hindered the evolution of a perfect story. They hesitated to omit or alter well-remembered incidents. Nevertheless a certain remodelling came, as generation after generation of narrators made the incidents more striking and the characters more marked, and, under the exigencies of story-telling, omitted details which, although actual, were irrelevant to the current of the story. The disadvantages from truthfulness were slight, compared with the admirable artistic qualities preserved by it. It kept the stories true to reality, excluding unreality, exaggeration, absurdity. Hence these Sagas are convincing: no reader can withhold belief. They contain no incredible incidents. On occasions they tell of portents, prescience, and second sight, but not so as to raise a smile. They relate a very few encounters with trolls—the hideous, unlaid, still embodied dead. But those accounts conform to the hard-wrung superstitions of a people not given to credulity. So they are real. The reality of Grettir's night-wrestling with Glam, the troll, is hardly to be matched.[1] Truthfulness likewise characterizes their heroes: no man lies about his deeds, and no man's word is doubted.
While the Saga-folk include no cowards or men of petty manners, there is still great diversity of character among them. Some are lazy and some industrious, some quarrelsome and some good-natured, some dangerous, some forbearing, gloomy or cheerful, open-minded or biassed, shrewd or stupid, generous or avaricious. Such contrasts of character abound both in the Sagas of Icelandic life and those which handle the broader matter of history. One may note in the Heimskringla[2] of the Kings of Norway the contrasted characters of the kings Olaf Tryggvason and St. Olaf. The latter appears as a hard-working, canny ruler, a lover of
- ↑ The Story of Grettir the Strong (Grettis Saga), chaps. 32-35, trans, by Magnusson and Morris (London, 1869). See also ibid. chaps. 65, 66. These accounts are analogous to the story of Beowulf's fights with Grendal and his dam; but are more convincing.
- ↑ The stories of the Kings of Norway, called the Round World (Heimskringla), by Snorri Sturluson, done into English by Magnusson and Morris (London, 1893). Snorri Sturluson (b. 1178, d. 1241) composed or put together the Heimskringla from earlier writings, chiefly those of Ari the Historian (b. 1067, d. 1148), "a man of truthfulness, wisdom, and good memory," who wrote largely from oral accounts.
