Note Footnote 2: — PART I

Unfortunately The Saga of Hromund Greipsson is preserved only in late paper mss., of which none apparently are earlier than the seventeenth century. None of the verses of which the notice in the Saga of Thorgils and Haflithi speaks (cf. p. 58 above) have been preserved. There is, however, a rhymed version of the saga known as Gríplur, dating apparently from about the year 1400 and evidently taken from a better text than any of those which have come down to us. A short extract from these rhymed verses will be found on pp. 173-75. For a full discussion of the relationship of the Gríplur to the extant texts of the saga and to the later ballads, the reader is referred to Kölbing, Beiträge zur Vergleichenden Geschichte der Romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters (Breslau, 1876), pp. 181-83, and to Andrews, Studies in the Fornaldarsögur Northrlanda2 in Modern Philology, 1911, 1912.