Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/81

Rh circumstances there was still another which largely contributed to undermine the historical talent of which the sagas give such a striking evidence, namely, the increasing influence which the romances introduced from abroad exercised on the whole North and also on Iceland. Of "lygisagas," that is fictitious accounts of northern events, mention is made in an early day, but toward the close of the old Norse literary period foreign works found admittance and made their influence felt on the development of northern literature. This influence manifests itself partly in the domain of history, inasmuch as it produced a tendency to adorn the events with poetical embellishments, and partly in the domain of poetry, where the mythic and heroic traditions which were now put in writing were exaggerated and embellished according to the well known style of the French and German romances of chivalry, so that the original frequently very ancient elements became more or less indiscernible. Wholly new fictions were also written in this style so widely different from that of the earlier literature.

We will first briefly consider the sagas, since they deal with life in the north and relate stories which are, excepting the embellishments, very old and founded on the traditions out of which the whole literary development grew. These sagas are chiefly transprosings of old poems, of which fragments of more or less length are at the same time introduced. In one of the most important sagas of this kind, the, the transproser's embellishments are very easily separated from the ancient traditions, since several of the old poems, on which the saga is based, are preserved in the Elder Edda. The whole middle portion of the saga is a transprosing of the poems which relate to the Volsungs, and the opening chapters are also clearly based on very ancient songs, which are now lost, while the last chapters are unmistakably a later addition to the original cycle of poems. The Volsunga Saga is of great importance on account of the connected narration of all the parts of the Volsung story.