Sagas
SAGAS are long prose narratives in Old Norse written primarily in Iceland between approximately 1180 and 1500. They are generally categorized by their subject matter. The kinds of sagas important for the study of Norse paganism are the kings' sagas, which are biographies of Scandinavian kings (related sagas are about the Scandinavian earls of the Orkneys and the Faeroes); family sagas (or "sagas of the Icelanders"), which recount the histories of Iceland and Greenland from their settlement in the ninth and tenth centuries up to about 1030 (a related text is Landnámabók [Book of the Land-Takings], an account of the settling of Iceland, which began around 870); and mythical-heroic sagas, which describe adventures taking place in Scandinavia before the settlement of Iceland. All three groups of texts contain material relating to Scandinavian paganism, mythology, and other non-Christian beliefs and practices.
The kings' sagas about Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson describe their efforts to convert Norway and Iceland to Christianity in the period from 995 to 1030, including their encounters with pagan gods, temples, idols, and believers. The legendary history of the early kings presents the Swedish royal family as the descendants of Freyr and worshippers of Óðinn. It also includes myths not found elsewhere, some of which (such as the story that the giantess Skaði married Óðinn after she separated from Njörðr) may be medieval inventions.
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