Our Mission

The Saga Heritage Foundation, founded on December 29, 2014, in Stavanger, Norway, is a nonprofit foundation that aims to preserve the Norse cultural heritage and stimulate interest in it by supporting and/or initiating activities aimed at the general, cultural, and academic spheres. Furthermore, the foundation shall ensure that key cultural works in Norse and Latin tradition are preserved for the future.

The Saga Heritage Foundation was established based on Professor Torgrim Titlestad's lifelong work with the Norse sagas. From 2001 to 2019, he led two of the largest translation and publishing projects in modern times, namely Tormod Torfæus' "Historia Rerum Norvegicarum" (1711) from Latin to Norwegian, and the Icelandic saga treasure - to which Torfæus' work was inextricably linked for over a quarter of a century - Flateyjarbók (1387), in total nearly 6000 pages that had never before been available in their entirety to a modern audience, with a total cost of over 3 million euros.

Professor Torgrim Titlestad with Flateyjarbók and Torfæus’ Historia Rerum Norvegicarum.
Photo: Ferdinand Bart Alst.

Since 2014, the foundation has worked to finance, translate, and promote "Flateyjarbók" - one of the most complex and magnificent saga manuscripts in existence, written in Iceland at the end of the 14th century. It is also one of the only complete original manuscripts that still exists intact, stored in Reykjavik, Iceland. Thanks to the foundation's efforts, this work will soon be available in its complete form for the first time in English, translated by Professor Alison Finlay from Birkbeck University of London.

The leather bound Norwegian edition of Flateyjarbók, published by Saga Bok in the period 2014-2019, with funding from The Saga Heritage Foundation. Photo: Ferdinand Bart Alst.

An organization with a unique mission, The Saga Heritage Foundation follows in the footsteps of historical luminaries such as Jón Hákonarsson (Iceland, 1300s), Ole Worm (Denmark, 1588–1654), Brynjolfur Sveinsson (Iceland, 1605–1675), Tormod Torfæus (Iceland, 1636–1719), Carl Richard Unger (Norway, 1817–1897) and other pioneers of the era of rediscovery and dissemination of the ancient Norse culture and history during the Renaissance and early Enlightenment period. Today, there are organizations responsible for preserving manuscripts and artifacts, but the living, intangible cultural heritage that has traveled from mouth to ear, from pen to parchment throughout the ages – the stories that have influenced world culture for centuries – has few dedicated protectors. These stories carry timeless insights into the human mind and must be preserved for posterity so that future generations can glean the wisdom and knowledge held therein, as we are moving towards a world where increasingly complex technologies will herald unprecedented challenges to the forces which has spearheaded the evolution of the human project since the earliest civilizations.