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The roots of Icelandic literature can be traced to the ancient Nordic (Viking) pagan heritage, which was passed on by oral tradition over the centuries until it was committed to calfskin manuscripts when Iceland's Age of Writing began in the early 12th century. An important source about this heritage the Codex Regius, written down around 1270 and now preserved at the Árni Magnússon Manuscript Institute in Reykjavík. It contains the Poetic Edda, a unique record of the cosmogony and myths of the ancient peoples of the North, as well as presenting the most comprehensive body of ancient heroic legends which are known only in fragments from other parts of Europe. The ancient world picture is also portrayed in the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), who is unquestionably the most important Nordic writer of the Middle Ages. An equally important legacy in medieval Icelandic literature is the Sagas of Icelanders, most of which were written down in the 12th and 13th centuries. These accounts of the lives of the early settlers and their descendants are largely set in Iceland in 930-1030 - the period often referred to as the Saga Age. Njal's Saga, The Saga of Grettir the Strong and Laxdæla are examples of the magnificent literary achievement of this genre, with its epic accounts of conflicts and feuds, love and fate.

With the introduction of printing in the 16th century, Icelandic literature in effect split into two areas: the official domain dominated by the Church, and the popular domain where literature was still propagated in handwritten manuscript. When the Enlightenment reached Iceland, the printed word passed into the hands of the intelligentsia, but popular literature continued to be distributed in manuscript form throughout the 19th century and until the early 20th. In the 19th century, romanticism introduced new visions to poetry. Its best known champion is Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845), often dubbed "the great poet of art", which speaks volumes about his status in Icelandic literature.

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) must rank as the most important Icelandic writer of the 20th century - he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. His incredibly diverse oeuvre spans an enormous range of literary forms, but he is best known for novels such as Independent People, Iceland´s Bell and Under the Glacier. With the ascent of Laxness, Icelandic in effect became a language of world literature once again, as the Swedish Academy acknowledged when it awarded him the Nobel Prize - for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland?.