[504] Njáls Saga, cap. 158.
[505] Fragment, ll. 40-1.
[506] p. 213 (ed. Holder).
[507] Finn may perhaps be holding a meeting of chieftains. For similar meetings of chieftains, compare Sǫrla þáttr, cap. 4; Laxdæla Saga, cap. 12; Skáldskaparmál, cap. 47 (50).
[508] There is assuredly a considerable likeness between the Finn story and the Nibelungen story: this has been noted often enough. It is more open to dispute whether the likeness is so great as to justify us in believing that the Nibelungen story is copied from the Finn story, and may therefore safely be used as an indication how gaps in our existing versions of that story may be filled. See Boer in Z.f.d.A. XLVII, 125 etc.
[509] The fact that both sides have suffered about equally facilitates a settlement in the Teutonic feud, just as it does among the Afridis or the Albanians at the present day.
[510] The situation would then be parallel to that in Laxdæla Saga, cap. 60-5, where the boy Thorleik, aged fifteen, is nominally in command of the expedition which avenges his father Bolli, but is only able to accomplish his revenge by enlisting the great warrior Thorgils, who is the real leader of the raid.
[511] Bugge (P.B.B. XII, 36) interpreted this swylce as meaning that sword-bale came upon Finn in like manner as it had previously come upon Hnæf. But this is to make swylce in l. 1146 refer back to the death of Hnæf mentioned (72 lines previously) in l. 1074. Möller (Volksepos, 67) tries to explain swylce by supposing the passage it introduces to be a fragment detached from its context.
[512] f, r, s, þ, w, p (
