Bydder, Jillene2017-01-042016-122017-01-042016-12Bydder, J. (2016). The detective and the Sagas: Erlendur in the novels of Arnaldur Indriðason. In Peer Reviewed Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) (pp. 52–60). Wellington, New Zealand: POPCAANZ.978-0-473-38284-1https://hdl.handle.net/10289/10831Arnaldur Indriðason’s Erlendur novels are popular crime fiction stories set in Iceland. Detective Erlendur Sveinsson’s team deals with serious crimes, murders, and missing persons. Their cases are contemporary, but Indriðason has always said that he is influenced as a writer by the medieval Icelandic sagas. How is this illustrated by his crime fiction? The sagas, like crime fiction, contain stories of murder, revenge, love, loss and family conflicts. The paper uses examples from the novels and the sagas to examine the links between them. These links include the importance of traditional and local stories and the significance of fate. The paper also describes how Erlendur’s character develops over the series until he becomes an archetypical saga hero.application/pdfenThis article is published in the Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ). © 2016 Copyright with the author.Arnaldur Indriðason, Icelandic crime fiction, Icelandic sagas, Detective Erlendur Sveinsson, fate in literatureIcelandic crime fictionIcelandic sagasDetective Erlendur Sveinssonfate in literatureConference Contribution