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55-480: More than 5,500 skaldic verses have survived, preserved in more than 700 manuscripts, including in several sagas and in Snorri Sturluson 's Prose Edda , a handbook of skaldic composition that led to a revival of the art. Many of these verses are fragments of originally longer works, and the authorship of many is unknown. The earliest known skald from whom verses survive is Bragi Boddason , known as Bragi

110-614: A genre of novels telling stories spanning multiple generations, or to refer to saga-inspired fantasy fiction. Swedish folksaga means folk tale or fairy tale , while konstsaga is the Swedish term for a fairy tale by a known author, such as Hans Christian Andersen . In Swedish historiography, the term sagokung , "saga king", is intended to be ambiguous, as it describes the semi-legendary kings of Sweden , who are known only from unreliable sources. Norse sagas are generally classified as follows. Kings' sagas ( konungasögur ) are of

165-407: A greater or lesser extent influenced by saga-style, in the widespread genres of hagiography and episcopal biographies. The genre seems to have begun in the mid-twelfth century. Icelandic sagas are based on oral traditions and much research has focused on what is real and what is fiction within each tale. The accuracy of the sagas is often hotly disputed. Most of the medieval manuscripts which are

220-571: A growing range of other ones. Where available, the Íslenzk fornrit edition is usually the standard one. The standard edition of most of the chivalric sagas composed in Iceland is by Agnete Loth. A list, intended to be comprehensive, of translations of Icelandic sagas is provided by the National Library of Iceland 's Bibliography of Saga Translations . Many modern artists working in different creative fields have drawn inspiration from

275-521: A series of stanzas with a refrain ( stef ) at intervals, and the flokkr (similar to drápa , without a refrain), vísur ‘verses, stanzas’, or dræplingr ‘little drápa’, a shorter series of verses without refrain. There are also some shield poems, which supposedly describe mythological scenes on a shield presented to the poet by a patron. Most of the longer skaldic poems were composed by court poets to honor kings and jarls. They typically have historical content, relating battles and other deeds from

330-402: A spur of the moment thing. Although there is no evidence that the skalds employed musical instruments, some speculate that they may have accompanied their verses with the harp or lyre . A large number of the preserved skaldic verses are individual stanzas, called lausavísur ("loose verses"), often said to have been improvised. Long forms include the drápa , a praise poem consisting of

385-537: Is Þiðreks saga , translated/composed in Norway; another is Hjalmars och Hramers saga , a post-medieval forgery composed in Sweden. While the term saga is usually associated with medieval texts, sagas — particularly in the legendary and chivalric saga genres — continued to be composed in Iceland on the pattern of medieval texts into the nineteenth century. Icelanders produced a high volume of literature relative to

440-651: Is about King Magnus the Good ; in the 12th century it was the dominant metre of religious skaldic poetry. Despite these adaptations, the skaldic tradition itself was endangered by the popularity of newer and simpler forms of poetry and loss of knowledge of the kenning tradition. Snorri Sturluson 's Prose Edda , a handbook produced around 1220 that includes a guide to the metres, an explanation of kennings and their mythological and heroic bases grounded in contemporary learning, and numerous examples that preserve many skaldic verses, enabled skaldic poetry to continue in Iceland after

495-412: Is also characteristically more ornate in its diction, using more interlacing of elements of meaning within the verse and many more kennings and heiti . This both assisted in meeting the greater technical demands of the metre and allowed the poets to display their skill in wordplay. The resulting complexity can appear somewhat hermetic to modern readers, as well as creating ambiguity in interpretation; but

550-464: Is invariably Eddaic verse . Some legendary sagas overlap generically with the next category, chivalric sagas. Chivalric sagas ( riddarasögur ) are translations of Latin pseudo-historical works and French chansons de geste as well as Icelandic compositions in the same style. Norse translations of Continental romances seem to have begun in the first half of the thirteenth century; Icelandic writers seem to have begun producing their own romances in

605-491: Is perhaps ultimately related to Proto-Germanic : * skalliz , lit.   'sound, voice, shout' ( Old High German : skal , lit.   'sound'). Old High German has skalsang , 'song of praise, psalm ', and skellan , 'ring, clang, resound'. The Old High German variant stem skeltan , etymologically identical to the skald- stem ( Proto-Germanic : * skeldan ), means "to scold, blame, accuse, insult". The person doing

