THE ICELANDIC SAGAS

I

[Iceland and the Heroic Age]

The close of Teutonic Epic—in Germany the old forms were lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages[179]
England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages[180]
Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere[181]
Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition—a new heroic literature in prose[182]

II

[Matter and Form]

The Sagas are not pure fiction[184]
Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details[185]
Miscellaneous incidents[186]
Literary value of the historical basis—the characters well known and recognisable[187]
The coherent Sagas—the tragic motive[189]
Plan of Njála
of Laxdæla
of Egils Saga		[190]
[191]
[192]
Vápnfirðinga Saga, a story of two generations[193]
Víga-Glúms Saga, a biography without tragedy[193]
Reykdæla Saga[194]
Grettis Saga and Gísla Saga clearly worked out[195]
Passages of romance in these histories[196]
Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoða, a tragic idyll, well proportioned[198]
Great differences of scale among the Sagas—analogies with the heroic poems[198]

III

[The Heroic Ideal]

Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas[200]
Heroic characters[201]
Heroic rhetoric[203]
Danger of exaggeration—Kjartan in Laxdæla[204]
The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal[206]