st in a modern country inn; whereas in the
Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness
between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far
astray.

[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]

As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the
word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this
particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder.
Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.
Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and
strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well
marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic
Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of
Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally
different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic
sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from
southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and
mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of
folk-lore. In the other class come the _historical sagas_, such as those
of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous
biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often
very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in
narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a
handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it
in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it
otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the
Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate
chronicles, and call them alike "stories."

[Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical
account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's
"Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878,
vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account
in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian
North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]

[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga.]

The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly
based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric
the Red, and