Tongue) is a love-story of great sentimental charm. In Gislasaga the gloom of the Icelandic outlaw-life is strikingly depicted in the adventures of Gisli, who is under a ban and is hunted from place to place. A very unusual specimen of the minor saga is Bandamannasaga, a comic story of manners in the north of Iceland in the 11th century, in which an intrigue of the old families banded against the pretensions of a wealthy parvenu, is told in a spirit of broad humour. The most archaic of the minor sagas is Kormakssaga, the story of the loves of the dark-eyed Kormak and Steingerda; this is, according to Vigfusson, the most primitive piece of Icelandic prose writing that has come down to us. Another very ancient and very simple saga is Vatzdaelasaga. Among sagas which deal with the earliest history of America in the chronicles of Greenland and Vinland, a foremost place is taken by Floamannasaga, which possesses peculiar interest from its description of the shipwreck of colonists on the coast of Greenland; this belongs to the close of the 10th century. We possess a late (13th century) recension of what must have been equally important as a record of the Greenland colony in the 11th century, Fostbraedrasaga. Vigfusson formed a class of still shorter sagas than these, thaettir or “morsels” of narrative. At the close of the great period of the composition of all these anonymous sagas, of which few can have been written later than 1260, a work of enormous length and value was composed or compiled by a poet and historian of great eminence, Sturla Thordsson (1215-1284). About the year 1270 he began to compile the mass of sagas which is now known by his name as Sturlungasaga. The theory that Sturla was the author of the whole of this bulky literature is now abandoned; it is certain that Hrafn Sveinbiornssaga, for instance, belongs to an earlier generation, and the same is true of Guðmundar Saga Góða. Vigfusson distinguished these and other sagas, which Sturla evidently only edited, from those which it is certain that he composed, and gathered the latter together under the title of Islendingasaga. It is certain that it is to Sturla that we owe almost all our knowledge of Icelandic history from 1200 to 1260. Islendinga is divided into two main sections, the former closing in a general massacre of the characters of the story in about 1240, the latter dealing much more minutely with new persons and subsequent events. To Sturla also are attributed two saga-biographies, the Hakonssaga and the Magnussaga. It is a remarkable fact that while Icelandic saga literature begins and ends with a definite figure of a writer, all that lies between is wholly anonymous. Ari was the earliest and Sturla the latest of the saga-writers of the classical period, but in the authors of Njala and Laxdaela we have nameless writers whose genius was still greater than that of the pioneer and of the rear-guard of Icelandic literature. These unknown men deserve a place of honour among the best narrative-writers who have ever lived. The elder brother of Sturla was called Olaf Hvitaskald, or the White Poet (1209?-1259); he was a learned man, who worked at the arrangement and compilation of the sagas which form the mass of Sturlunga. In another class are the stories of bishops, Biskupasögur, which are not sagas in the true sense, but have considerable value as biographical material for reconstructing Icelandic social life in the 12th century. The admirable saga of Bishop Laurence (1266-1331) was composed by his private secretary, Einar Haflidason (1304-1393), who also wrote Annals, and is the latest Icelandic biographer. After his time a long silence fell on the literature of the country, a silence not broken until the revival of Icelandic learning in the 17th century.
