But a reaction comes when she holds the sword in her hands at last:
Surely in terror I drew my breath
Between the worlds of life and death
When the grave fires girt me round.
Surveying the saga as a whole, perhaps the most striking feature is its extraordinary diversity of interest. It would be difficult to find elsewhere in Norse literature—or indeed perhaps in any literature—so great a variety of subjects and of literary forms brought together within such narrow limits.
Of the poems contained in the saga, the first is romantic, the second gnomic, the third heroic—and the prose narrative itself is not less varied in character. The conclusion of the saga appears to be purely historical; indeed it is generally regarded as one of the most important authorities for early Swedish history. Elsewhere also historical elements are probably not wanting, but they are interwoven in a network of romance and folklore. Thus whoever King Heithrek may have been, the part which he has come to play in the saga is chiefly that of linking together a number of folk-tales and illustrating popular saws. As regards chronology, the war described in ch. 12-15 must belong to a period nearly seven centuries before the incidents related at the close of the saga. Still more strange is the fact that the victor in this war, the younger Angantyr, would seem to have lived some four or five centuries before his great grandfather and namesake who perished at Samsø—if indeed the latter story rests on any genuine tradition. In spite of these and similar inconsistencies, however, the saga is on the whole perhaps the most attractive of all the Fornaldarsögur.
[Footnote 1:] This ms. is identical with the one referred to as A in the Introduction to the Tháttr of Nornagest (cf. p. 11 above).
[Footnote 2:] Quoted by Heusler, Eddica Minora (Dortmund, 1903), p. vii.
[Footnote 3:] Fornaldarsögur Northrlanda (Copenhagen, 1829), Vol. i; Antiquités russes etc. (Copenhagen, 1850-2), Vol. i.
[Footnote 4:] Oldnorske og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, Vol. ii, p. 839 f.