[Footnote 11: A. _Th·ttr_ (pl. _ThÊttir_) is a story within a story--an episode complete in itself but contained in a long saga.] [Footnote 12: _Eddica Minora_, pp. xxi, xlii.] [Footnote 13: _Op. cit._, Book V, p. 166 (Elton's translation, pp. 204, 205).] [Footnote 14: See Introduction to the _Hervarar Saga_, pp. 81-4 below.] [Footnote 15: See Introduction to the _GrÌplur_, p. 171 ff. below.] [Footnote 16: Cf. p. 165 ff. below.] [Footnote 17: Cf. General Introduction to Part II, p. 166 below.] [Footnote 18: Bugge's edition of the _Saemundar Edda_, p. 352 ff.; also Ker, _Epic and Romance_, p. 114 etc.; Vigf˙sson and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (Oxford, 1883), Vol. I, p. 501 ff.] [Footnote 19: _C. P. B._, Vol. I, pp. 175 and 501 ff.] [Footnote 20: _C. P. B._, Vol. I, p. 502 ff.] [Footnote 21: Always, however, with the proviso that, owing to the avowed literary origin of many of them, the Faroese ballads to some extent form a class by themselves; cf. General Introduction to Part II, p. 166 below.] [Footnote 22: Cf. Chadwick, _The Heroic Age_ (Cambridge, 1912), p. 95.] [Footnote 23: Cf. the Introduction to the _Saga of Hervˆr and Heithrek_, p. 81 f. below.] [Footnote 24: Copenhagen, 1901.] INTRODUCTION TO THE TH¡TTR OF NORNAGEST This story occurs as an episode in the long _Saga of Olaf Tryggvason_--to be distinguished from the shorter _Saga of Olaf Tryggvason_ contained in the _Heimskringla_ and translated by Morris and Magn˙sson in the _Saga Library_[1]. The best known manuscript (_F_) of the longer saga is the _FlateyjarbÛk_ which comes from the island of Flatey in Breithifjˆrth off the west of Iceland, and was written between 1386 and 1394. The second (_S_) is the Codex _Arn. Magn. 62_ in the Royal Library (at Copenhagen), which, like the former, contains a fragment only of the _Saga of Olaf Tryggvason_, but includes the _Th·ttr of Nornagest_. This MS. dates, in all probability, from shortly after the middle of the fourteenth century. Finally, besides several paper MSS. (comparatively late and unimportant), there is a MS. _A_ (number 2845 of the Royal Library at Copenhagen) dating from the fifteenth century, in which the _th·ttr_ stands by itself.