Kings’ Sagas

The Norse-Icelandic kings’ sagas originated in the 12th century, reached their zenith in the 13th century, and then kept being amplified and rewritten into new compilations throughout the Middle Ages. They have been defined by their subject matter, the kings of Norway and Denmark from the 9th century until the 13th century, since it is hard to refer to them as a literary genre as these are works of disparate length and are composed in different languages (Icelandic or Latin) with few shared common features apart from the subject matter. The kings’ sagas are believed to have originated in the early 12th century although there are no extant texts from that period. It has been postulated that Icelandic historians Sæmundr Sigfússon (b. 1056–d. 1133) and Ari Þorgilsson (b. c. 1067–d. 1148) each wrote a kings’ saga even though the outlines of those are not known. Shortly after the mid-12th century the otherwise unknown Icelander Eiríkur Oddsson wrote a saga about the royal pretender Sigurðr Slembir and his short reign in Norway (1136–1139), a text that was possibly influenced by Danish interests. The late 12th century saw the emergence of short synoptical histories of Norway and biographies of the royal saints St Óláfr and Óláfr Tryggvason influenced by hagiography, whereas the first saga of a secular king was Sverris saga, authored by Karl Jónsson (d. 1213), possibly co-authored by King Sverrir himself, and first drafted in the 1180s. The 13th century witnessed ever expanding royal biographies, culminating in the three large compendia Morkinskinna (c 1220), Fagrskinna ( c. 1225) and Heimskringla (c. 1230), each of which collects several royal biographies in a period from 150–300 years. In Morkinskinna and Heimskringla in particular, the biography of the king is augmented by skaldic verse and narratives about various other people, thus expanding royal biographies into a history of the kingdom of Norway in the medieval fashion. Kings’ sagas continued to be written throughout the 13th century, with Hákonar saga and Knýtlinga saga by brothers Ólafur Þórðarson (b. 1212–d. 1259) and Sturla Þórðarson (b. 1214–d. 1284), lawspeakers, scholars, and skaldic poets of particular interest. However, after Iceland became a dependency of the kings of Norway in 1262–1264, interest in kingship as an institution seems to gradually wane. Most of the 14th-century kings’ sagas are large compendia that join together various 13th-century texts. Thus, the kings’ sagas are the oldest category of secular sagas but also declined first whereas other saga writing in general thrived in the 14th century.