Guide to Northern Archaeology/1

The most perfect and enduring form in which the memorabilia of the present day can be preserved for posterity is that of written documents; the facility with which these are now prepared and multiplied in copies by the assistance of the press, makes the information they embody imperishable. In ancient times and through the middle ages, the difficulty was greater; written documents were less diffused, costlier, the property rather of individuals than of the people at large, and least of all, of the humbler classes. We may therefore assume that what has been preserved belonged to the choicer productions of its age; that it was something on which the most distinguished and enlightened men of its time and country placed a high value, and which must therefore assist us to the knowledge, not indeed of all the remarkable events of past ages, but still of their most important results.

That which in the earliest times was preserved only by tradition, very frequently in a poetical shape, came by degrees to be committed to writing, either in its original traditionary poetical form, or altered by later additions to prose. If therefore we bestow the necessary attention on the form as well as the matter, we may attain the means of deciding which of the accounts that have come down to us are the older and more trustworthy, and which are later and more disfigured by a ​multiform tradition. But in order to judge by this process of a body of literature which may be considered as having been long ago closed, a complete view of all its products is essential. To explain the properties of a stream which varies in its analysis in different stages of its progress, we must pursue it back to all its channels and feeders. Thus it is with the literature of a people. It is only thus that we can arrive at a comparison embracing due reference to form and substance, style and treatment; it is only thus that enquiry can separate the weighty from the unimportant, the true from the false, the noble from the trivial, and apply the knowledge which lies concealed in the treasures of a nearer or more remote antiquity to the present time, which we must admit owes its foundation and origin to the past. This idea is at the bottom of the resolution of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, by degrees to edite all the historical writings and narratives extant in the Old Icelandic, even those which verge upon or merge into the dominion of fable; for only thus shall we be in condition to afford a distinct and perfect exposition of the actions of our forefathers, of their social institutions and their physical and intellectual circumstances.

The significance and importance of the Old Northern literature can only be fully recognized on a consideration of its relations to the culture of modern Europe. The aims to which that culture tends, the means by which it works, and the civilisation it has diffused we may assume as sufficiently known; all our readers are probably agreed that it is the choicest yet known among men, that it is distinguished from all others by continuous progress, the result of awakened thought, which is never satisfied and incessantly employed in speculation. This ever forward march of thought produces a perpetual advance in the life of all the states which it pervades, an unbroken procession of changes and improvements, which concern not only the outer forms and greater relations of states, but penetrate into the simplest and apparently most insignificant details. This ​developement of humanity has been mainly pursued through two channels: this unrest of the mind, so beneficial in its operations, we owe first and most signally to the ancient classical literature, that of Greece and Rome; by this it has been awakened, by this it has been nourished, by this Christianity itself has been urged forwards. The study of the Greek and Latin languages has given birth to the modern philology. By the example of the classical historians modern history has attained its eminence, of which fact there can be but one opinion among men of scientific acquirement; none but the uninstructed and superficial observer would ascribe the movement of a machine to the great external and visible wheels without taking into account the inner principle of motion. But with the remains of the old classical literature the moderns have moreover combined a new spirit of intellectual activity, sprung indeed from an ancient root, but which by degrees has expanded into a new tree with another stem and bearing other fruit. The knowledge of the old time embraced man, that of our time nature at large. The special subjects of the labours of antiquity were mythology, language, history, as also philosophy, or in other words the history of man; what in modern times has been added to these is the knowledge of the world in all its departments, or in general terms the history of nature. The latter could not have sprung into existence without the former, no La Place without an Euclid, but the later developement of knowledge has placed such a distance between the two, that they may be considered as independent of each other. Both together complete the culture of the human intellect. If we enquire under which of these two modes of intellectual activity the Old Northern literature is to be classed, the natural answer must be, under that of the olden time. It contains, like the Greek and Roman, scarcely any other element than the religious, the historical and the linguistic; the philosophical is wanting. To require more from it than in virtue of its nature it could afford, would be unreasonable. Its importance is commensurate with the influence ​which these elements can be proved to exercise on the present. The special subject for our consideration is the interest which the written remains of Icelandic literature can present for mankind in general and the inhabitants of the North in particular.

Under the term religious element, in so far as it is meant to be distinguished from the purely historical, we understand the remains which we possess of the doctrine of Odin, which before the establishment of Christianity pervaded the whole North. They are contained in the Eddas, the older, or Sæmund’s Edda, and the younger, or Snorre’s Edda, each so called from the name of its respective compiler. They are distinguished from each other in this respect, that the older contains elements more ancient than the Christian æra of the North, poems of pagan birth, of which, however, fragments only are preserved; the younger on the other hand exhibits narratives founded on the other, and filled with verses extracted from it, which however have been committed to writing at a period subsequent to Christianity, and have been preserved by learned individuals of such later time as memorials of the past. Not seldom, for this reason, they exhibit and dwell upon childish conceptions and distorted features of the old belief. In this collection of traditions are to be found recollections, for the most part imperfect, of all kinds of mythological doctrines, which sometimes are jumbled confusedly together, and occasionally as an aid to memory are put into a metrical form, somewhat on the principle of the propria quæ maribus of our Latin grammar. It is obvious enough that the first collection is the more valuable, and the later principally worth attention in so far as it completes and assists the comprehension of the former.

