Many writers and historians from between the 13th-17th Centuries used the saga to vase their writings on. The original text was lost in the 17th Century, however, but a 16th Century Latin precis of the text still exists.

Snorri Sturlusson used it as reference for his Prose Edda. We know of a saga of the Skjoldungs extant in the second decade of that century. The Skjoldunga Saga is one of the earliest written accounts about which we know to be verifiable and may have been set down before AD1200 - in which case it was written at the start of saga documentation in Iceland.

The text follows on from the founder Skjold through a score of generations and ends with Gorm 'the Old', the Viking era king who died in AD940 and was succeeded by his son Harald 'Blaatand' (pron. Hrolf's Saga is the chief remaining source of the tale of this outstanding line of kings.Remnants of the Icelandic Saga of the Skjoldungs ( Skjoeldunga Saga), an unknown writer's history of the Danish kings of pre-Viking Scandinavia also give a broader background knowledge on Hrolf's clan.

First king of denmark skjold