Nart saga

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The Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. 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 first written account of the material is due to the Kabardian author Shora Begmurzin Nogma (written in Russian 1835-1843, published posthumously in 1861, German translation by Adolf Bergé in 1866).

The best known and most studied versions of the Nart sagas are found in the folklore of the Ossetians and the Circassian peoples, closely followed by the related Abkhaz and Abazin people; Nart sagas are also present in Karachay-Balkar and Chechen-Ingush folklore.

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

Sosruko (Ubykh and Abkhaz and Adyghe sawsərəqʷa, Ossetian soslan), a hero who sometimes also appears as a trickster;
Satanaya (Ubykh satanaja, Adyghe setenej, Ossetian shatana), the mother of the Narts, a fertility figure and matriarch;
Tlepsh (Adyghe and Abaza ɬapʃʷ, Ossetian Kuyrdalægon), a blacksmith deity;
Syrdon, a trickster figure compared by Georges Dumezil to the Norse Loki.

Some motifs in the Nart sagas are shared by Greek mythology. The story of Prometheus chained to Mount Kazbek or to Mount Elbrus 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 Ossetian 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. Based especially on the Ossetian versions, the sagas have long been "largely viewed as a relic of the old Iranian-speaking culture of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans" (the Alans being the ancestors of the Ossetians). However, anthropologist John Colarusso argues that this view is unfair to the versions preserved among the Circassians and their kin: although the presence of "an ancient Iranian core in the various corpora is not to be denied", the Northwest Caucasian versions are highly valuable due to their authentic and raw form. They preserve "all the odd details constituting the detritus of earlier traditions and beliefs", as opposed to the Ossetian ones, which have been "reworked to form a smooth narrative".[1]

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, some of whom migrated into northern France at around the time the Arthurian legends were forming. Colarusso also notes these parallels and states that they are most evident in the Ossetian versions. See Historical basis for King Arthur - Sarmatian connection for more details on this hypothesis.