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74 THE VIKING PERIOD
number, while many of the Fornaldar Sogur may be said
to bear a certain resemblance to the Irish epic stories.
The evidence discussed above seems to afford some ground
for suspecting that the saga literature of Iceland and
Ireland may not be wholly unconnected, and, as we have
seen, the conditions of the time, particularly the frequent
intercourse between the two countries, were such as to
favour the exercise of literary influence by one people upon
the other. If so, one can hardly doubt that in this case the
influence came to Iceland from Ireland.
We have seen 1
that the prose saga appears to have
developed in Iceland in the course of the tenth century.
There are indeed narratives relating both to the settlement
of Iceland and to still earlier events in Norway. But these,
in so far as they can be regarded as trustworthy traditions
not embellished by fiction in later times are quite brief,
and not far removed from such local or family traditions
as one could find in other parts of the world. The detailed
and elaborate type of story which we dealt with in Section I.,
and which is the distinctive feature of Icelandic literature,
can hardly be traced back beyond the end of the tenth
century.
The prose stories of Ireland, on the other hand, are without
doubt much earlier. Although we have few MSS. of Irish
prose dating from a period before the twelfth century,
yet it is generally agreed that many of the forms preserved,
e.g., in the Yellow Book of Lecan MS. of the Tain Bo Cualnge
must be derived from an earlier MS. of not later than the
seventh or early eighth century. The oral saga in Ireland
is therefore of great antiquity.
It may, of course, be argued that if the prose saga arose
spontaneously in Ireland, there is no reason why it should
1 Cf. p. 63 ante.
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