Scandinavian-Britain

THE EARLIEST RAIDS 49of the incidents worked into the Arthurian cyclemaydate from the times of /Elfred and EadmundIronside, whose series of battles with Halfdan andKniit offers analogies to Arthur's fights with theheathen. The Arthurian legend took form in theViking Age, and was put back into the "good oldtimes " according to the use and wont of storytellers,but contains some Scandinavian elements.For instance, the horse of Sir Gawain, according toProf. Gollancz, has been evolved out of the boat ofWade, the hero of the Volund myth ;Tristram andIsolt (a Pictish and a Teutonic name) seems to be alove-story from Strathclyde not earlier than the tenthor the eleventh century. That there are quite ancientCeltic myths in the Arthurian cycle is not disputed,but much of the material, as in the Ossianic legends,comes from that stirring and fruitful age ofstorm and stress when the contact of many variousraces and cultures, especially in the north of Britain,produced a really romantic era.Thus, again, has Scandinavian history been manufactured.The Ynglinga saga (chap, xlv.) tells howIvar Widefathom, who must have " flourished " inthe seventh century, subdued the fifth part of England.For Ivar Widefathom read Ivar "the Boneless" of two hundred years later, and we comenearer to historical truth, for "Northumbria is thefifth part of England," as Egil's saga says ;and thislater Ivar, though himself not entirely free from legendaryattributions, seems to have been the leading spiritof the conquest (p. 86). At the battle of Bravoll,