CHAP,
horrible smiting of the bearsarks, who are shut up in a barn, we have the awful hall of slaughter in the Odyssey and the Nibelung Lay. In the marvellous story of the demon who is vainly assailed first by Glam who becomes a demon himself, then by Thorgaut, but is finally slain by Grettir, we see the common type of the popular story in which the youngest son, or Boots, wins the day, when his two brothers or comrades fail. In the beaks of the ship which is so full of weather-wisdom that the one whistles before a south wind and the other before a north wind, we have a reminiscence of the divine Argo.^ In the errand on which, when his companions have no fire, Grettir is sent to bring fire from a distant cliff, although "his mind bids him hope to get nought of good thereby," we see the myth of Prometheus and his recompense. The conflict of Grettir and Snge-
koU is related in words so nearly resembling those of the narrative of
David's fight with Goliatli, that it is hard to resist the suspicion that
we may have here an instance of mere copying,^ or that we have a travesty of the story of Samson, as we read that " on a day as Grettir lay sleeping, the bonders came upon him, and when they saw him they took counsel how they should take him at the least cost of life, and settled so that ten men should leap on him while some laid bonds on his feet ; and thus they did, and threw themselves on him ;
but Grettir broke forth so mightily that they fell from off him." ^ In his
enormous strength, in his fitful action, which is as often mischievous as it is beneficent, in the lot which makes him a servant of beings meaner than himself, which stirs up enemies against him in men whom he has never injured, in the doom which he foresees and which he has not the power, and indeed takes no pains, to avert, he is the very counterpart of Herakles and Achilleus. When he slays afresh Glam who has been long dead, the demon tells him " Hitherto thou
hast earned fame by thy deeds, but henceforth will wrongs and manslayings fall upon thee, and the most part of thy doings will turn to thy woe and illhap ; an outlaw shalt thou be made, and ever shall it be thy lot to dwell alone abroad." Henceforth he is " the traveller," who can know no rest, who seeks shelter of many great men ; " but something ever came to pass whereby none of them would hasbour him." This, however, is the doom of Indra and Savitar in many Vedic hymns, of Wuotan Wegtam in Teutonic mythology, of Sigurd, Perseus, Bellerophon, Oidipous, Odysseus, Phoibos, and Dionysos. These are all wanderers and outlaws like Grettir, and there is scarcely an incident in the life of Grettir which is not found in the legends of one or more of the mythical beings just named. The overthrow
' Grettir Saga, 115. * lb. 123. » lb. 153.
