia Norvegiæ'', . *''Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium '' by Theodoricus monachus, . *'' Skjöldunga sag ...
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Viking
Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Greenland, and Vinland (present-day Newfoundland in Canada, North America). In their countries of origin, and some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early Middle Ages, early medieval history of Northern Europe, northern and Eastern Europe, including the political and social development of England (and the English language) and parts of France, and established the embryo of Russia in Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators of their cha ...
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Heilagramannasögur
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 ...
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Biskupasögur
The bishops' saga (Old Norse and modern Icelandic ''biskupasaga'', modern Icelandic plural ''biskupasögur'', Old Norse plural ''biskupasǫgur'') is a genre of medieval Icelandic saga Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia. The most famous saga-genre is the (sagas concerning Icelanders), which feature Viking voyages, migration to Iceland, and feuds between ...s, 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) Two '' þættir'' are ...
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Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the region's westernmost and most list of countries and dependencies by population density, sparsely populated country. Its Capital city, capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which is home to about 36% of the country's roughly 380,000 residents (excluding nearby towns/suburbs, which are separate municipalities). The official language of the country is Icelandic language, Icelandic. Iceland is on a rift between Plate tectonics, tectonic plates, and its geologic activity includes geysers and frequent Types of volcanic eruptions, volcanic eruptions. The interior consists of a volcanic plateau with sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, and many Glacial stream, glacial rivers flow to the sea through the Upland and lowland, lowlands. Iceland i ...
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Icelandic Language
Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian languages, West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese language, Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language Norn language, Norn. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish language, Danish, Norwegian language, Norwegian, and Swedish language, Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English language, English and German language, German. The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. The language is more Linguistic conservatism, conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them hav ...
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Family Saga
The family saga is a genre of literature which chronicles the lives and doings of a family or a number of related or interconnected families over a period of time. In novels (or sometimes sequences of novels) with a serious intent, this is often a thematic device used to portray particular historical events, changes of social circumstances, or the ebb and flow of fortunes from a multitude of perspectives. The word ''saga'' comes from Old Norse, where it meant "what is said, utterance, oral account, notification" and "(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)", and was originally borrowed into English from Old Norse by scholars in the eighteenth century to refer to the Old Norse prose narratives known as '' sagas''.saga, n.1.
, ''OED Online'', 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2019). The typical family saga follows generations of a fami ...
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Old Norse
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their Viking expansion, overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia, and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not precise, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as ''Old Norse''), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish. Old West Norse and O ...
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