Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets

Eleven papers present broad discussions of a small group of sagas which chronicle the lives of Skalds, court poets, and provide a vivid and entertaining portrait of poetry, love and warfare. The contributors examine the typical features of the skald sagas, their date and authorship, the relationship between verse and prose, their composition, characterisation and their relationship with other Icelandic and European genres. The sagas discussed are Bjarnar saga , Gunnlaugs saga , Hallfredar saga and Kormáks saga .