at length, though she is unable to break the tie that binds Gunnar to his trusted counselor, Hrut's prophecy and Nial's forebodings are finally fulfilled, and after a brave defense the Lithend chief is slain in his own house by his half regretful foes. His son and Nial avenge his death. Then comes an episode abroad which is merely a link to connect the second and most important of the three dramas with the foregoing one, and to introduce fresh characters on the scene. (2) Nial is now the central figure; his character is heightened, he is almost a sage and prophet; the writer's highest skill is lavished on this part of the Saga. The death of Thrain, slain by the sons of Nial, at length brings down on himself and his house the fate which he is powerless to avert. The adoption of Hoskuld, his foeman's son, by which he strives to heal the feud, is but a step to this end. Eventually, to further his foster-son's interests, he obtains for him one of the new 'priesthoods' which were set up in consequence of the great constitutional reform he had carried. Upon this, the hatred of the old aristocracy whose position he had thus assailed broke out in the guile of Valgard and his cunning son Mord, who sowed hatred between the Whiteness Priest and his foster-brethren. A fancied slight at last rouses these latter to murder the innocent Hoskuld. Nial, cut to the heart, still strives for peace; but a few bitter words undo all his work, and the end he has foretold is near. The scenes at the Althing, which relieve the story by introducing portraits of every great chief of that day in Iceland, boldly and humorously depicted, are very noteworthy. Flosi, the widow's kinsman, driven unwillingly to action, now takes up the holy duty of blood-revenge; and by his means Nial and his wife and sons perish in the smoke of their burning homestead. This awful catastrophe closes the second part. (3) Of the concluding drama Flosi is the hero, and the plot tells of the Burner's fate. The great suit against them at the Althing fails by a legal technicality; and the ensuing battle is stayed by Hall and Snorri, by whose award they are exiled. But Kari, Nial's son-in-law, who alone escaped from the fire, pursues them with unrelenting vengeance; one by one they fall by various fates: and when in the real battle of Clontarf, 1014, those of them who have hitherto evaded their destiny perish, fighting against the new Faith, by the swords of the Irish, his revenge is at length complete, and Flosi and he are reconciled."

The reader of the Nial's Saga' and other literature of the kind will readily see how natural was the growth of this Icelandic literature; but it is only the close student who will observe how the short saga of the individual becomes the more complex saga of a family or a tribal section of the race. This transformation took place when some of the smaller sagas were combined by one narrator of exceptional power and welded into a harmonious whole. An analogous process is afforded in the instance of the 'Kalevala,' and possibly in that of Homer. Of these composite sagas the finest are 'Nial's Saga' already alluded to, Gudmund's Saga,' and the Eyrbyggia Saga.' Doubtless sagas such as these, and indeed nearly all oral lore, go through an actual process of attenuation on the one hand and of embellishment on the other, with each succeeding generation.

Let us consider for a moment how the 'Heimskringla'—the chief glory and pride of old Norse literature-came to be written by Snorri Sturluson. In him, says a recent authority, «< we have a Macaulay of the thirteenth century,- a man to whom all who wish to be good story-tellers, to interest the mind and stir the heart, may well apprentice themselves: a man in a remote valley of Iceland, that sunless land of snow and ice, that howling wilderness of lava and cinder-heaps, over which Night broods so many weary hours of the year. Surely Newman had forgotten Snorri when he laid it down as an axiom that 'Science, literature, and art refuse to germinate in frost.' You should see the place, the site of his abode with the bath of hewn stone, in that valley of bogs and reek, and you would be lost in amazement if you did. See him picking up the threads of history, and working them into a tissue picturesque in the extreme, in his own vernacular too, when we English, who had not the wit to throw off the old Roman influence,- dumbfounded too with that French jargon which the Norman had brought into the land, the language of the royal court, the courts of law, and the baronial castle,were maundering away in Latin.»

It was in the midst of this gloomy and remote Iceland that the great epic of the Scandinavian race was put together. But here I am not dealing specifically with the Eddas as distinct from the Sagas: and it should be remembered, too, that the ancients applied this name only to the work of Snorri; though it is uncertain whether Snorri himself, the composer of the New Edda,' called it so. In a manuscript written fifty years after his death, there occurs this interpolation: "This book is called the Edda; it is compiled by Snorri Sturluson."

