Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/429

 Reviews. 409

are purely fictitious and put in in obedience to fashion, which demanded Norwegian episodes and expected its heroes to rob barrows, fight holmga7tgs, get into trouble with earls, and come home to Iceland finished characters.

The composer of the Saga was not Sturla, I think (for the style is not Sturla's, and we have enough of Sturla's style to judge by), but some one of the Sturlung school, a humorous, shrewd, legal- minded man, with a curious turn of style, idiomatic, racy, full of saws and proverbs, who was minded to write a big long Saga, and so eked out the good genuine liquor he had inherited with liquid of less bouquet and potency, flavouring it to the liking of his customers. But he made a good story of it in spite of himself. He keeps hold of the strand of facts that is the centre of the whole history, working up to the great and terrible Glam scene that crosses the brave young gentleman's luck, but can only enhance his fame. Grettir may lose much that evil luck can affect, but his kind brave heart, his stout hand, his wide renown, are his for ever. Asdis bore sons, indeed ! The laconisms, saws, and inci- dents used are admirably adapted to this story and deftly employed. In his anxiety to make a long tale the composer lags a little some- times, and sometimes, but less often, he hurries, as where he dis- appoints us by not letting us hear more about the Widowsson and the contests of strength and skill between Grettir and Beorn, and other incidents merely hinted at. One great opportunity is lost. When her son's head is brought to Asdis, she is made to answer in an elaborate verse, "If my son had been well ye would all have leaped headlong into the sea before him, as sheep from a grey fox"; but there must have been a pithy phrase here in the original tale, for the situation is dramatic enough (if indeed the scene was not devised by the literary composer of this Saga) to provide one of those brief and deeply tragic utterances, " fierce mortal words," such as the greater Elizabethan dramatists and the Icelandic Saga-makers at their best give us.

The composer had access to poems as well as prose works in the vernacular. At least two of the Eddie poems are apparently cited — Havamal and the Long Lay of Brunhild.

Among other curious notes in this Saga are the triads, of which there are several : three strongest men in Iceland — Grettir, Orm Stoedpson, Thoralf Scolmsson; three reasons for Grettir's celebrity; character of the three outlaws as regards courage, &c. One might