Oprindelse Kormak er efter alt at dømme en historisk person, og et af hans kvad gengives også i Den yngre Edda, men kærlighedshistorien i sagaen er skabt efter samme mønster som fransk høvisk kærlighedspoesi; "the more widely held view is that the verses are genuinely old, that their attribution to Kormákr is correct, and that the saga narrative was created from the substance of these verse" og "consensus holds that the prose connecting the verses in Kormáks saga represents not a 'deep' tradition but merely a perfunctory attempt to link the verses".