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grouped under the name of ‘fslendinga ségur (Icelandic Sagas), the
action, as already mentioned, takes place in the tenth century and the
beginning of the eleventh. The last of these sagas, however, the
‘Bandamanna saga‘ (the Story of the Banded Men) is an exceplion in
so far as the events, it relates, took place about the middle of that
century. As the names of the sagas: Egils saga elc, imply, they are
mostly biographies of single persons where the fortunes of the hero,
from cradle to grave, are carefully recorded; but some of them are
much more comprehensive and give not only the saga of the family,
for several generations, but that of the whole district as well. Most of
the sagas relate to the north and west of Iceland; there are a few
short stories dealing with events in the eastern districts, and only two
have their plots laid in the south. But complemental to the sagas and
serving as a standard by which to test their reliability, stands that famous
 compilation, called the ‘Landnimabdék’ (Book of Settlement or
Land-take) which, quite unique of its kind and furnishing a detailed
account of the colonization of the country, gives the names of most
(if not all) the settlers with their genealogies and much historical matter
 besides. To the same period as the sagas proper belong a number
of short stories (Thaettir) of Icelanders, both poets, heroes, merchant
mariners, men out of the common a. s. 0. They are a kind of snapshots,
 taken of them while abroad with kings or great men, and show
in a masterly way not only the magnanimity and firmness characterizing
 our countrymen in those far-off days, their sagacity, daring and
recklessly emulative spirits, but also the culture of the age.
The Icelandic sagas are justly famous for their great literary merits:
their style, at once stately and homely, abounds in short pithy sentences;
 every thought is expressed, every event related in the most suitable
 language; the author’s firm grip of things and his keen eye for
the individuality of his characters come by their own; there is in most
of the sagas a strong undercurrent of fate, sometimes faintly present
even in the opening chapters where the descent of the persons is
traced, and sometimes appearing in dreams, darkly foreshadowing the
whole course of events; we are struck with the noble tranquility of
the author, his moderation and sober impartiality; always remaining
behind the scene he lets his persons appear in words and deeds, as
on a stage, each with his own particular mode of expression, his tricks
of manner, his garb even. Nowhere is silence more eloquent, nowhere
such vistas opened up between the lines as in the Icelandic sagas.