III
The Heroic Ideal
| Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas | 200 |
| Heroic characters | 201 |
| Heroic rhetoric | 203 |
| Danger of exaggeration—Kjartan in Laxdæla | 204 |
| The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal | 206 |
IV
Tragic Imagination
| Tragic contradictions in the Sagas—Gisli, Njal | 207 |
| Fantasy | 208 |
| Laxdæla, a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to the terms of common life | 209 |
| Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgeland | 209 |
| The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic literature | 210 |
| The Northern rationalism | 212 |
| Self-restraint and irony | 213 |
| The elegiac mood infrequent | 215 |
| The story of Howard of Icefirth—ironical pathos | 216 |
| The conventional Viking | 218 |
| The harmonies of Njála and of Laxdæla | 219 222 |
| The two speeches of Gudrun | 223 |