The question might be asked, what is the use of these old books? but it would be after all merely commensurate with the question, what is the use of mythological studies in general? What have men now living to do with the belief of their fathers? To the enquiry, however, in the present case, we are attracted by the apparent obscurity of these ancient monuments. Much ​as men have thought, enquired, and written, and still daily write upon them, they appear not as yet to have arrived at any satisfactory result, and almost every fresh writer starts fresh views upon the subject. Among such systems may be enumerated: an historical one, according to which the gods were once men, who conferred benefits on their cotemporaries, and, as some hold, who falsely gave themselves out for gods, and in either case were honored as such after death; a geographical system, according to which the superhuman beings of whom mythology speaks, were once actual nations upon the earth, and the myths are therefore records of events which occurred in connexion with alliances or wars between these nations; an astronomical system, according to which the myths embodied ancient theories of the world, its creation, and the changes of the heavenly bodies, with all the relations of such to the life of man, clad in the mystic form of fable, from which, if we are indefatigable in the enquiry, the leading ideas may be still unravelled; a physical system, which holds that in the myth the greater features of change in nature were not so much contemplated, as the connexion between its individual components, and their strife and conflict; finally, an allegorizing system, either considering the gods as personifications, sometimes of the conceptions and feelings of men, sometimes of nature at large, or else considering neither man in general, nor the Northman in particular as the subject of personification, but, on the contrary, the history of the world, and even the character and qualities of the remotest nations. Among these systems, the ancient Northmen themselves have by particular expressions and comparisons originated the historico-geographical and the astronomico-physical, which have since been adopted anew and developed by Danish writers; it is easy however to conclude that these can only hold good in certain instances, and are by no means of universal application. Some writers have pushed the physical theory so far as to admit the supposition of a chemical knowledge of the elements, of electricity etc., which would ​invest our in this respect uninstructed ancestors with an intuition of the discoveries of the subtlest geniuses of our time, a supposition to which we cannot by any means give our assent. The universal-history theory, however, can as little be sustained, in as much as it attributes to the ancients an ethnographical grasp of their subject, which was not compatible with their circumstances; and no explanation can be received as generally valid, which lies and must lie beyond the sphere of their conceptions and knowledge; every other is but a new and poetical treatment of the Edda, the value of which it is not our business now to discuss, when we wish to speak of the ancients themselves, and not of the manner and degree in which their conceptions have been altered and, if you will, improved upon. In order to explain the Edda it is beyond doubt essential to extract its spirit and essence and consider it with reference to itself; we can only thus discuss its value and its importance as a link in the chain of human knowledge. We shall then find that that work, like every other body of mythology, contains the conceptions of the Ancients, with respect to God, man and nature, and the mutual relations of each expressed in the symbolical style of thought and language peculiar to antiquity. The mode and form of this expression are of consequence as throwing light upon the origin and affinity of nations. Every people on earth has, for instance, asked itself the questions: how did the world begin? and how will it cease to be? The manner in which these questions are answered, is in the main ideas the same, but differs greatly in particulars. Comparison leads us to discover what nations entertained the most similar conceptions, and thence we conclude that these nations were mutually related. We have made considerable advances in this investigation, but it cannot yet be considered as completed. Every nation conceives the phenomena of nature to be the results of godlike agencies. We enquire, for example, what nation has represented lightning and its concomitants under the aspect of the thunder god Thor of the Northmen? what nation ​has represented the subterranean power of fire and its effects under the form of the freakish fire deity Loke? Every nation has imagined to itself a power superior to the gods whose agency is limited to this nether world of ours; we enquire, what was the conception of the Northmen as to this supreme, eternal fate, from whose will every thing was dependent, and with what other nations did they hold their conception, be it what it might, in common? Every nation holds for certain that the world will one day perish; but what nation has held precisely the opinion that the gods themselves will perish with it? and what is it which is destined to survive the world? These and many similar questions are suggested by the consideration of the Northern mythology, and their answer will not only throw a clear light on the origin of the Northern nations and their relationship to others, but will enable us to penetrate at the same time into the spirit of antiquity; we shall see the ideas through the corporeal integuments in which they are arrayed. From these ideas, when exhibited in their integrity and no longer floating like mist before our sight, we shall be able to draw general conclusions as to the conceptions of our ancestors, their notions of God and the universe, of good and evil, virtue and vice; we shall moreover be able to trace the course of certain superstitions still extant back to their source, and in this manner to further that knowledge of the former state of the northern races, which is essential to a thorough knowledge of them as they are. Even if learned men have occasionally in their investigations strayed into by paths of error, their very failures will serve to make truth the more conspicuous; and no inquiry into the obscure meaning of the Eddas can be thought useless by those who reflect that in them are deposited the most essential and important notions of the people. It must be considered as an inestimable advantage for the North, that so many of these productions have been there preserved, while the analogous works which certainly once existed in Germany have almost entirely perished, so that the Icelandic ​nature in this respect serves to illustrate not only the oldest religious tenets of our own race, but also those of the Germanic.

