The Roots of the MountainThe first step towards the characteristic large scale fantasies which have had such influence on the genre and, indirectly, on science fiction] is "The House of the Wolfings" (1889). Here the setting is quasi historical: a European Saxon community is resisting the decadent advances of late Imperial Rome. The romantic supernatural story contains a large admixture of verse. What later critics were to call "The Teutonic thing" or "the Northern thing"