ORJHTX or .V.I.I//; KMil.MfD. 1!) 



" On this there are various opinions, some thinking tlut 

 the Saxons had their origin from the Danes and Northmen ; 

 others, as I heard some one maintain when a young man, 

 that they are derived from the Greeks, because they themselves 

 used to say the Saxons were the remnant of the Macedonian 

 army, which, having followed Alexander the Great, were by 

 his premature death dispersed all over the world." 



As to how Britain came to be called England the different 

 legends given by the monkish writers are contradictory. 



The SJcjoldiwga Saga, which is often mentioned in other 

 Sagas, and which contains a record down to the early kings 

 of Denmark, is unfortunately lost : it would, no doubt, have 

 thrown great light on the lives of early chiefs who settled in 

 Britain ; but from some fragments which are given in this 

 work , and which are supposed to belong to it, we see that 

 several Danish and Swedish kings claimed to have possessions 

 in England long before the supposed coming of the Danes. 



Some writers assert that the new settlers gave to their new 

 home in Britain the name of the country which they had left, 

 called Angeln, and which they claim to be situated in the 

 southern part of Jutland ; but besides the Angeln in Jutland 

 there is in the Cattegat an Engelholm, which is geographi- 

 cally far more important, situated in the land known as the 

 Vikin of the Sagas, a great Viking and warlike land, from 

 which the name Viking may have been derived, filled with 

 graves and antiquities of the iron age. There are also other 

 Engeln in the present Sweden. 



In the whole literature of the North such a name as Engeln 

 is unknown ; it may have been, perhaps, a local name. 



In the Sagas the term England was applied to a portion 

 only of Britain, the inhabitants of which were called Etiylar, 

 Enskirmenn. Britain itself is called Bretland, and the people 

 JBretar. 



"Ongulsey (Angelsey) is one third of Bretland (Wales)" 

 (Magnus Barefbot's Saga, c. 11). 



cental us audivi ijuendam praedicantem | <|iii secutus magnum Alexandrum hi- 

 de Graeeis. quia ipsi dicerent, Siixone i mat nra morte ipsius per totuni orbem 

 reli<iuias fuisse Macedonia exercitus | sit dispersus " (Ann. lib. 1). 



c 2 



