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of the incidents worked into the Arthurian cycle
may date from the times of Ælfred and Eadmund
Ironside, whose series of battles with Halfdan and
Knút offers analogies to Arthur’s fights with the
heathen. The Arthurian legend took form in the
Viking Age, and was put back into the "good old
times" according to the use and wont of storytellers,
but contains some Scandinavian elements.
For instance, the horse of Sir Gawain, according to
Prof. Gollancz, has been evolved out of the boat of
Wade, the hero of the Völund myth; Tristram and
Isolt (a Pictish and a Teutonic name) seems to be a
love-story from Strathclyde not earlier than the tenth
or the eleventh century. That there are quite ancient
Celtic myths in the Arthurian cycle is not disputed,
but much of the material, as in the Ossianic
legends, comes from that stirring and fruitful age of
storm and stress when the contact of many various
races and cultures, especially in the north of Britain,
produced a really romantic era.
Thus, again, has Scandinavian history been
manufactured. The Ynglinga saga (chap, xlv.) tells how
Ivar Widefathom, who must have "flourished" in
the seventh century, subdued the fifth part of
England. For Ivar Widefathom read Ivar "the Boneless"
of two hundred years later, and we come
nearer to historical truth, for "Northumbria is the
fifth part of England," as Egil’s saga says; and this
later Ivar, though himself not entirely free from legendary
attributions, seems to have been the leading spirit
of the conquest (p. 86). At the battle of Brávöll,
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