Index - Icelandic Saga Database

Welcome to the Icelandic Saga Database

saga n : a narrative telling the adventures of a hero or a family; originally, a story of the families that settled Iceland and their descendants.

The Icelandic Saga Database is an online resource dedicated to publishing the Sagas of the Icelanders -- a large body of medieval Icelandic literature. The sagas are prose histories describing events that took place amongst the Norse and Celtic inhabitants of Iceland during the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth in the 10th and 11th centuries AD.

The Icelandic sagas are believed to have been written in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD, perhaps originating in an oral tradition of storytelling. While their facticity and authorship is for the most part unknown, they are a widely recognized gem of world literature thanks to their sparse, succinct prose style and balanced storytelling. The sagas focus largely on history, especially genealogical and family history, and reflect the struggles and conflicts that arose amongst the second and third generations of Norse settlers in medieval Iceland, which was in this time a remote, decentralised society with a rich legal tradition but no organized executive power.

This website contains all the extant Icelandic family sagas, made available in a variety of open formats using modernized Icelandic spelling, with the Old Norse versions and translations into English and other languages made available where these exist in the public domain.