Sturlunga Saga : The Role of the Creative Compiler

The less prepared the body of good men within the land are to act as mediators, the longer, more violent and less reconcilable will be the conflicts through which the land is plagued. The prefatory sagas of the Sturlunga compilation develop this principle by incremental repetition of themes, of disintegration, of mediation and its collapse, of flawed reconciliation; the central work of the compilation, Sturla Thordarson's Islendinga saga, provides the proof. The compilation as an entity is an exemplum calling on the leaders of 14th-Century Iceland to settle their differences amicably and avoid a return to Sturlung Age chaos.