SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

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Saga-Book of the Viking Society
a mythical trait, which curiously enough is also to be
found in the story of Egill. But how simple is the
account of it in the Icelandic saga: in a moment of
extreme discontent it is told that he drew one eyebrow
down to the cheek and the other one up to the line of the
hair on his forehead.
If we want to get an insight into the different character
of Celtic and Germanic heroic fantasy, we have only to
confront the two main currents of French medieval epic
poetry: the Carolingian chansons de geste with the so-called
British romances. The latter are elaborated on plots and
schemes that originated in Wales and came by one way
or another to France. Contrariwise, the epics of
Charlemagne are thoroughly French, if not indeed
Frankish: they treat of events and personages belonging
to the real history of Merovingian and early Carolingian
times. I do not wish to enter here upon the discussion of
the problem, how the chansons de geste in their present
form came into being. I am for myself convinced of
a Frankish substructure, and at any rate the spirit
pervading the Chanson de Roland is quite the same as that
of the German and Scandinavian epics.
Turning from these poems, all of them showing the
clear outlines of every-day warfare and conflict, to those
of the British cycle, we are confronted with an altogether
different conception of the world. No historical events
at all, but tales of most fantastic invention. This is the
more remarkable as the principal personage of the Welsh
cycle, the king Artus, may be considered a historical
figure. The dux bellorum, who fought twelve battles with
the Saxons, although he is only mentioned first by
Nennius and is absent from Gildas's account of the wars
between the Britons and the Saxons, cannot be dismissed
as a mere product of poetic invention. Curiously enough,
when we read the much more elaborate story in the
Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, we
get the impression of a heroic tale, showing the character