When the Icelandic prose began to fail, and the slighter forms of Romance rose up in the place of Epic history, there were two modes in which the older literature might be turned to profit. For one thing, there was plenty of romantic stuff in the old heroic poetry, without going to the French books. For another thing, the prose stories of the old tradition had in them all kinds of romantic motives which were fit to be used again. So there came into existence the highly-interesting series of Mythical Romances on the themes of the old Northern mythical and heroic poetry, and another series besides, which worked up in its own way a number of themes and conventional motives from the older prose books. Mythical sagas had their beginning in the classical age of the North. Snorri, with his stories of the adventures of the gods, is the leader in the work of getting pure romance, for pure amusement, out of what once was religious or heroic myth, mythological or heroic poetry. Even Ari the Wise, his great predecessor, had done something of the same sort, if the _Ynglinga Saga_ be his, an historical abstract of Northern mythical history; though his aim, like that of Saxo Grammaticus, is more purely scientific than is the case with Snorri. The later mythical romances are of different kinds. The _Volsunga Saga_ is the best known on account of its subject. The story of Heidrek, instead of paraphrasing throughout like the Volsung book, inserts the poems of Hervor and Angantyr, and of their descendants, in a consecutive prose narrative. _Halfs Saga_ follows the same method. The story of _Hrolf Kraki_, full of interest from its connexion with the matter of _Beowulf_ and of Saxo Grammaticus, is more like _Volsunga Saga_ in its procedure.[65] [Footnote 65: The Mythical Sagas are described and discussed by Vigfusson, Prol. § 34.] The other class[66] contains the Sagas of _Frithiof_ and _Viglund_, and all the fictitious stories which copy the style of the proper Icelandic Sagas. Their matter is taken from the adventures of the heroic age; their personages are idealised romantic heroes; romantic formulas, without substance. [Footnote 66: _Ibid._ § 11, "Spurious Icelandic Sagas" (_Skrök-Sögur_). For _Frithiof_, see § 34.]