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LITERARY INFLUENCE 61
to do so. Now you are worried because your sagas have
come to an end at Christmas time, and you do not wish to
tell the same over again."
"
You have guessed rightly," said the Icelander.
"
I
know only one more saga, but I dare not tell it here, because
it is the story of your adventures abroad."
"
That is the saga I particularly want to hear," said
the king, and he asked the Icelander to begin it on Christmas
Day and tell a part of it every day. During the Christmas
season there was a good deal of discussion about the enter-
tainment. Some said it was presumption on the part of
the Icelander to tell the saga and they wondered how the
king would like it ; others thought it was well told, but others
again thought less of it. When the saga was finished, the
king, who had listened attentively throughout, turned to
the storyteller and said :
"
Are you not curious to know,
Icelander, how I like the saga ?
"
"
I am afraid to ask," replied the storyteller.
The king said :
"
I think you have told it very well.
Where did you get the material for it, and who taught it
to you ?
"
The Icelander answered :
"
When in Iceland I used to
go every summer to the Thing, and each summer I learned
a portion of the saga from Halldor Snorrason."
"
Then it is not surprising that you know it so well,
since you have learned it from him," said the king.
We may in fact see the origin of the Islendinga Sogur
in certain passages of the sagas themselves. In Fostbroethra
Saga, for instance, the story is told of an Icelander named
Thormothr, who went to Greenland in order to avenge the
death of his foster-brother Thorgeirr. On one occasion he
fell asleep in his booth, and when he awoke some time later
he found, to his surprise, that the place was quite deserted.
Then his servant Egill
"
the foolish
"
came to him and
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