is
primarily concerned with any of the sagas contained in this volume.

The ballads, both Faroese and Danish[16], belong to a fifth stage in
the life of heroic legend in the North; but their origin and history
is by no means so clear as that of the _Rimur_, and it is at present
impossible to assign even approximate dates to more than a few of
them with any degree of certainty. I have touched on this question at
somewhat greater length below[17]; and I would only add here that
some Danish and Swedish ballads, e.g. _Ung Sveidal_[18], _Thord af
Haffsgaard_[19] and perhaps _Her Aage_[20], appear to be derived more
or less directly from poems of the Viking Age, such as _Fjoelsvinsmal_,
_Thrymskvitha_ and _Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I_--without any
intermediate prose stage.

A careful study of the Faroese ballads as a whole might enable one
to determine something more of the relation of ballads to
'Literature'[21] and of the various ballad forms to one another, such
as that of the short and simple _Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr_
to the longer and more complicated _Ballad of Arngrims Sons_.
Simplification and confusion are among the chief characteristics of
popular poetry[22]; but it is to be noted that in the case of
the _Hervarar Saga_ confusion set in long before the days of the
ballad--as early as the saga itself, where there must surely be at
least one case of repetition of character[23]. In reality, considering
through how many stages the ballad material has passed, one is amazed
at the vitality of the stories and the amount of original groundwork
preserved. A careful comparison of the _Voelsunga Saga_ and the Faroese
cycle of ballads generally classed together as _Sjurethar Kvaeethi_--which,
be it observed, were never written down at all till the nineteenth
century--brings out to a degree literally amazing the conservatism of
the ballads on the old heroic themes.

Readers who desire to make further acquaintance with the 'Stories of
Ancient Times' as a whole will find a further account of the subject
in Professor Craigie's _Icelandic Sagas_ (p. 92 ff.). More detailed
accounts will be found in Finnur Jonsson's _Oldnorske og Oldislandske
Litteraturs Historie_[24], Vol. II, pp. 789-847, and in Mogk's
_Geschichte der Altnordischen Literatur_ in Paul's _Grundriss der
Germanischen Philologie_, Ed. II, 1904, Vol. II, pp. 830-857, while a
discussion of the heroic stories will be found in Professor Chadwick's
_Heroic Age_, chs