Man there are a lot here. I got to read a few of these sagas (in English) years ago and many of them are fun. Think crazy soap opera but with swords, boats and bows and all before 1000AD. Somebody else recommended the Saga of Erik the Red and the Greenland Saga. Those are great.
For an early look at democracy vs mob rule the The Story of Burnt Njal is great.
For great poetry[1], adventurism and, well, funny-shaped heads, Egil's Saga is also great.
If I remember, a lot of the Sagas will reference other ones, and the style definitely gives you the sense that they were spoken for centuries before they were written down. It's also worth noting that many (most?) were written down by Christians based on the tellings. Some people think the outlook of the Christians writing down these mostly-pagan tales comes through a little more than the original telling. Sorry I don't have a source for that.
If I remember correctly many Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the subjects of some of these Sagas.
If you decide to read some, what I found was that I was mostly lost in the first saga, but by the third or fourth in a row the style started making more sense. It gets immersive.
[1] Old Norse poetry doesn't easily translate into English but a lot of the style still comes through. They relied heavily on kennings. There's a good description on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
History is the only source you need. It would have been considered heresy to to otherwise, and it was common at the time for Christian scholars to reframe pagan gods as wicked sorcerers or demons and the like. In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson states the gods are human descendants of Trojan heroes. It's also likely the descriptions of "light elves" and "dark elves" (basically angels and demons) along with Ragnarok (Apocalypse) and Baldr's death and resurrection (Christ motif) were retooled if not fabricated entirely to turn these 'dangerous pagan lies' into useful Christian metaphors.
Unfortunately we'll never know how much was changed, but we can be absolutely certain things were changed.
Christian translators did that quite far into the modern era. An uncensored, fully unabridged translation of The Count of Monte Cristo didn't appear in English until 1996, over 150 years after the book was written.
I read some of these in school. But haven’t returned to most of them. Of medieval icelandic literature I’m much more fond of Völuspá and Snorra-Edda simply because the fantastic nature of them appeals more to me than the soap-opera style of the Sagas. Of the Sagas them selves, I remember Laxdæla being my favorite, it has been a while though I don’t remember what specifically I liked about it.
That said, I came across a reading Brennu-Njálssaga a year or two ago, read by Árman Jakobsson (a medieval literature expert; and a brother of the Prime Minister) and it sparked a new interest in these stories. These stories are written to be read out loud. They were first authored to be remembered and recited, and when they were written down in books the common practice was still for one reader to read them out loud to a group of people as entertainment. Reading was a social event, not private like it is today. If your are interested in the sagas, for sure try to find a recording of a good reading and listen, as opposed to reading your self.
For an early look at democracy vs mob rule the The Story of Burnt Njal is great.
For great poetry[1], adventurism and, well, funny-shaped heads, Egil's Saga is also great.
If I remember, a lot of the Sagas will reference other ones, and the style definitely gives you the sense that they were spoken for centuries before they were written down. It's also worth noting that many (most?) were written down by Christians based on the tellings. Some people think the outlook of the Christians writing down these mostly-pagan tales comes through a little more than the original telling. Sorry I don't have a source for that.
If I remember correctly many Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the subjects of some of these Sagas.
If you decide to read some, what I found was that I was mostly lost in the first saga, but by the third or fourth in a row the style started making more sense. It gets immersive.
[1] Old Norse poetry doesn't easily translate into English but a lot of the style still comes through. They relied heavily on kennings. There's a good description on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning