The religious text translated from Latin into Old Norse in the Middle Ages show different degrees of fidelity to their original, ranging from exegesis and glossing of the Latin text, through word-for-word translation, to a more independent use of the sources. While the older hagiographic sagas consist of the translation of a single text, the younger ones are composed by conflating different sources, with a greater or lesser degree of editorial revision and original amplification on the part of the translator. Alongside with this, we also find different approaches to the sources in almost contemporary works, depending on the nature of the target text, on the intended public and possibly on the technique adopted by the translator. The interplay of these different factors results in a shifting balance between fidelity to a single Latin source an fidelity to the subject matter of the sage an translation becomes part of the process of the creation of new texts form pre-existing ones.