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The matter, indeed, is not quite free from doubt, because low down in the scale of civilization, as among the Ainos of Japan, stories are told which appear to be no more than märchen; and because, on the other hand, it is at all times easier, even for experienced collectors, to obtain sagas than märchen.

The Norse Records or Sagas say merely, he lost many of his ships by the tempests, and many of his men by land fighting in various parts, tacitly including Largs, no doubt, which was the last of these misfortunes to him.

In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are sagas of mighty fairies who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperborean's land, to the east of the north wind; up there, in the deep, still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form.

We have compared the stories, both mediæval and modern, mentioned by Liebrecht, with märchen and sagas told among nations outside European influence in various degrees of civilization, down to the savagery of Kaffirs and Dyaks. We have succeeded in classifying their differences, and in spite of them we have found all the tales in substantial agreement.

The history of these early jarls is not told in detail in any surviving contemporary record, for the Sagas of the jarls as individuals have perished; but there is a brief account of them in the beginning of the Orkneyinga Saga, another in chapters 99 and 100 of the St. From these the following story may be gathered.

In moments of encouragement Agamemnon is a valiant fighter, few better spearmen, yet "he attains not to the first Three," Achilles, Aias, Diomede. It is guided at once by feudal allegiance and feudal jealousy, like the Chansons de Geste and the early sagas or romances of Ireland.

Other men of his race have won undying renown, but Olaf Triggvison has ever been accounted the fairest and tallest and strongest of all the heroes of Scandinavia, and in prowess surpassing all the warriors told of in the sagas.

In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo's stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen.

On the other hand, Morillot declares that the belief in ghosts was brought to Greenland by the Icelanders and Scandinavians. The sagas have not been as yet much studied with a view to establishing how much social intercourse there was between the natives and the colonists, but common experience would teach that during three centuries it must have been something.

Literature, instead of being considered as merely an expression of the primitive experiences of a race in its sagas, glees, ballads, dramas, and larger works and songs, is more and more revealing itself as an appeal to the Highest in the supreme moments of life. It is the unfolding panorama of the concepts of the soul in regard to duty, conduct, love, and hope.