The Story of Rolf and the Viking’s Bow

The Icelanders were a wonderful people. To escape the tyranny of kings, they settled a new land, and there built up the laws and customs in which we see the promise of modern civilization. No better pictures of a law-abiding, rural, and yet valiant race have ever been made than in the tales which the Icelanders had the skill to weave about their heroes, those men who, at home in their island, or so far abroad as Constantinople, made the name of Icelander respected. The main interest of all these tales is the same: they tell of real men and women in real circumstances, and show them human in spite of the legends which have grown about them.