Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas

The Quellenwert of the Icelandic sagas has long aroused controversy among scholars, especially between historians and those specializing in philology or literature.[...] Fortunately for historians, Tatjana Jackson [...] endorses the more balanced position of T. M. Andersson, Gísli Sigurðsson and others concerning the interplay between the spoken and the written word, whereby writers of sagas drew upon both components. And she approaches the Old Norse Kings’ Sagas in light of Aron Gurevich’s dictum: it is “not a question of whether to use the sagas ..., but of how.”

~Jonathan Shepard, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas / jgo.e-reviews 70, nos. 1-2 (2022): 222-224