It is evident that a vast number of sagas must be lost; when we consider how many are preserved, we can only express amazement at the fecundity of the art of saga-telling in the classic age. The MSS., on which what we have were preserved, were all on vellum, and there were no sagas written on paper until the time of Bishop Odd, who died in 1630; there was an enormous destruction of vellums during the dark age. After 1640 it became the practice to make transcripts on paper from the perishing vellum MSS. The best authority on the history of the sagas is the copious prolegomena to Dr Gudbrandr Vigfusson's edition of the text of Sturlungasaga, published in 2 vols., by the Clarendon Press at Oxford in 1878. See also the edition of Biskupasögur, issued by the same author, at Copenhagen, in, 1858. Möbius and Vigfusson published the Fornsögur or archaic sagas in 1860, and all the work of Vigfusson calls for the closest attention from those interested in this subject. In connexion with the descents of Northmen on the shores of Britain particular interest attaches to the four volumes of sagas edited for the “Rolls” series (1887-1894). William Morris, who had done much to interpret the spirit of the sagas to English readers, and who published a translation of Grettissaga in 1869, started in 1891 the “Saga Library,” in conjunction with Mr E. Magnusson; of this a sixth volume appeared in 1906. Mr Sephton has published versions of several of the purely historical sagas. No account has been given above of the famous Heimskringla or “Round of the World,” of Snorri Sturlason, because this great work, although it contains stories of the kings of Norway, hardly belongs to the same class as the biographical sagas of Iceland. The Heimskringla is purely a storehouse of primitive Norwegian history.
See also Jónnson, Der oldnordiske og oldislandske Literaturshistorie (Copenhagen, 1893-1902); F. W. Horn, Geschichte der Literatur des skandinavischen Nordens (Leipzig, 1879).
(E. G.)
SAGAING, a district and division of Upper Burma, lying to the south and west of Mandalay. The district has an area of 1862 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 282,658, showing an increase of 15% in the decade. It occupies both banks of the Irrawaddy, at its confluence with the river Chindwin. The chief crops are sesamum, millet, rice, peas, wheat and cotton. The total rainfall in 1905 was 34.76 in., taken at Sagaing. In the hot season the maximum shade temperature rises to a little over 100° F. The lowest readings in the cold season average about 56° F.
Sagaing, the headquarters town, is opposite Ava, a few miles below Mandalay; pop. (1901) 9643. It was formerly a capital of Burma. It is the terminus of the railway to Myitkyina. A steam ferry connects with the Rangoon-Mandalay line, and the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company call daily.
The Sagaing division includes the four districts of Upper and Lower Chindwin, Shwebo and Sagaing; area, 29,566 sq., m.; pop. (1901) 1,000,483.
SAGALLO, a small settlement on the north shore of the Gulf of Tajura, French Somaliland. A dismantled fort built by the Egyptians (who occupied the place between 1875 and 1884) is the most prominent object. In January 1889 Sagallo was occupied by a Cossack chief named Achinov, who was accompanied by the archimandrite Païsi and some 200 people, including priests, women and children. Païsi had been entrusted by the metropolitan of Novgorod with an evangelistic mission to the Abyssinian Church; while Achinov stated that he had a come mission from the Negus for the purchase of arms and ammunition. The presence of Achinov at Sagallo (where he occupied the fort, which he found deserted) was regarded by the French government as an invasion of French territorial rights. The Russian foreign office having disavowed (7th of February) any connexion with Achinov, instructions were sent from Paris to secure the removal of the Cossacks. On the 17th of February French warships appeared off the port, and an ultimatum was sent to Achinov calling on him to surrender, but without effect. The fort was bombarded, and seven persons killed, two being women and four children. The Cossacks then surrendered, not having fired a shot. They were subsequently deported to Suez, whence they returned to Russia. Achinov was interned by the Russian government for some months (until October 1889). In 1891 he returned to Abyssinia, Païsi was promoted by his ecclesiastical superiors. In Paris the incident caused great excitement amongst the Russophils, and the consequent demonstrations led to the suppression of the League of Patriots and the prosecution of M. Paul Déroulède.
See L'Archimandrite Païsi et l'Ataman Achinoff, by vicomte de Constantin (Paris, 1891).
SAGAN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, situated on the Bober, a tributary of the Oder, 60 m. S.S.E. of Frankfort-on-Oder and 102 m. S.E. of Berlin by the direct main line of railway to Breslau. Pop. (1905) 14,208. It is still partly surrounded by its old fortifications and has numerous medieval houses. It contains the handsome palace of the dukes of Sagan. Among other buildings are an Evangelical church with a conspicuous steeple and containing the burial vaults of the ducal family, and Augustine and a Jesuit
