CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE ( 3 )

THE HEROIC AND

LEGENDARY SAGAS

Stephen Mitchell

T

he heroic and legendary sagas, also known by such varied terms as Mythical-Heroic
Sagas and fornaldarsögur norðrlanda (‘Nordic sagas of antiquity’), constitute a group
of some thirty late medieval Icelandic texts. Although the genre was given its canonical
shape by modern editors, especially P.E. Müller ( 1818 ) and Carl C. Rafn ( 1829 ), few
readers fail to sense the unity of these narratives. Characteristic features include the
valorisation of Nordic heroes, wide-ranging exploits across the map of Europe, frequent
pagan theophanies, and a remarkable array of supernatural creatures and villains. These
features, and a frequent suspension of normal temporal and spatial frames of reference,
contrast sharply with the more realistic saga genres (e.g. íslendingasögur, Sturlunga saga).
Many of these same formal features are also true of a group of texts closely resembling
the fornaldarsögur but which, due to their foreign origins and non-Nordic heroes,
are usually assigned to a separate genre of translated and original chivalric romances
(e.g. Karlamagnús saga, Kirjalax saga).
The fornaldarsögur are generally subdivided into several broad, and occasionally
overlapping, sub-categories, Adventure Tales and Heroic Legends, corresponding to
comic and tragic modes within the genre. Typically, the Adventure Tales (e.g. Bósa saga)
sport a so-called ‘Ashlad’ hero and end with a felicitous conclusion to the hero’s quest.
By contrast, the Heroic Legends (e.g. Ragnars saga loðbrókar) generally close with the
deaths of their champions. To the extent the protagonist is presented as a Viking, a
further subgroup is sometimes drawn from the previous sub-categories, namely the
Viking Sagas. The taxonomic imprecision evident in such a statement underscores the
difficulty in making overly narrow genre assignments, yet the themes associated with
these sub-categories are helpful in understanding the genre as a whole. Alternatively,
some critics have looked to categorise – and evaluate – the fornaldarsögur in terms of the
individual saga’s relation to such external categories as myth, folktale, history and heroic
poetry. In addition to the extant texts, a number of lost fornaldarsögur (e.g. *Ásmundar
saga flagðagæfu) can be perceived in the literary record.
That something like our modern perception of the genre was also recognised in
medieval Iceland is strongly suggested by the fact that several manuscripts consist
almost entirely of fornaldarsögur and other ‘romantic’ sagas (e.g. AM 343 a, 4 to). The
popularity of these sagas in Iceland is attested to by the large number of manuscripts in