The inspiration of the sagas, strong as it is in these tales, is still more evident in the series of dramas that run parallel with them.  These include ‘Mellem Slagene’ (Between the Battles:  1858), ‘Halte Hulda’ (Lame Hulda:  1858), ‘Kong Sverre’ (1861), ‘Sigurd Slembe’ (1862), and ‘Sigurd Jorsalfar’ (Sigurd the Jerusalem-Farer:  1872).  The first two of these pieces are short and comparatively unimportant.  ‘Kong Sverre’ is a longer and far more ambitious work; while in ‘Sigurd Slembe,’ a trilogy of plays, the saga-phase of Bjoernson’s genius reached its culmination.  This noble work, which may almost claim to be the greatest work in Norwegian literature, is based upon the career of a twelfth-century pretender to the throne of Norway, and the material was found in the ‘Heimskringla.’  There are few more signal illustrations in literature of the power of genius to transfuse with its own life a bare mediaeval chronicle, and to create from a few meagre suggestions a vital and impressive work of art.  One thinks instinctively, in seeking for some adequate parallel, of what Goethe did with the materials of the Faust legend, or of what Shakespeare did with the indications offered for ‘King Lear’ and ‘Cymbeline’ by Holinshed’s chronicle-history.  And the two greatest names in modern literature are suggested not only by this general fact of creative power, but also more specifically by certain characters in the trilogy.  Audhild, the Icelandic maiden beloved of Sigurd, has more than once been compared with the gracious and pathetic figure of Gretchen; and Earl Harald is one of the most successful attempts since Shakespeare to incarnate once again the Hamlet type of character, with its gentleness, its intellectuality, its tragic irony, and the defect of will which forces it to sink beneath the too heavy burden set upon its shoulders by fate.  ‘Sigurd Jorsalfar,’ the last of the saga-plays, was planned as the second part of a dramatic sequence, of which the first was never written.  Another work in this manner, having for its protagonist the great national hero, Olaf Trygvason, was also planned and even begun; but the author’s energy flagged, and he felt himself irresistibly impelled to devote himself to more modern themes dealt with in a more modern way.  But before leaving this phase of Bjoernson’s work, mention must be made of ‘Maria Stuart i Skotland’ (1864), chronologically interjected among the saga-plays, and dealing with the more definite history of the hapless Queen of Scots in much of the saga-spirit.  Bjoernson felt that the Scots had inherited no little of the Norse blood and temper, and believed that the psychology of his saga-heroes was adequate to account for the group of men whose fortunes were bound up with those of Mary Stuart in Scotland.  He finds his key to the problem of her career in the fact that she was by nature incapable of yielding herself up wholly to a man or a cause, yet was surrounded by men who demanded of her just such whole-souled allegiance.  Bothwell and Knox were pre-eminently men of this stamp; as were also, in some degree, Darnley and Rizzio.  The theory may seem fanciful, but there is no doubt that Bjoernson’s treatment of this fascinating subject is one of the strongest it has ever received, and that his play takes rank with such European masterpieces as Scott’s novel, and Alfieri’s tragedy, and Swinburne’s great poetic trilogy.