They tell of famous kings, difficult gods and women of great beauty, goodness or cunning; but although they paint the traditional colourful picture of the Viking warrior making raids in his dragon-headed longboat, these stories are not concerned, like Hrafnkel's Saga, for example, to point a moral or to set down the glories of Icelandic history or geography. Instead the narrators, witty and well-read, plundered sources from Homer to French romance, and incorporated local myths, legends and heroic tales in a bid to entertain us, capture our imagination and make us laugh.
