The First Icelandic King's Saga: Oddr Snorrason's Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar or The Oldest Saga of Saint Olaf?

Theodore M. Andersson, Indiana University

In his monograph Fyrsta sagan Bjarni Gudnason preempted the title of "first saga" for Eiríkr Oddsson's *Hryggjarstykki, a lost text referred to and paraphrased in Morkinskinna and Heimskringla and written sometime in the middle of the twelfth century. This text is difficult to reconstruct even in outline and may have been narrowly focused on Sigurdr slembir, as Bjarni Gudnason thought. If he is right, *Hryggjarstykki was not the sort of full-scale saga narrative we know from a later age. Another saga with a claim to be the "first" is Sverris saga, which appears to have been begun by Karl Jónsson in the late 1180s, but it may not have been completed until a good many years later.