saga

In Old Norse, saga meant simply 'a story, narrative, tale' — related to the verb segja ('to say'). But the Icelandic sagas were no ordinary stories: they were epic narratives of families, heroes, and gods, preserved through centuries of oral and written tradition.

The Icelandic sagas — the Njáls saga, Egils saga, the sagas of kings and heroes — were discovered by European scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries. These complex, literary narratives astonished readers used to thinking of medieval stories as simple romances.

English adopted 'saga' to describe the Icelandic originals, then expanded it to any long narrative of heroic achievement. A family saga, a corporate saga, 'the saga continues' — the word kept its sense of epic scope.

Today 'saga' appears in contexts its Icelandic creators couldn't have imagined: Star Wars saga, the Twilight saga, the saga of some sports team's season. The medieval Icelandic tale became a marketing term.