The Sagas of the Icelanders - Egil’s Saga

Hello and welcome to Medieval Murder, the podcast that brings all things gruesome and historical to the comfort of your own home or car or wherever it is you’re listening from. My name is Hannah Purtymun and I’m here with my father Kevin Purtymun to discuss some of the most famous and infamous murders that took place in the Medieval and Early Modern periods.

Medieval Murder came to be, first as a blog, then as an instagram and now as a podcast after I finished my master’s dissertation on homicide in early medieval England. The podcast will feature some of the most famous murders in medieval history, some mini-episode series on different types of medieval murders and interviews with historians and history enthusiasts alike.

Today we will be talking about Egil's Saga which spans from about 850 to 1000.

The Saga’s of the Icelanders are a genre of saga that are stories about different families in the medieval period. The stories are kind of a cross over between history and story and are almost what Icelander’s would consider historical fiction. Most of these stories were written several hundred years after the events themselves, and were told through a sort of oral tradition until they were written down.