V
The Progress of Epic
| Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter | 144 |
| The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared—Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr | 147 |
| Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of Kriemhild's revenge | 149 |
| The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, apparently confused and ill recollected in the other two poems | 150 |
| But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story | 152 |
| Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school | 153 155 |
| The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and not of casual popular variants | 156 |