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| | Icelandic Sagas |
 | | Most sagas are quasi-historical texts; the subjects they treat were orally passed down many centuries before finally being written down, and therefor can not necessarily be considered perfectly authentic historical documents; for example, some of the Sagas, such as Eyrbyggja Saga, contain many instances of supernatural events which are obviously fantastic. |
| | As literature, the sagas are held in high esteem, but are relatively plain when compared to both contemporaneous and later medieval works, which, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf, often made use of ornate verse and fancified poetry. |
| | Instead, the Sagas, being more recorded for the sake of posterity than literature, are written in a very matter-of-fact and conservatively succinct prose very accessible to all levels of readers -- what subject any number of romantic authors could spend wordy pages on, an Icelandic writer could summarize in a single objective sentence. |
| phwibbles.com /sagas (1630 words) |
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