Читать книгу Facts and fancies for the curious from the harvest-fields of literature - Charles C. Bombaugh - Страница 7

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The old Norse narrative writings are called “Sagas,” a word which, as John Fiske remarks, we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a saga as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale. In the class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Erik the Red belongs, we have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but often much like a ship’s log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. These sagas are divisible into two well-marked classes. In the one class are the mythical or romantic sagas, composed of legendary materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore. In the other class are the historical sagas, with their biographies and annals. These writings give us history, and often very good history. They come down to us in a narrative form which stamps them as accurate and trustworthy chronicles.