novels. We have all, probably, a drop of the Northmen's blood in
us, but in that general reader the blood is dormant.

What is a Saga? It is neither quite a piece of history nor wholly a
romance. It is a very old story of things and adventures that
really happened, but happened so long ago, and in times so
superstitious, that marvels and miracles found their way into the
legend. The best Sagas are those of Iceland, and those, in
translations, are the finest reading that the natural man can
desire. If you want true pictures of life and character, which are
always the same at bottom, or true pictures of manners, which are
always changing, and of strange customs and lost beliefs, in the
Sagas they are to be found. Or if you like tales of enterprise, of
fighting by land and sea, fighting with men and beasts, with storms
and ghosts and fiends, the Sagas are full of this entertainment.

The stories of which we are speaking were first told in Iceland,
perhaps from 950 to 1100 B.C. When Norway and Sweden were still
heathen, a thousand years ago, they were possessed by families of
noble birth, owning no master, and often at war with each other,
when the men were not sailing the seas, to rob and kill in Scotland,
England, France, Italy, and away east as far as Constantinople, or
farther. Though they were wild sea robbers and warriors, they were
sturdy farmers, great shipbuilders; every man of them, however
wealthy, could be his own carpenter, smith, shipwright, and
ploughman. They forged their own good short swords, hammered their
own armour, ploughed their own fields. In short, they lived like
Odysseus, the hero of Homer, and were equally skilled in the arts of
war and peace. They were mighty lawyers, too, and had a most
curious and minute system of laws on all subjects--land, marriage,