The main interest of all these tales is the same: they tell of real men and women in real circumstances, and show them human in spite of the legends which have grown about them. The sagas reveal the characteristics of our branch of the Aryan race, especially the personal courage which is so superior to that of the Greek and Latin races, and which makes the Teutonic epics (whether the Niebelungen Lied, the Morte Darthur, or the Njala) much more inspiring than the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Aeneid.
The prominence of law in almost every one of the Icelandic sagas has been preserved in the following story; and the conditions of life, whether at home or abroad, have been described as closely as was possible within the limits of the simple narrative form which the sagas customarily employed.
ALLEN FRENCH.
Concord, Massachusetts,
May, 1904.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Chapter | Page | |
| I. | Of the Lighting of the Beacon | [1] |
| II. | Of the Soursops, and the Curse which Hung on Them | [20] |
| III. | Kiartan at Cragness | [28] |
| IV. | Of Einar and Ondott | [42] |
| V. | The Summoning of Hiarandi | [53] |
| VI. | Of what Hiarandi should do | [59] |
| VII. | How Hiarandi received the Lesser Outlawry | [64] |
| VIII. | Of Schemings | [78] |
| IX. | Of the Outcome of Ondott's Plottings | [91] |
| X. | How Rolf named Witnesses for the Death of Hiarandi | [101] |
| XI. | Of Rolf's Search for One to Surpass Him with the Bow | [109] |
| XII. | Of the Trial of Skill at Tongue | [121] |
| XIII. | Of that Robber | [129] |
| XIV. | How Rolf and Einar summoned each other | [145] |
| XV. | Of Suits at the Althing | [155] |
| XVI. | The Act of Distress | [166] |
| XVII. | Rolf and Frodi fare abroad | [175] |
| XVIII. | How those Two came into Thraldom | [180] |
| XIX. | Now Men are Shipwrecked | [192] |
| XX. | How Rolf won his Freedom | [206] |
| XXI. | How Rolf won the Viking's Bow | [230] |
| XXII. | Now Kiartan Returns | [253] |
| XXIII. | Of the Coming of Earl Thorfinn | [271] |
| XXIV. | Now Rolf and Grani Quarrel | [279] |
| XXV. | Here Rolf comes to Cragness | [295] |
| XXVI. | Of Grani's Pride | [313] |
| XXVII. | Odd Doings at Cragness | [335] |
| XXVIII. | Of that Harvest Feast | [345] |
| XXIX. | Of the Trial of Grani's Pride | [369] |
| XXX. | Of the Saying of those Two Words | [385] |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| "It was Rolf in his weapons" | [Frontispiece] | |
| "'Now Einar dies if my father is hurt'" | Page | [58] |
| "So tall was she that the vikings could not board her" | " | [184] |
| "There he sat as if he were still alive, but there was no sight in his eyes" | " | [224] |
| "Grani took his sword and his shield, and they stood up to fight by the spring" | " | [405] |