Are the Icelandic sagas history, or fiction? A scholars' fight over one saga

Probably some of each, but nobody can say how much: scholars have argued about it since the 19th century, and the question is still open. The sagas of Icelanders are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth and early eleventh centuries. But many were recorded mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries, by authors, or rather recorders, who are largely unknown.

The classic test case is Hrafnkels saga, a story of struggles between chieftains and farmers in 10th-century eastern Iceland. It is widely read for its logical structure, plausibility and vivid characters, so it became a test case in the dispute over where the sagas come from.

The older view was that events were passed down orally for hundreds of years until written down by faithful scribes. That was the view of 19th-century scholars, and it went out of fashion around 1940. The challenge came from comparisons with other sources: Landnámabók says Hrafnkell's father was named Hrafn, but the saga names him Hallfreðr. In 1939 and 1940 Gordon and Nordal concluded that the saga was a 'bookish composition' that is 'historically impossible', and Nordal saw it as the work of a single brilliant author who cared little for historical accuracy.

The story did not end there. Later scholars argued that core story lines can survive orally for a long time while details such as the names of secondary characters change, so a wrong name proves little. The controversy remains unsettled.