Editing Sagas of Icelanders (section)

== Historical time frame ==
Among the several literary reviews of the sagas is the ''Sagalitteraturen'' by [[Sigurður Nordal]], which divides the sagas into five chronological groups (depending on when they were written not their subject matters) distinguished by the state of literary development:<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/njalssaga00lars|title=Njáls Saga|last=Lönnroth|first=Lars|publisher=University of California Press|year=1976|isbn=0-520-02708-6<!--hard cover which was scanned; the first character in text is "O" rather than "0", but this was flagged as invalid by wp-validation check-->|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/njalssaga00lars/page/204 204]&ndash;205|url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

* 1200 to 1230 – Sagas that deal with [[Skald|skalds]] (such as ''[[Fóstbrœðra saga]]'')<ref name=":4"/>
* 1230 to 1280 – Family sagas (such as ''[[Laxdæla saga]]'')<ref name=":4"/>
* 1280 to 1300 – Works that focus more on style and storytelling than just writing down history (such as ''[[Njáls saga]]'')<ref name=":4"/>
* Early fourteenth century – Historical tradition<ref name=":4"/>
* Fourteenth century – Fiction<ref name=":4"/>

This framework has been severely criticised as based on a presupposed attitude to the fantastic and an over-estimation on the precedence of ''Landnámabók''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ármann Jakobsson and Yoav Tirosh |title="The 'Decline of Realism' and inefficacious Old Norse literary genres and sub-genres" |journal=Scandia |date=2020 |issue=3 |pages=102–38 |url=https://www.academia.edu/44059206}}</ref>