h is left to the imagination.

The greatest charm of the poem, however, lies in the sympathetic
treatment of Hervoer. The Hervoer of the prose narrative is perfectly
consistent with the Hervoer of the poem, but at the same time the
poem--which is probably more than a century older than the saga--would
lead us to conclude that her character was not correctly understood by
the writer of the saga. Obviously unsympathetic, he denounces her with
an indignation which would have made the writer of the poem smile.

"She grew up to be a beautiful girl ... but as soon as she could do
anything it was oftener harm than good; and when she had been checked
she escaped to the woods.... And when the Earl heard of it he had her
caught and brought home."

The picture which the poem presents to us is that of a high-spirited
girl, headstrong and impulsive, not unlike Brynhild in the Voelsung
story. When she goes to the barrows, every nerve is strung up to gain
the treasure that has fired her imagination:

What care I though the death-fires blaze,
They sink and tremble before my gaze,
They quiver out and die!

But a reaction comes when she holds the sword in her hands at last:

Surely in terror I drew my breath
Between the worlds of life and death
When the grave fires girt me round.

Surveying the saga as a whole, perhaps the most striking feature is
its extraordinary diversity of interest. It would be difficult to find
elsewhere in Norse literature--or indeed perhaps in any literature--so
great a variety of subjects and of literary forms brought together
within such narrow limits.

Of the poems contained in the saga, the first is romantic, the second
gnomic, the third heroic--and the prose narrative itself is not less
varied in character. The conclusion of the saga appears to be purely
historical; indeed it is generally regarded as one of the most
important authorities for early Swedish history. Elsewhere also
historical elements are probably not wanting, but they are interwoven
in a network of romance and folklore. Thus whoever King Heithrek may
have been, the part which he has come to play in the saga is chiefly
that of linking together a number of folk-tales and illustrating
popular saws. As regards chronology, the war described in ch. 12-15
must belong to a period nearly seven centuries before the incidents
related at the close of the saga. Still more strange is the fact that
the victor in this war, t