The saga proper, says Dr. Vigfusson, is a kind of prose epic.

"It has its fixed laws, its set phrases, its regular epithets and terms of expression; and though there is, as in all high literary form, an endless diversity of interest and style, yet there are also bounds which are never overstepped, confining the saga as closely as the employment and restrictions of verse could do. It will be best to take as the type the smaller Icelandic saga, from which indeed all the later forms of composition have sprung. This in its original form is the story of an Icelandic gentleman, living some time in the tenth or eleventh centuries. It will tell first of his kin, going back to the 'settler from whom he sprung, then of his youth and early promise before he left his father's house, to set forth on that foreign career which was the fitting education of the young Northern chief. After these Wanderjahre passed in trading voyages and pirate cruises, or in the service of one of the Scandinavian kings as poet or henchman, the hero returns to Iceland a proved man, and the main part of the story thus preluded begins. It recounts in fuller detail and in order of time his life in Iceland, his loves and feuds, his chieftainship and lawsuits, his friendships and his enmities, his exploits and

renown, and finally his death; usually concluding with the revenge taken for him by his kinsmen, which fitly winds up the whole. This tale is told in an earnest straightforward way, as by a man talking in short simple sentences, changing when the interest grows high into the historic present, with here and there an 'aside' of explanation. There is no analysis of character: the actors 'present themselves' in their action and speech. The dialogue, which is crisp and laconic, full of pithy saws, and abounding in quiet grim humor or homely pathos expressed in a few vivid words, is never needlessly used, and is therefore all the more significant and forcible. If the hero is a poet, we find most aptly interwoven many of his extemporary verses. The whole composition, grouped round a single man and a single place, is so well balanced and so naturally unfolded piece by piece, that the great art shown therein often at first escapes the reader. A considerable choice of words, a richness of alliteration, and a delicate use of syntax, are always met with in the best sagas. The story-teller is absorbed in his subject: no description of scenery, no reflections of his own, ever break the flow of the tale. He is a heathen with the heathen, a wrathful man with the avenger, and a sorrowful man with the mourner, as his style reflects the varied feelings of his dramatis personæ. The plot is nearly always a tragedy, and the humor dark and gloomy (the hearty buffoonery of Bandamanna is the marked exception); but this is relieved by the brighter and more idyllic home and farm scenes, and by the pathos and naïveté which are ever present.

"The constant epic allusions to the old days,' the continual reference to Law, the powerful use and vivid reality of the supernatural element, the moral standpoint of the story-teller himself appreciating so fully the pride of birth, the high sense of honor, the quick sharp wit, ready hand, and dauntless heart of his heroes, and last and most important the constant presence of women in the story, which give it that variety and interest we admire so much in Homer, are all noteworthy characteristics of the saga."

The State which grew up from such beginnings as have already been indicated, resulted, as also hinted, in a form of life and social habit peculiar to the island. Here again I may fall back upon that foremost exemplar of old Icelandic life and literature, Dr. Vigfusson, in his Prolegomena to the 'Sturlunga Saga,' for an admirable précis of the conditions out of which saga-telling as an art arose. The geographical characteristics of the new land, he says,

"precluded centralization or town life; while the spirit of independence, the circumstances of the freeholders, were far too strong to permit the growth of a feudalism of the English or French type. The power of the chiefs was great, but it depended on custom and law which rigidly defined its influence; and though in later times the increased wealth and family alliances of the great men, and the influence of the ecclesiastical power, brought many changes, these had as yet affected but little the state of things with which we are here concerned. Each cluster of dales opening on a separate baynay, each dale itself - possessed an individuality and life of its own, within the circle of which a man's days were mainly passed; and the more so as

nearly every firth had been originally the claim of a single settler, who had divided it out by gift or sale among his kinsmen or dependents, later comers being obliged to buy of the earlier settlers where and how they could. Thus a series of almost 'family' groups was formed, each living its own life amid its own interests, cares, and politics.

