The passages quoted above would seem to point to RÌmur rather than Sagas as the sources of the ballads. Or had more than one "Book so broad" come from Iceland? One wonders. Heusler notices[30] the tendency to divide up the longer ballads into sections or _TÊttir_, each whole in itself and yet forming a part of the ballad, and suggests the Icelandic _RÌmur_ as the models for this particular form. It is even possible that the word _RÌma_ is used advisedly in the first strophe of _Olufu KvÊi_, instead of the somewhat commoner _KvÊi_, with some reminiscence of its origin. One of the _Sjurar KvÊi_ (_Dvˆrgamoy_ III) begins: Eina veit eg rÌmuna, Õ inni hevir ligi leingi. (I know a rhyme (or _RÌma_?) etc.) and _RÌsin Ì Holmgar_ also begins: Eg veit eina rÌmuna, Õ gjˆrd er um Virgar sterka. Many other instances might be quoted. But it would be perilous to press too far what may, after all, be a mere verbal coincidence. And whatever gave rise to our poems as they now stand, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that they, like the rest of the _F¯royja KvÊi_, are first and last _Ballads_--rightly ballads. They have a form of their own, like other ballads, and are not a degenerate form of _RÌmur_ or a mere versification of some old Icelandic legends. Indeed what Professor Ker says of the Danish ballads[31] may with equal truth be applied to the ballads of the Faroes: The ballads are not rude, rustic travesties of older more dignified stories; though some, perhaps many, of the older stories may survive among the ballads. They are for Denmark in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries what the older heroic lays of the Poetic Edda had been before them in the Northern lands. They take the place of earlier heroic poetry. Whatever the nature of their connection with the ballads of the surrounding lands, the Faroese ballads are no isolated growth. They exhibit all the main characteristics of the ballad type, especially of the Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic ballads. Crude and inartistic they often are compared with the best of the Danish and even the Scottish ballads. The _Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr_ has little to recommend it beyond its simplicity and naÔvetÈ, the 'quaintness' of primitive literature; the _Ballad of Arngrim's Sons_ exhibits a curious lack of skill in the manipulation of the theme, and perhaps we are justified in assuming that two earlier ballads or perhaps _tÊttir_ have been imperfectly welded. The _Ballad of Nornagest_ is bald to a fault and lacks inspiration; and all alike show an imperfect artistry in diction.