Yet there is good reason for believing that in the main the _Íslendinga_ and _Konunga Sögur_ are historical. This may be seen by the general agreement between the various sagas, since the same characters constantly reappear, and there is little inconsistency with regard to their circumstances or personal traits. Again, the description of houses, ships, weapons, and other articles seems generally to correspond to those known to date from the period to which the stories refer. There is, moreover, one feature which points to a more or less fixed tradition dating from the closing years of the tenth century, namely, the attitude towards those characters who figured prominently in the struggle between Christianity and heathenism. Thus there are indications that the rather unsympathetic representation of Harold Greycloak and his brothers may be due to the fact that they were Christians. Still more significant is the attitude of the sagas towards Haakon the Bad, whose character seems to undergo a great change--probably a reflection of the change in the popular opinion of Christianity.
Sagas like those of Egill and Kormak relating to the middle or first part of the twelfth century are few in number and usually contain a considerable amount of poetry; in fact, the prose is not infrequently based upon the poetry. Stories dealing with early Icelandic history from A.D. 874 onwards and Norwegian history of the same period are much less full. In general they appear to be trustworthy, but the details are such as might have been preserved by local or family tradition without the special faculty which is characteristic of the sagas.
Of a totally different character are the sagas relating to times before the settlement of Iceland (A.D. 874). Some of these, such as _Völsunga Saga_ and _Hervarar Saga_, deal with events as far back as the fifth century, and are, to a great extent, paraphrases of poems, many of which have come down to us. Very frequently, too, whether based on poems or not, the narrative bears the stamp of fiction.[236]
Conditions in Iceland were especially favourable to the development of the art of story-telling, owing partly to the isolated position of the country itself and to the difficulties of communication across the wide tracts of land separating the various settlements within it, partly also to the love of travel which characterised its inhabitants. In Icelandic literature the recital of stories is mentioned in connection with public meetings--such as the annual general assembly (_Althingi_)--and with social gatherings at the “winter-nights,” the chief season for hospitality in Iceland, when travellers had returned from abroad.