more freely than any Norse sagaman. A word may be
added in explanation of the appearances of "familiars" in the shapes
of animals, an instance of which will be found in this story. It was
believed in Iceland, as now by the Finns and Eskimo, that the passions
and desires of sorcerers took visible form in such creatures as wolves
or rats. These were called "sendings," and there are many allusions to
them in the Sagas.

Another peculiarity that may be briefly alluded to as eminently
characteristic of the Sagas is their fatefulness. As we read we seem
to hear the voice of Doom speaking continually. "_Things will happen as
they are fated_": that is the keynote of them all. The Norse mind had
little belief in free will, less even than we have to-day. Men and women
were born with certain characters and tendencies, given to them in order
that their lives should run in appointed channels, and their acts bring
about an appointed end. They do not these things of their own desire,
though their desires prompt them to the deeds: they do them because they
must. The Norns, as they name Fate, have mapped out their path long and
long ago; their feet are set therein, and they must tread it to the end.
Such was the conclusion of our Scandinavian ancestors--a belief forced
upon them by their intense realisation of the futility of human hopes
and schemings, of the terror and the tragedy of life, the vanity of its
desires, and the untravelled gloom or sleep, dreamless or dreamfull,
which lies beyond its end.

Though the Sagas are entrancing, both as examples of literature of which
there is but little in the world and because of their living interest,
they are scarcely known to the English-speaking public. This is easy
to account for: it is hard to persuade the nineteenth century world to
interest itself in people who lived and events that happened a thousand
years ago. Moreover, the Sagas are undoubtedly difficult reading. The
archaic nature of the work, even in a translation; the multitude of its
actors; the Norse sagaman's habit of interweaving endless side-plots,
and the persistence with which he introduces the genealogy and
adventures of the ancestors of every unimportant character, are none of
them to the taste of the modern reader.

"Eric Brighteyes" therefore, is clipped of these peculiarities, and,
to some extent, is cast in the form of the romance of our own day,
archaisms being avoided as much as possible. The author will be
gra