The ballads, both Faroese and Danish[16], belong to a fifth stage in the life of heroic legend in the North; but their origin and history is by no means so clear as that of the Rímur, and it is at present impossible to assign even approximate dates to more than a few of them with any degree of certainty. I have touched on this question at somewhat greater length below[17]; and I would only add here that some Danish and Swedish ballads, e.g. Ung Sveidal[18], Thord af Haffsgaard[19] and perhaps Her Aage[20], appear to be derived more or less directly from poems of the Viking Age, such as Fjölsvinsmál, Thrymskvitha and Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I—without any intermediate prose stage.
A careful study of the Faroese ballads as a whole might enable one to determine something more of the relation of ballads to 'Literature'[21] and of the various ballad forms to one another, such as that of the short and simple Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr to the longer and more complicated Ballad of Arngrims Sons. Simplification and confusion are among the chief characteristics of popular poetry[22]; but it is to be noted that in the case of the Hervarar Saga confusion set in long before the days of the ballad—as early as the saga itself, where there must surely be at least one case of repetition of character[23]. In reality, considering through how many stages the ballad material has passed, one is amazed at the vitality of the stories and the amount of original groundwork preserved. A careful comparison of the Völsunga Saga and the Faroese cycle of ballads generally classed together as Sjúrðar Kvæði—which, be it observed, were never written down at all till the nineteenth century—brings out to a degree literally amazing the conservatism of the ballads on the old heroic themes.
Readers who desire to make further acquaintance with the 'Stories of Ancient Times' as a whole will find a further account of the subject in Professor Craigie's Icelandic Sagas (p. 92 ff.). More detailed accounts will be found in Finnur Jónsson's Oldnorske og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie[24], Vol. ii, pp. 789-847, and in Mogk's Geschichte der Altnordischen Literatur in Paul's Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie, Ed. ii, 1904, Vol. II, pp. 830-857, while a discussion of the heroic stories will be found in Professor Chadwick's Heroic Age, chs. i-viii. For a full bibliography of the texts, translations, and general literature dealing with the Fornaldarsögur collectively, see the annual Islandica, Vol. V, pp. 1-9, compiled by Halldór Hermannsson and issued by the Cornell University Library, 1912.
[Footnote 1:] Cf. Saxo Grammaticus, Dan. Hist., Book v, p. 160 (Elton's translation, pp. 197, 198).
[Footnote 2:] Cf. Saxo, op. cit., Book v, p. 166 (Elton's translation, p. 205).
[Footnote 3:] Cf. Introduction to the Saga of Hromund Greipsson, p. 58 below.
[Footnote 4:] Cf. Heusler and Ranisch, Eddica Minora (Dortmund, 1903) p. xii.
[Footnote 5:] De Origine Actibusque Getarum (transl. C.C. Mierow, Princeton, 1915), cap. 5.
[Footnote 6:] Cf. Heusler and Ranisch, op. cit., p. x ff.
[Footnote 7:] Ker, Epic and Romance (London, 1908, 2nd ed.), p. 112.