his contemporary but as a near relative. If the Sagas were compared with the Arthurian romances numerous points of resemblance could be shown. Olaf is the Arthur of the story, Gudrun the Guinevere, and Odin is the Merlin, while the city of Drontheim serves as Caerleon. The story recounting how Arthur magically obtained his sword Excalibur finds an exact parallel in the story of Sigmund, Volsung’s son; and even the emblem of the dragon is not lacking,[13] for in the story of the Volsung we learn that Sigurd’s shield bore the image of that monster, “and with even such-like image was adorned helm, and saddle, and coat-armour.” But again it must be remembered that Arthur’s kingdom is reported to have extended to Iceland itself; in fact, the bounds of his kingdom were only set by the chroniclers where their own definite geographical knowledge ended. “We cannot bring within any limits of history,” Sir Edward Strachey has properly said, “the events which here succeed each other, when the Lords and Commons of England, after the death of King Uther at St. Albans, assembled at the greatest church of London, guided by the joint policy of the magician Merlin and the Christian bishop of Canterbury, and elected Arthur to the throne; when Arthur made Caerleon, or Camelot, or both, his headquarters in a war against Cornwall, Wales, and the North, in which he was victorious by the help of the King of France; when he met the demand for tribute by the Roman Emperor Lucius with a counterclaim to the empire for himself as the real representative of Constantine, held a parliament at York to make the necessary arrangements, crossed the sea from Sandwich to Barflete in Flanders, met the united forces of the Romans and Saracens in Burgundy, slew the emperor in a great battle, together with his allies, the Sowdan of Syria, the King of Egypt, and the King of Ethiopia, sent their bodies to the Senate and Podesta of Rome as the only tribute he would pay, and then followed over the mountains through Lombardy and Tuscany to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by the Pope, ‘sojourned there a time, established all the lands from Rome into France, and gave lands and realms unto his servants and knights,’ and so returned home to England, where he seems thenceforth to have devoted himself wholly to his duties as the head of Christian knighthood.”