The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

mirror my ideas. Snorri says in his Heimskringla that he bases his writings mainly on the
poems, since they are the most reliable sources. Myths and stories embedded in the poetic
form and kenningar are less likely to change over time, than prose stories. They may be
more difficult to understand, but solving that riddle is part of the magic.
The Sagas
Although the poems are to me the most magical sources, the sagas give another
view, also of great importance. The myths are often found in both a saga and a poem, the
poem probably being the source and/or inspiration for the saga-writer, as they were for
Snorri.
The Islandic Sagas can be divided into several categories. There are the
Íslendingasögur (Sagas of the Islanders), the history of settlement and the first few
centuries of what we can call Islandic history. The same characters often play the main
roles in many different sagas, such as Auður djúpúðga, who is mentioned in Landnáma
(Book of Settlements), Laxdæla Saga and Eyrbyggja Saga, and her story is also entwined
into the Vinland Sagas, e.g. Eiríks Saga. These are probably all more or less based on
historical incidents and people, although often dramatized and may not always be reliable
historical evidence. Einar Pálsson 40 has given interesting indications that at least some of
them are allegories, and he has written extensively about the allegory of Njáls Saga (1970
and 1994).
Another category are the Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda (The Old Norse Sagas),
which take place before the Islandic settlement and tell the stories of the ancestors of the
settlers. Among those are the Völsungasögur, which are really not even Norse, since they
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