"But for all this isolation, there were for every Icelandic yeoman two great outlets: the one the Althing, the other the sea. The former strengthening the bonds which made the island one State, by bringing together men from every quarter yearly at regular intervals, and exercising much the same sort of influence on Iceland as the feasts, fairs, and games of Tara, Ohud, and the Isthmus had on the scattered tribes of Ireland, Arabia, and Hellas; keeping up the ties which made them one in civilization if not in polity. The second, the sea, besides being the field for adventure and trade in which every young chief proved himself, was also the road that led to the motherlands of Scandinavia, and the only path by which the arts, sciences, and fashions might reach these 'dwellers at the gates of the world.' The importance of the foreign trade alone is amply illustrated by its effect on the literature and even vocabulary of Iceland. In the old days the inhabitants of each homestead passed their lives in a varying round of labor. In spring the fishing, in summer the hay harvest and in a few farmed localities the grain harvest also, in autumn killing and salting meat for the winter, furnished constant occupation; while in winter, after the wood-cutting and stump-grubbing had supplied a store of fuel, the indoor occupations of weaving and spinning, boat-building, and making or mending the farm implements, filled up the time. The only breaks in the year of labor in the heathen times, when time was still counted by pentads and neither Sunday nor saint's day gave a partial holiday, were the three or four great feasts of the year, which were kept in greater state and with more exact observance in consequence. The High Summer festival was passed by the chiefs and their families at the Althing, held yearly at midsummer, the time of the old heathen festival of the sun; the Althing lasted about a fortnight, and all the chiefs and a certain number of the freemen of each district were expected to attend. This meeting was at once a court, a council, and a merry-making, and probably in the old days' a religious feast; it decided all matters concerning the common-weal, and such cases as concerned several districts and could not therefore be settled at the local moots. We have above the kind of influence it exercised on the life of the people, and the opportunities for social intercourse it afforded; we hear of games of hurling and football, of match-making, of feasting, and above all of the recital of stories by those who could tell best the legends and traditions of their several districts,- -a feature which is highly noteworthy with respect to the origin and development of the Saga in Iceland. We hear also of spring and autumn sacrifices, which no doubt coincided with and were held at the district Things. But the greatest holiday of all was Yuletide, which sometimes lasted a fortnight, when friends, neighbors, and kinsmen would assemble at some farm in the dale and pass the time eating, drinking, and merry-making. The homely life of those days, while it kept every man in his own place, yet tolerated no formal separation of ranks; and the meanest thrall shared with the highest chief in the hospitality and relaxation of the season. In early days

religious solemnities were celebrated at this time, and the fitting sacrifices always concluded with a feast. Weddings and Arval feasts too were opportunities for great gatherings of guests down to much later times, and often lasted many days.

"It was amid such scenes that the Saga came into being. There was no music, no dancing, no drama in the old times in Iceland; so that hearing and telling stories, and repeating verses, formed (besides athletic sports) the staple amusement of the assembled guests. The local heroes and the local traditions furnished the chief topics; for the Icelanders were a practical rather than a religious people, and though they had legends of a superstitious character, they preferred truth to fiction, and so the plain unvarnished tale of some great local chief's career abroad and adventures at home was woven into the permanent shape of the saga.»

The great period of Icelandic literature was before the twelfth century. Thereafter much of the simplicity and epic beauty of the older poets waned; and commentators began to play havoc either with amended originals, with interpolations of personal bias or current vogue, or even with pseudo-antique imitations. In the literary age the chief poets were members of the famous Sturlung family: Snorri and his two nephews, Sturla and Olaf the White Poet, in particular. It would be useless to give a mere enumeration of names, which would leave in the ear of the reader simply a series of barbaric sounds, that would convey no definite meaning to his mind; but mention at least may be made of the few great ones of the earlier time. Such men were Egill, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of Athelstan; Kormak (whose name has a strangely Celtic sound in our ears, being phonetically identical with Cormac), the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Hakon's poet, called Skaldspoiler because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriks-mal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Ethelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod (and here again we have a Celtic reminder, for the familiar Gaelic forename Norman is, in the vernacular, Tormaid or Tormod, though its pronunciation is different), the poet who dies singing at Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earl's poet; and of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, there were Gretti, Biorn, and the two model Icelandic masters Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman,- the two latter however both of the twelfth century.

With the end of the Literary Age, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the greatness of Iceland waned. Thereafter, for two hundred and fifty years (from 1284 to 1530), the epoch of medievalism prevailed; an epoch of great vicissitudes from within and without,