Sagas like those of Egill and Kormak relating to the middle or first part of the twelfth century are few in number and usually contain a considerable amount of poetry; in fact, the prose is not infrequently based upon the poetry. Stories dealing with early Icelandic history from A.D. 874 onwards and Norwegian history of the same period are much less full. In general they appear to be trustworthy, but the details are such as might have been preserved by local or family tradition without the special faculty which is characteristic of the sagas. Of a totally different character are the sagas relating to times before the settlement of Iceland (A.D. 874). Some of these, such as _Völsunga Saga_ and _Hervarar Saga_, deal with events as far back as the fifth century, and are, to a great extent, paraphrases of poems, many of which have come down to us. Very frequently, too, whether based on poems or not, the narrative bears the stamp of fiction.[236] Conditions in Iceland were especially favourable to the development of the art of story-telling, owing partly to the isolated position of the country itself and to the difficulties of communication across the wide tracts of land separating the various settlements within it, partly also to the love of travel which characterised its inhabitants. In Icelandic literature the recital of stories is mentioned in connection with public meetings--such as the annual general assembly (_Althingi_)--and with social gatherings at the “winter-nights,” the chief season for hospitality in Iceland, when travellers had returned from abroad. The Icelanders were famous, too, for the cultivation of poetry. This art was evidently much practised in Norway in early times, but we hear of hardly any Norwegian poets after Eyvindr (c. 980), whereas in Iceland poetry flourished for a considerable period after this. Icelandic poets were received with favour not only in Norway, but elsewhere, for instance, in England and Ireland. It has been stated that sagas dealing with the early part of the tenth century owe a good deal to poetry, while stories relating to times earlier than the settlement of Iceland are often almost entirely dependent on poetic sources. Moreover, the cultivation of poetry probably contributed very largely to the development of the faculty of story-telling, and the two arts may have been practised by the same person. On this point, however, we have no precise information. II. Yet the remarkable fact that this faculty of story-telling was peculiar to the Icelanders alone among the Teutonic peoples still remains to be explained. It can hardly be without significance that the only parallel in Europe for such a form of literature is to be found in Ireland.