Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/87

Rh titles of more than one hundred translated romances of this kind. Among the most noteworthy ones may be mentioned the and the  (sagas of the Bretons), and also  poem,, a talented imitation of the forms of the most ancient poetry. The first of these sagas is a romantic description of the Trojan war, a very popular theme during the middle ages, and the Breta sagas is an adaptation of one of the fabulous chronicles (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum), of which the middle ages produced so large a number. A free transprosing of the Latin poem, Alexandreis (from the year 1200), is the, and the is a prose translation of one of the French Chansons de geste. The or  (stringed instrument or song-book) is a translation of the old Breton popular poem, "Lais," into prose. Of genuine romantic works we may mention, , and.

A branch of literature in which the foreign influence also was felt in a marked degree are the legendary sagas, Some of them are of Norwegian origin, as for instance the story of Albanus and Sunniva and of the Saints in Selja, but their number is insignificant as compared with the multitude of translations. Many of these have already been published, as the Mariu Saga (Virgin Mary), the Postula Sögur (sagas of the Apostles), that of Edward the Confessor, etc. The most important one of them is the and, originally written in Greek by Johannes Damascenus in the eighth century. It is a religious poem, translated from the Latin into Icelandic prose by King Hakon