Summary: The Icelandic Sagas were first written down in the 13th century and tell the stories of the Norse settlers who began to arrive in Iceland 400 years before. They contain some of the richest and most extraordinary writing of the Middle Ages. Full of heroes, feuds, ghosts and outlaws, the sagas inspired later writers including Sir Walter Scott, William Morris and WH Auden. Melvyn Bragg is joined by Carolyne Larrington, Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English Literature at St John's College, Oxford; Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, University Lecturer in Scandinavian History at the University of Cambridge and Emily Lethbridge, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Árni Magnússon Manuscripts Institute in Reykjavík.
