What value do the Nordic sagas have as historical texts?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I've always tended to be sceptical of the sagas when treating them as anything other than entertainment, especially when compared to the Saxon sources. However, when you're looking at Viking history it's hard to get away from them.

What are your opinions on them?

[Hueij]

This is from the introduction of the Penguin edition of Njal's Saga. It is specific to this saga but I have a feeling it is more universal than that.

From the time they adopted the Latin alphabeth in the eleventh century, the Icelanders have been prodigious storytellers and record keepers. Among the many genres that have been preserved is a group of annals, begun around the year 1200, most of which contain, usually under the year 1010, the simple entry 'Nials brenna' (the burning of Njal). Another work, which dates back to the twelfth century, The Book of Settlements, a detailed account of the people who settled Iceland in the late ninth century,reports this about a man named Thorgeir: 'His son was Njal, who was burned to death in his house.'

The introduction goes on with a couple of other references to this Njal.

Also, a lot of people appear in more than one saga. From the introduction to Njal's Saga again:

For one thing, many characters overlap from saga to saga, and are mentiond as well in The Book of Settlements

Fact is that most Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the tenth/eleventh century. In a thread in the OTF about tracing back yor family a guy from Iceland (I forgot his name) made that claim for homself and he sounded totally convincing.

So yes, I think that the people in the saga's are historical figures. What was written about them may not be totally accurate but what's wrong with spicing up a story?

Edit: whoah, five edits before I got this right

Another edit: damn, I just noticed you weretalking about Nordic saga's, not just Icelandic saga's. Consider my post not written...