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660-432: Is skaldic verse. According to historian Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, "Scholars generally agree that the contemporary sagas are rather reliable sources, based on the short time between the events and the recording of the sagas, normally twenty to seventy years... The main argument for this view on the reliability of these sources is that the audience would have noticed if the saga authors were slandering and not faithfully portraying

715-487: Is the Íslendingasögur (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

770-772: Is thought to have originated in either Norway or the Scandinavian Baltic. Most of the skalds of whom we know spent all or part of their careers as court poets, either those of kings, particularly the kings of Norway, or those of jarls, particularly the Hlaðir jarls , a dynasty based in what is now Trøndelag some of whose members ruled all or part of Norway as heathens in alternation with the Christian converters King Olaf Tryggvason and King Olaf Haraldsson (Saint Olaf). They produced praise poetry telling of their patrons' deeds, which became an orally transmitted record and

825-555: Is to show that poetry has gone through and will continue to go through change. The dróttkvætt metre appears to have been an innovation associated with a new fashion in formally more elaborate poetry associated with named poets. The metre has been compared to Irish and Latin poetic forms, which may have influenced its development. Origins in magic have also been suggested, because of the existence of skaldic curses (such as Egill Skallagrímsson 's on King Eric Bloodaxe ) and because there are 10th-century magical inscriptions on runestones in

880-499: The Codex Regius manuscript. Skaldic verses are preserved in a large number of manuscripts, including many sagas, and some skaldic poetry, including prophetic, dream, and memorial poems, uses the simpler metres. Medieval Scandinavians appear to have distinguished between older and more modern poetry rather than considering skaldic verse as a distinct genre. Compositions done without preparation were especially valued, to judge by

935-608: The Late Middle Ages . The standard edition of the skaldic poetic corpus, Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning , was edited by Finnur Jónsson and published in 1908–1915. A new edition was prepared online by the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project and began publication in 2007. The word skald (which internal rhymes show to have had a short vowel until the 14th century)

990-476: 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

1045-695: The 16th century, although that produced after 1400 is rarely studied as part of the skaldic corpus. More than 300 skalds are known from the period between 800 and 1200 AD. Many are listed in the Skáldatal , a list of court skalds by the ruler they served that runs from the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok to the late 13th century and includes some poets from whom no verses are preserved. Notable names include: Many lausavísur attributed in sagas to women have traditionally been regarded as inauthentic, and few female skalds are known by name. They include: The first comprehensive edition of skaldic poetry, by Finnur Jónsson ,

1100-523: The Old, a Norwegian skald of the first half of the 9th century. Most known skalds were attached to the courts of Norwegian kings during the Viking Age , and increasingly were Icelanders. The subject matter of their extended poems was sometimes mythical before the conversion to Christianity, thereafter usually historical and encomiastic , detailing the deeds of the skald's patron. The tradition continued into

1155-533: The continental kings of Europe and that those kings could therefore not ban subversive forms of literature. Because new principalities lacked internal cohesion, a leader typically produced Sagas "to create or enhance amongst his subjects or followers a feeling of solidarity and common identity by emphasizing their common history and legends". Leaders from old and established principalities did not produce any Sagas, as they were already cohesive political units. Later (late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century) saga-writing

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1210-484: The cult of Odin as an aristocratic, educated form of heathenism influenced by Christian eschatology . Poetic ability was highly valued; the art was practised by the Norwegian kings themselves, and several skalds, such as Egill Skallagrímsson , are the subject of their own biographical sagas. Icelandic skalds came to dominate at Norwegian courts; the last prominent Norwegian skald was Eyvindr skáldaspillir , and from

1265-421: The description of the items of clothing mentioned in the sagas concludes that the authors attempted to create a historic "feel" to the story, by dressing the characters in what was at the time thought to be "old fashioned clothing". However, this clothing is not contemporary with the events of the saga as it is a closer match to the clothing worn in the 12th century. It was only recently (start of 20th century) that

1320-491: The earliest surviving witnesses to the sagas were taken to Denmark and Sweden in the seventeenth century, but later returned to Iceland. Classical sagas were composed in the thirteenth century. Scholars once believed that these sagas were transmitted orally from generation to generation until scribes wrote them down in the thirteenth century. However, most scholars now believe the sagas were conscious artistic creations, based on both oral and written tradition. A study focusing on

