The theatre of action of this, the second greatest national epic, is the entire range of the North Sea, with its measureless limits extending into mythical infinity, with its long coast line and sea-girt isles, with its Viking ships storm-tossed on the watery roads of all the races. The North Sea did not limit the sturdiness of the Teutonic seafarers of the Norse race, just as the Mediterranean did not restrain their energy and wandering instincts. As the Lombard cycle of sagas reaches out beyond the confines of the Teutonic world to Constantinople, to Syria, to Babylon, and to the mythical lands beyond the seas, so the cycle of the North leads us not only to the Netherlands, the land of the Frisians and Ditmarsch, but over to Seeland, Normandy, Ireland, even to the Orkneys, and perchance to Iceland. And perhaps it may not be amiss, by way of contrast and to show the opposite poles of the Germanic world, to recount briefly an epic lay of the Lombard cycle which breathes quite a different atmosphere and exhibits different colors, geographically and morally speaking, from those of the North Sea. In the Lombard cycle there is a connection of the Teutonic cosmos with the fabulous Oriental world. King Ortnit of _Lamparten_ (Lombardy) wins by a series of stratagems the resplendent daughter of the heathen king Nachaol, of Muntabur, in Syria, and makes her his wife. Descriptions of golden armor, magic rings, and rich treasures of the East betray everywhere the Oriental character of this Langobard legend.