noun
definition
An Old Norse (Icelandic) prose narrative, especially one dealing with family or social histories and legends.
definition
Something with the qualities of such a saga; an epic, a long story.
Examples of saga in a Sentence
So far, this saga of Annie Quincy is going just like we thought.
The verse in this saga is important and interesting.
See the Heims-Kringla, in the Saga Library, trans.
Snorri (1179-1241) wrote the Lives of the Kings (Heimskringla), from Olaf Tryggvason to Sigurd the Crusader inclusive; and we have them substantially as they came from his hand in the Great King Olaf's Saga; St Olaf's Saga, as in Heimskringla and the Stockholm MS.; and the succeeding Kings' Lives, as in Hulda and Hrokkinskinna, in which, however, a few episodes have been inserted.
Jomsvikinga Saga, the history of the pirates of Jom, down to Knut the Great's days, also relates to Danish history.
The saga of Thorgils Skardi (1252-1261) seems to have been the first of his works on Icelandic contemporary history; it deals with the life of his own nephew, especially his career in Iceland from 1252 to 1258.
As the Apple Turns sees the Apple saga as a TV soap opera - you can get reruns here too.
The KonungabOk is preserved under the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturloson, parts of it almost as they came from Ari's hands, for example Ynglinga and Harald Fairhair's Saga, and the prefaces stating the plan and critical foundations of the work, parts of it only used as a framework for the magnificent superstructure of the lives of the two Olafs, and of Harald Hardrada and his nephew Magnus the Good.
The complex work now known as Orkneyinga is made up of the Earls' Saga, lives of the first great earls, Turf-Einar, Thorfinn, &c.; the Life of St Magnus, founded partly on Abbot Robert's Latin life of him (c. 1150) an Orkney work, partly on Norse or Icelandic biographies; a Mirade-book of the same saint; the Lives of Earl Rognwald and Sveyn, the last of the vikings, and a few episodes such as the Burning of Bishop Adam.
The saga has already been shown in two forms, its original epic shape and its later development applied to the lives of Norwegian and Danish kings and earls, as heroic but deeper and broader subjects than before.
The great extent of his subject, and the difficulty of dealing with it in the saga form, are most skilfully overcome; nor does he allow prejudice or favour to stand in the way of the truth.
The life of Gudmund (Gudmundar Saga Goda), as priest, recounts the early life of this Icelandic Becket till his election as bishop (1160-1202); his after career must be sought out in Islendinga.
The former work, Arna Saga Biskups, is imperfect; it is the record of the struggles of church and state over patronage rights and glebes, written c. 1315; it now covers only the years 1269-1291; a great many documents are given in it, after the modern fashion.
The latter, Laurentius Saga Biskups, by his disciple, priest Einar Haflidason, is a charming biography of a good and pious man, whose chequered career in Norway and Iceland is picturesquely told (1324-1331).
V olsunga Saga and Hervarar Saga contain quotations and paraphrases of lays by the Helgi poet, and Half's, Ragnar's and Asmund Kappabana's Sagas all have bits of Western poetry in them.
Thidrek's Saga, a late version of the VOlsung story, is of Norse composition (c. 1230), from North German sources.
A brilliant sketch of Icelandic classic literature is given by Dr Gudbrandr Vigfusson in the Prolegomena to Sturlunga Saga (Oxford, 1879).
He has translated Tegner's Frithiofs Saga, several plays of Shakespeare and some other foreign masterpieces.
But the most important works of this class are the Islendinga Saga and Thorgils Saga of Lawman Sturla.
The native literature of the islands consists of the Faereyinga Saga, dealing with the period of Sigmund Bresterson, and a number of popular songs and legends of early origin.
This reform may have helped to foster the cultivation of the native literature, and it is possible that we owe to it the preservation of the Ulster epic. But the Irish were unfortunately incapable of rising above the saga, consisting of a mixture of prose and verse.
A Scandinavian witch does the same in the Egil saga.
The story on which the poem is based belongs to the general stock of Teutonic saga and was very widespread under various forms, some of which are preserved.
For, as in the legend of Sigurd the Volsung, the plot had turned upon the love and vengeance of Brunhild, so in the song of the Nibelungs it is the love and vengeance of Kriemhild, the Gudrun of the northern saga, that forms the backbone of the story and gives it from first to last an artistic unity which the V olsungasaga lacks.
Cynthia was already in bed, an impossibly fat book in her lap— probably a long drawn out saga where generations of dysfunctional families romp around history.
End in sight for Harray baby saga A tragic chapter in the short lives of three newborn babies could draw to a close soon.
And so the saga of the BBC screening the Jerry Springer opera gets even more bizarre.
At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal.
In 1956 for the first time in fifty years the Sexton Blake saga was given a face-lift.
Even with that they only managed a partial refund, the saga continues.
The police have just announced a dreadful development in this unfolding saga!
The attacks come in the main from the continuing saga of Drumcree.
In the early 1750s began a saga to succeed Plummer which here can only be outlined.
One thing the media love is a long running saga.
It marks a step forward in the long-running saga of the film, which has spent years in development hell.
In the evening we went to a Viking village and sat around a fire listening to a Norse saga.
Thus the whole sorry saga could be brought to a convenient close.
The books being released now fit into arcs telling a section of an ongoing saga.
It's rather like The Red Shoes transformed into an epic saga.
The dread curve of Michael Corleone's life, which provided a dramatic spine for the family saga, has lost its sinister bend.
Posh yesterday rejected an attempt by Lincoln to solve the Simon Yeo transfer saga.
This survey of female sidekicks comes full circle with another look at the Sexton Blake saga.
Perhaps the main revelation was how, with the benefit of hindsight, the whole Doherty saga seems so damn tedious.
We asked a saga rose Porter Hargreaves Travel provided upstaging move ultra from fremantle.
So curiously alike in their general features were the sepulchral usages connected with barrow-burial over the whole of Europe, that we find the Anglo-Saxon Saga of Beowulf describing the chambered tumulus with its gigantic masonry "held fast on props, with vaults of stone," and the passage under the mound haunted by a dragon, the guardian of the treasures of heathen gold which it contained.
Under his name of Etzel, Attila plays a great part in Teutonic legend (see Nibelungenlied) and under that of Atli in Scandinavian Saga, but his historic lineaments are greatly obscured in both.
His later series of editions (1874-85) included Orkneyinga and Hdconar Saga, the great and complex mass of Icelandic historical sagas, known as Sturlunga, and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, in which he edited the whole body of classic Scandinavian poetry.
Beginning with the sagas of the west, most perfect in style and form, the earliest in subject is that of Gold-Thori (c. 930), whose adventurous career it relates; Hensa-porissaga tells of the burning of Blund-Ketil, a noble chief, an event which led to Thord Gelli's reforms next year (c. 964); Gislasaga (960-980) tells of the career and death of that ill-fated outlaw; it is beautifully written, and the verses by the editor (13th century) are good and appropriate; Hord's Saga (980) is the life of a band of outlaws on Whalesfirth, and especially of their leader Hord.
Hrolf Kraki's Saga paraphrases part of Biarkamal; Hromund Gripsson's gives the story of Helgi and Kara (the lost third of the Helgi trilogy); Gautrek's Arrow Odd's, Frithiof's Sagas, &c., contain shreds of true tradition amidst a mass of later fictitious matter of no worth.
The police have just announced a dreadful development in this unfolding saga !