1375-582: The early 21st century, the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project has prepared a new edition with associated database online; 5 of a projected 9 volumes had been published as of 2018. This edition groups the poems according to the type of prose source in which they are preserved. Saga Sagas are prose stories and histories, composed in Iceland and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Scandinavia . The most famous saga-genre

1430-416: The early Icelanders were. Pragmatic explanations were once also favoured: it has been argued that a combination of readily available parchment (due to extensive cattle farming and the necessity of culling before winter) and long winters encouraged Icelanders to take up writing. More recently, Icelandic saga-production has been seen as motivated more by social and political factors. The unique nature of

1485-429: The eighteenth century to refer to Old Norse prose narratives. The word continues to be used in this sense in the modern Scandinavian languages: Icelandic saga (plural sögur ), Faroese søga (plural søgur ), Norwegian soge (plural soger ), Danish saga (plural sagaer ), and Swedish saga (plural sagor ). It usually also has wider meanings such as 'history', 'tale', and 'story'. It can also be used of

1540-491: The insulting is a skelto or skeltāri . The West Germanic counterpart of the skald is the scop . Like scop , which is related to Modern English scoff , the word skald is probably cognate with English scold , reflecting the importance of mocking taunts in the poetry of the skalds. Skaldic poetry and Eddic poetry stem from the same tradition of alliterative verse , and in Old Norse as well as Icelandic,

1595-506: The king's career. Examples include: A few surviving skaldic poems have mythological content: To these could be added two poems relating the death of a king and his reception in Valhalla : Some extended works were composed as circumstance pieces, such as the following by Egill Skallagrímsson : The origin story for poetry comes from a myth by Snorri Sturlson. The story depicts poetry as a liquid that takes various forms. The point of this

1650-494: The kings' sagas. Like kings' sagas, when sagas of Icelanders quote verse, as they often do, it is almost invariably skaldic verse. Contemporary sagas ( samtíðarsögur or samtímasögur ) are set in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Iceland, and were written soon after the events they describe. Most are preserved in the compilation Sturlunga saga , from around 1270–80, though some, such as Arons saga Hjörleifssonar are preserved separately. The verse quoted in contemporary sagas

1705-573: The late thirteenth century, with production peaking in the fourteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth. While often translated from verse, sagas in this genre almost never quote verse, and when they do it is often unusual in form: for example, Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns contains the first recorded quotation of a refrain from an Icelandic dance-song, and a metrically irregular riddle in Þjalar-Jóns saga . Saints' sagas ( heilagra manna sögur ) and bishops' sagas ( biskupa sögur ) are vernacular Icelandic translations and compositions, to

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1760-549: The lives of Scandinavian kings. They were composed in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. A pre-eminent example is Heimskringla , probably compiled and composed by Snorri Sturluson . These sagas frequently quote verse, invariably occasional and praise poetry in the form of skaldic verse . The Icelanders' sagas ( Íslendingasögur ), sometimes also called "family sagas" in English, are purportedly (and sometimes actually) stories of real events, which usually take place from around

1815-435: The medieval corpus — seem to have been composed in the thirteenth century, with the remainder in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These sagas usually span multiple generations and often feature everyday people (e.g. Bandamanna saga ) and larger-than-life characters (e.g. Egils saga ). Key works of this genre have been viewed in modern scholarship as the highest-quality saga-writing. While primarily set in Iceland,

1870-413: The metre. Since the first example of skaldic poetry of which we know is Bragi Boddason 's Ragnarsdrápa from the early 9th century, some have argued that he and his associates invented it, but his work is already highly accomplished, suggesting that this style of poetry had been developing for some time. Bragi (whom many scholars consider was deified as the god Bragi ) was a Norwegian, and skaldic poetry

1925-461: The original audiences would have been familiar with the conventions of the syntactic interweaving as well as the vocabulary of the kennings. Eddic poems are characterized by their mythological, ethical, and heroic content, while skaldic verse has a wider range of subject matter. One of the main topics was mighty kings and the deeds of courtly patrons. Eddic poetry typically includes a large amount of dialogue and rarely recounts battles; skaldic poetry,

