Volsunga saga ranks as one of the foremost works of prose written in thirteenth-century Iceland. A highly dramatic rendering of tales from the remote Germanic past, the saga presents the Old Norse version of the story of the Volsungs, Gjukungs, and Budlungs, three families fated to destroy each other. A continental German version of this history is recounted in the well-known Middle High German epic the Nibelungenlied.
