When The Queens of Kungahälla was published in 1899, the volume included a group of stories designated as legends and given the simple title Legender (Legends). In 1906, these legends appeared in a single volume. Two years earlier, in 1904, Kristuslegender (Christ Legends) was published, which together with Legends contain Lagerlöf's most important work in that genre.

Elements of the legend appear, however, as early as Gösta Berling's Saga, and they are common in the later novels, especially The Miracles of Antichrist, Jerusalem II (or The Holy City), and The Emperor of Portugallia. As early as 1892, the journal Ord och bild published "Legenden om fågelboet" ("The Legend of the Bird's Nest") in which a hardened, vengeful hermit is changed into a mild man resembling St. Francis of Assisi, who stands with upstretched arms to give the birds a haven in the wilderness...