the temper and genius of the Northern folk, as that of the
Volsungs and Niblungs, which has in varied shapes entered into
the literature of many lands. In the beginning there is no doubt
that the story belonged to the common ancestral folk of all the
Teutonic of Scando-Gothic peoples in the earliest days of their
wanderings. Whether they came from the Hindu Kush, or originated
in Northern Europe, brought it with them from Asia, or evolved it
among the mountains and rivers it has taken for scenery, none
know nor can; but each branch of their descendants has it in one
form or another, and as the Icelanders were the very crown and
flower of the northern folk, so also the story which is the
peculiar heritage of that folk received in their hands its
highest expression and most noble form. The oldest shape in
which we have it is in the Eddaic poems, some of which date from
unnumbered generations before the time to which most of them are
usually ascribed, the time of the viking-kingdoms in the Western
Isles. In these poems the only historical name is that of
Attila, the great Hun leader, who filled so large a part of the
imagination of the people whose power he had broken. There is no
doubt that, in the days when the kingdoms of the Scando-Goths
reached from the North Cape to the Caspian, that some earlier
great king performed his part; but, after the striking career of
Attila, he became the recognised type of a powerful foreign
potentate. All the other actors are mythic-heroic. Of the
Eddaic songs only fragments now remain, but ere they perished
there arose from them a saga, that now given to the readers of
this. The so-called Anglo-Saxons brought part of the story to
England in "Beowulf"; in which also appear some incidents that
are again given in the Icelandic saga of "Grettir the Strong".
Most widely known is the form taken by the story in the hands of