Nart saga

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The Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the Caucasus Mountains. They form the basic mythology of the tribes in the area; some are simply stories, but some have value as creation myths and ancient theology.

The Abkhaz, Circassians, Ossetians and the Ubykh all have versions of the Nart sagas.

The Narts themselves are a race of giants. Some of the characters who feature prominently in the sagas are:

Sosruko (Ubykh and Abkhaz sawsərəqʷa, Ossetian soslan), a trickster figure;
Satanaya (Ubykh satanaja, Adyghe setenej, Ossetian shatana), the mother of the Narts, a fertility figure and matriarch;
Tlepsh (Abaza ɬapʃʷ), a blacksmith;
Syrdon, a figure compared by Georges Dumezil to the Norse Loki;
Baoutch (Adyghe bəwkʾə).

Some motifs in the Nart sagas are shared by Greek mythology. The story of Prometheus chained to Mount Kazbek in particular is similar to an element in the Nart sagas. These shared motifs are seen by some as indicative of an earlier proximity of the Caucasian peoples to the ancient Greeks, also shown in the myth of the Golden Fleece, in which Colchis is generally accepted to have been part of modern-day Georgia or Abkhazia.

Additionally, the philologist Georges Dumézil used the division of the Narts into three clans to support his Trifunctional Hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were similarly divided into three castes—warriors, priests, and commoners. (Implicit in this argument is the assumption that this aspect of the Nart sagas was derived from the Ossetians, as the other peoples among whom the sagas are shared are non-Indo-European.)

In the book From Scythia to Camelot, authors C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor speculate that many aspects of the Arthurian legends are derived from the Nart sagas. The proposed vector of transmission is the Alans—the ancestors of the Ossetians—some of whom migrated into northern France at around the time the Arthurian legends were forming.