The Vikings (2005)

Skaldic Poetry and Sagas (1x21)

Air date: Jan 21, 2005

Icelanders preserved memories of their Scandinavian homeland and transmitted tales of the ancient Germanic gods through recited poems, consistent with an oral culture in which even law was recited publicly from memory. From the 10th century onward, literature became ever more ornate and sophisticated, culminating in the great written works of the 12th-14th centuries: the collections of Norse poetry and mythology, and the prose sagas.