Saga

in Scandinavian literature, a legend or tradition. The Saga in Scandinavian mythology is the name of the goddess of history and narrative. It was the duty of the skalds and sagamen to preserve the accounts of warriors and their deeds and recite them when called for. The skald recited or sang in poetry, but the stories of the sagamen were in prose. These legends came gradually to be composed in regular form and according to fixed laws. A saga gave the history of some hero and resembled the epic in every respect excepting the one of versification. The sagas preserved specially in Icelandic literature are of great historical value. The oldest sagas extant are believed to have been written down first during the twelfth century, probably after they had been recited orally for a generation or two. The sagas fill over 200 volumes and include mythical and romantic, as well as heroic, stories, for the word saga seems to denote both tradition and history. They are in reality prose epics, resembling the regular hero epic in every respect except versification. The most important of these prose epics, as they have been called, are Frithiof's Saga, the title of which has been used by the Swedish Tegner for his great poem; and the Volsunga Saga, relating to the ancestors of Sigurd, the hero of the Nibelungen Lied. In time, almost every important Icelandic family came to have its written saga. The legends and nursery tales popular among the common people are called folk-saga. They have been collected in recent times. Among them are found the originals of many tales popular in various European countries. Jack the Giant Killer, and Cinderella are two of them. See Literature; Icelandic; Edda; Skald