1980-458: The past." Legendary sagas ( fornaldarsögur ) blend remote history, set on the Continent before the settlement of Iceland, with myth or legend. Their aim is usually to offer a lively narrative and entertainment. They often portray Scandinavia's pagan past as a proud and heroic history. Some legendary sagas quote verse — particularly Vǫlsunga saga and Heiðreks saga — and when they do it

2035-682: The political system of the Icelandic Commonwealth created incentives for aristocrats to produce literature, offering a way for chieftains to create and maintain social differentiation between them and the rest of the population. Gunnar Karlsson and Jesse Byock argued that the Icelanders wrote the Sagas as a way to establish commonly agreed norms and rules in the decentralized Icelandic Commonwealth by documenting past feuds, while Iceland's peripheral location put it out of reach of

2090-494: The reverse. Skalds also composed spontaneous verses reacting to events, insult verses ( níðvísur ) such as Þorleifr jarlsskáld 's curse on his former patron Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson and the níð that provoked the missionary Þangbrandr into killing Vetrliði Sumarliðason , and occasionally love poems and erotic verse called mansöngr . Hallfreðr Óttarsson and especially Kormákr Ögmundarson are known for their love poetry. A large amount of Eddic poetry has been preserved in

2145-484: The sagas follow their characters' adventures abroad, for example in other Nordic countries , the British Isles, northern France and North America. Some well-known examples include Njáls saga , Laxdæla saga and Grettis saga . The material of the short tales of Icelanders ( þættir or Íslendingaþættir ) is similar to Íslendinga sögur , in shorter form, often preserved as episodes about Icelanders in

2200-434: The sagas. Egill Skallagrímsson is supposed to have composed his Höfuðlausn in one night to ransom his head. King Harald Hardrada is said to have set his skald, Þjóðólfr Arnórsson , as he was walking down the street, to compose two stanzas casting a quarreling smith and tanner through the choice of kennings as specific figures first from mythology and then from heroic legend. It is not common though that skaldic verse are

2255-755: The sagas. Among some well-known writers, for example, who adapted saga narratives in their works are Poul Anderson , Laurent Binet , Margaret Elphinstone , Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué , Gunnar Gunnarsson , Henrik Ibsen , Halldór Laxness , Ottilie Liljencrantz , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , George Mackay Brown , William Morris , Adam Oehlenschläger , Robert Louis Stevenson , August Strindberg , Rosemary Sutcliff , Esaias Tegnér , J.R.R. Tolkien , and William T. Vollmann . Primary: Other: In Norwegian: Vetrli%C3%B0i Sumarli%C3%B0ason Vetrliði Sumarliðason ( Old Norse : [ˈwetz̠ˌliðe ˈsumɑz̠ˌliðɑˌson] ; Modern Icelandic : Vet u rliði Sumarliðason [ˈvɛːtʏrˌlɪːðɪ ˈsʏːmarˌlɪːðaˌsɔːn] )

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2310-571: The second half of the 10th century, all known court skalds were from Iceland or the Orkney Islands. By the end of the 10th century, skaldic poetry had become increasingly internally complex, and in the 11th century Christian skalds reacted against this complexity by using far fewer kennings, especially avoiding those referencing heathen deities. In the 12th century, a century after the conversion of Iceland, some skalds reintroduced heathen kennings as literary formulae, interest in ancient tradition

2365-477: The settlement of Iceland in the 870s to the generation or two following the conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000. They are noted for frequently exhibiting a realistic style. It seems that stories from these times were passed on in oral form until they eventually were recorded in writing as Íslendingasögur , whose form was influenced both by these oral stories and by literary models in both Old Norse and other languages. The majority — perhaps two thirds of

2420-649: The size of the population. Historians have proposed various theories for the high volume of saga writing. Early, nationalist historians argued that the ethnic characteristics of the Icelanders were conducive to a literary culture, but these types of explanations have fallen out of favor with academics in modern times. It has also been proposed that the Icelandic settlers were so prolific at writing in order to capture their settler history. Historian Gunnar Karlsson does not find that explanation reasonable though, given that other settler communities have not been as prolific as

