arisen from the prowess of any famous swordsman.

_The Sword of Angantyr_.--Like the two last legends, Angantyr's
story is not represented in the Elder Edda; it is not even told by
Snorri. Yet poems belonging to the cycle survive (preserved by good
fortune in the late mythical _Hervarar Saga_) which among the heroic
poems rank next in artistic beauty to the Helgi Lays. Since the story
possesses besides a striking originality, and is connected with the
name of a Pan-Germanic hero, the Ongendtheow of Old English poetry,
I cannot follow the example of most editors and omit it from the
heroic poems.

Like the Volsung legend it is the story of a curse; and there is a
general similarity of outline, with the exception that the hero is in
this case a woman. The curse-laden treasure is here the sword Tyrfing,
which Svafrlami got by force from the dwarfs. They laid a curse on it:
that it should bring death to its bearer, no wound it made should be
healed, and it should claim a victim whenever it was unsheathed. In
the saga, the story is spread over several generations: partly, no
doubt, in order to include varying versions; partly also in imitation
of the true Icelandic family saga. The chief actors in the legend,
beside the sword, are Angantyr and his daughter Hervör.

The earlier history of Tyrfing is told in the saga. Svafrlami is
killed, with the magic weapon itself, by the viking Arngrim, who thus
gains possession of it; when he is slain in his turn, it descends to
Angantyr, the eldest of his twelve berserk sons. For a while no one
can withstand them, but the doom overtakes them at last in the battle
of Samsey against the Swedes Arrow-Odd and Hjalmar. In berserk-rage,
the twelve brothers attack the Swedish ships, and slay every man