  Magnetic fields correlated on several kiloparsec scales are seen in spiral
galaxies. Their origin could be due to the winding up of a primordial
cosmological field or due to amplification of a small seed field by a turbulent
galactic dynamo. Both options have difficulties: There is no known battery
mechanism for producing the required primordial field. Equally the turbulent
dynamo may self destruct before being able to produce the large scale field,
due to excess generation of small scale power. The current status of these
difficulties is discussed. The resolution could depend on the nature of the
saturated field produced by the small scale dynamo. We argue that the small
scale fields do not fill most of the volume of the fluid and instead
concentrate into intermittent ropes, with their peak value of order
equipartition fields, and radii much smaller than their lengths. In this case
these fields neither drain significant energy from the turbulence nor convert
eddy motion of the turbulence on the outer scale to wave like motion. This
preserves the diffusive effects needed for the large scale dynamo operation.