2475-630: The sources: the author of King Sverrir 's saga had met the king and used him as a source. While sagas are generally anonymous, a distinctive literary movement in the 14th century involves sagas, mostly on religious topics, with identifiable authors and a distinctive Latinate style. Associated with Iceland's northern diocese of Hólar , this movement is known as the North Icelandic Benedictine School ( Norðlenski Benediktskólinn ). The vast majority of texts referred to today as "sagas" were composed in Iceland. One exception

2530-488: The tales of the voyages to North America (modern day Canada) were authenticated. Most sagas of Icelanders take place in the period 930–1030, which is called söguöld (Age of the Sagas) in Icelandic history. The sagas of kings, bishops, contemporary sagas have their own time frame. Most were written down between 1190 and 1320, sometimes existing as oral traditions long before, others are pure fiction, and for some we do know

2585-562: The text. The main meanings of the Old Norse word saga (plural sǫgur ) are 'what is said, utterance, oral account, notification' and the sense used in this article: '(structured) narrative, story (about somebody)'. It is cognate with the English words say and saw (in the sense 'a saying', as in old saw ), and the German Sage ; but the modern English term saga was borrowed directly into English from Old Norse by scholars in

2640-478: The tradition of court poetry ended in the 13th century. Christian religious poetry became an increasingly important part of the skaldic tradition beginning in the 12th century. Eysteinn Ásgrímsson 's Lilja was particularly influential: it uses the hrynhent metre and almost no kennings, and was much imitated. Christian skaldic poetry died out in Iceland only with the Protestant Reformation of

2695-478: The word skald simply means "poet" or "composer". Skaldic verse is distinguished from Eddic by characteristically being more complex in style and by using dróttkvætt ("court metre"), which requires internal rhyme as well as alliteration, rather than the simpler and older fornyrðislag ("way of ancient words"), ljóðaháttr ("song form"), and málaháttr ("speech form") metres of the Eddic poems. Skaldic poetry

2750-671: Was Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning , published in 4 volumes in Copenhagen in 1908–15 (2 volumes each diplomatic and corrected text; with Danish translations). Later editions include Ernst A. Kock  [ sv ] 's Den norsk-isländska Skaldedigtningen , published in 2 volumes in Lund in 1946–50, and Magnus Olsen 's Edda- og Skaldekvad: forarbeider til kommentar , published in 7 volumes in Oslo in 1960–64 (analysis in Norwegian). In

2805-551: Was a 10th-century Icelandic skald . He was the great-grandson of Ketill hængr ("salmon"), one of the settlers of Iceland . He lived in Fljótshlíð , in the south of the island. Vetrliði was pagan and opposed the conversion to Christianity. He composed defamatory verses ( níð ) about Þangbrandr , a missionary sent to Iceland by Óláfr Tryggvason . He was killed by the priest (or by the priest and his companion Guðleifr Arason). In some versions, another skald, Þorvaldr veili ,

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2860-453: Was motivated by the desire of the Icelandic aristocracy to maintain or reconnect links with the Nordic countries by tracing the ancestry of Icelandic aristocrats to well-known kings and heroes to which the contemporary Nordic kings could also trace their origins. The corpus of Old Norse sagas is gradually being edited in the Íslenzk fornrit series, which covers all the Íslendingasögur and

2915-431: Was murdered for the same reason. A stanza was composed by an unknown author about Vetrliði's death: Ryðfjónar gekk reynir randa suðr á landi beðs í bœnar smiðju Baldrs sigtólum halda ; siðreynir lét síðan snjallr morðhamar gjalla hauðrs í hattar steðja hjaldrs Vetrliða skaldi. He who proved his blade on bucklers, South went through the land to whet Brand that oft hath felled his foeman, Gainst

2970-427: Was revived, and drápur were produced on historical figures, such as Einarr Skúlason 's Geisli on Olaf Tryggvason, composed 150 years after his death. Skalds experimented with new metres, notably hrynhent , which uses longer lines than dróttkvætt and was probably influenced by Latin metres. This metre arose in the 10th century and was popularized in the 11th by Arnórr jarlaskáld , whose Hrynhenda (c. 1045}

3025-470: Was subsequently cited in history sagas. One example of this is the Helmskringla by Snorri Sturlson. A third of the book focuses on Olaf II Haraldsson. Their accuracy has been the subject of debate, but the verse form guards against corruption and the skalds traditionally criticized as well as advised their patrons. Skalds at the court at Hlaðir have been credited with developing the Valhalla complex and

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