The oldest shape in
which we have it is in the Eddaic poems, some of which date from
unnumbered generations before the time to which most of them are
usually ascribed, the time of the viking-kingdoms in the Western
Isles. In these poems the only historical name is that of
Attila, the great Hun leader, who filled so large a part of the
imagination of the people whose power he had broken. There is no
doubt that, in the days when the kingdoms of the Scando-Goths
reached from the North Cape to the Caspian, that some earlier
great king performed his part; but, after the striking career of
Attila, he became the recognised type of a powerful foreign
potentate. All the other actors are mythic-heroic. Of the
Eddaic songs only fragments now remain, but ere they perished
there arose from them a saga, that now given to the readers of
this. The so-called Anglo-Saxons brought part of the story to
England in "Beowulf"; in which also appear some incidents that
are again given in the Icelandic saga of "Grettir the Strong".
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