Scandinavian Literature, The heroic sagas

The fantastic element was further developed in the fornaldar sögur, literally “the sagas of antiquity,” whose heroes were supposed to have lived in Scandinavia and Germany before Iceland was settled. The best known, the Völsunga saga (c. 1270), retold in prose stories from heroic lays of Sigurd, the Burgundians, and Jörmunrekr, and the Hrólfs saga kraka (c. 1280–1350) incorporated ancient