te as to the
proportions. This was the manner of the saga's growth: In the early days
of the Iceland community--that republic of aristocrats--say, between the
dates 900 and 1100 of our era, a quarrel would arise between two great
families. As in the case of the Njal Saga, its cause, probably, was the
ill doings of some noble woman. This quarrel would lead to manslaughter.
Then blood called for blood, and a vendetta was set on foot that ended
only with the death by violence of a majority of the actors in the drama
and of large numbers of their adherents. In the course of the feud, men
of heroic strength and mould would come to the front and perform deeds
worthy of the iron age which bore them. Women also would help to
fashion the tale, for good or ill, according to their natural gifts
and characters. At last the tragedy was covered up by death and time,
leaving only a few dinted shields and haunted cairns to tell of those
who had played its leading parts.

But its fame lived on in the minds of men. From generation to generation
skalds wandered through the winter snows, much as Homer may have
wandered in his day across the Grecian vales and mountains, to find a
welcome at every stead, because of the old-time story they had to tell.
Here, night after night, they would sit in the ingle and while away
the weariness of the dayless dark with histories of the times when men
carried their lives in their hands, and thought them well lost if there
might be a song in the ears of folk to come. To alter the tale was one
of the greatest of crimes: the skald must repeat it as it came to him;
but by degrees undoubtedly the sagas did suffer alteration. The facts
remained the same indeed, but around them gathered a mist of miraculous
occurrences and legends. To take a single instance: the account of
the burning of Bergthorsknoll in the Njal Saga is not only a piece of
descriptive writing that for vivid, simple force and insight is scarcely
to be matched out of Homer and the Bible, it is also obviously true. We
feel as we read, that no man could have invented that story, though some
great skald threw it into shape. That the tale is true, the writer of
"Eric" can testify, for, saga in hand, he has followed every act of the
drama on its very site. There he who digs beneath the surface of the
lonely mound that looks across plain and sea to Westman Isles may still
find traces of the burning, and see what appears to be the black sand
with which