The Fljotsdale Saga and The Droplaugarsons

Translated from the Icelandic by Jean Young and Eleanor Haworth and introduced by Jean Young. The Fljotsdale Saga, which may perhaps be called 'the last of the sagas', is one of the forty or so Family Sagas or Sagas of Icelanders. These sagas were based to a considerable extent on oral tradition and consisted of stories about real or fictitious persons who lived in the period from the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century to the middle of the eleventh century. The Fljotsdale Saga, which is episodic in form and intended as a skaldsaga or story to entertain, recounts, among other things, some of the exploits of two brothers, the Droplaugarsons. The work dates from about 1500. The author probably came from the East Fiords. The Droplaugarsons completes the story of the brothers Grim and Helgi and is akin to the classical Family Saga. It probably dates from the early thirteenth century and is very likely the work of an inhabitant of Fljotsdale.