Besides the strictly mythical songs the older Edda contains a succession of historical poems almost uninterrupted in connexion, forming an heroic poem, a Northern counterpart to the Homeric poems of the Greeks. Whoso covets a conception of the vigour and greatness of former times, will do well to read these. They have not the glow of the South, but they rivet attention; they consist not of rounded verses, which flow like streams in varied directions between flowery margins, but they stand up frozen into a stern fixity, like icebergs, rising into infinite space, while forms the most monstrous and events the most terrible that human imagination can suggest, are the accompaniments of their base. If we read these poems in the recent versions of them by Grundtvig and La Motte Fouqué, we may form a notion of the qualities of the sublime and terrible which they exhibit; but these attributes are even more conspicuous in a simple translation executed by Finn Magnusson, whose object has been to render them as literally as possible, rejecting all adventitious aid from pocsy. To render them in another language at once with the original simplicity and poetic beauty which they unite in their own is a task for none but a poet of the highest order.

After the Eddas we come to consider the historical monuments.

The origin and development of historical composition in Iceland have been ably illustrated by another writer. It was a natural result of the circumstances of the country and its people; a taste for narrative is to this day one of the characteristics of the Northman. The uniformity of aspect which Northern nature, as compared with that of the South, presents, its long intervals of quiescence, beget the desire for a factitious variety and change; there is always something attractive in stories of movement, when the bearer is at rest; the pleasure is in its principle the same which we derive from the tales ​of former times. This natural propensity to listen to narrative accompanied the first settlers to Iceland, and was nourished and developed by their successors. The former brought with them various recollections of ancient events in the North, preserved for the most part in poems which passed from mouth to mouth; their metrical form assisted the memory and was opposed to their mutilation or corruption. By degrees, however, and to a great extent, they lost this poetic form and passed into that of prose narrative, the leading passages of which were strengthened by inserted verses. From a series of continuous epic strains which recorded the principal actions of a king or a people, they assumed the shape of a series of romantic historical narratives. The occurrences in the country itself were too few to obliterate the recollection of those ancient events. The country's own history was interwoven with that of the North. With Norway Iceland was in constant connexion without being its dependent; the leading Icelanders made voyages thither, and the Icelandic coasts were visited in return by Norway traders. The arrival of a ship was an important event for every district, and the trader's relation of foreign occurrences was received with equal, if not with greater eagerness than his merchandise. From Norway also, the Icelander, in the character of warrior or skald, pursued his excursions to other countries of the North, Sweden and Denmark; thence also to the Vendic and eastern countries; in the islands of Scotland he found his own kindred; in England he was greeted in a language very similar to his own. As warrior and bard he took personal part in the events he celebrated in song. When he had acquired wealth and honor he returned to his native land and passed the rest of his days in tranquillity in his homestead. What wonder, if his children and children's children gave ear to the tales of the travelled man, and that the record of his distant adventures became an heirloom of his race and one more highly prized than the chattels he left behind. In this way were the historical materials, which had been drawn from the whole North ​brought together in Iceland. The preservation of them incidental to the character of the country and its people. They were first brought into shape in little isolated circles, in districts which mountain and stream separated almost entirely from each other; they formed the conversation of the individual family, enlivened the feast and were recounted in the bath and at every other occasion of social meeting. From being thus the property of separate distinguished families they became that of the country at large. At all the public meetings and particularly at the assembly of the Althing, the finest of the old traditions were recited, and here the most recent events that had passed on the stage of the world were reenacted by a remote people skilled in, and fondly devoted to historic lore. Every considerable chieftain had long had his Sagaman. On these occasions he came forward before the people, and the first of the land were his auditors. The song of the skald and the narrative of the Sagaman, when thus all eyes were fixed upon him, and all ears open to him, behooved not only to be artistical, lively and attractive, but true. If the recital was without life it wearied; if it varied from facts with which every auditor was familiar, if it contained falschoods, the reciter was treated as a braggart and a liar.

The historical materials which thus by degrees accumulated themselves in the possession of the highest families of Iceland, were at last preserved for posterity. As an aid to memory the principal contents of the oldest poems were cut on wood in Runic characters; a collection of such wood tablets formed the earliest book. With Christianity the proper art of writing was introduced, and now the more bulky saga could be committed to writing and multiplied; it was written on parchment. The Runic tablets as well as the parchment books were both rare and dear. Historical knowledge itself, however, was much extended by the introduction of Christianity, which brought in its train the knowledge and literature of the South. The ecclesiastics studied and were ordained in foreign countries; the ​pilgrim wandered on foot from Deumark through Europe to Rome, he sojourned on his way in monasteries and heard there of the events of the world, he visited the graves of the Saints. Intelligence from other quarters than the North thus reached Iceland. Not only the nearer and kindred lands of the Saxon and the Frank, but Italy and the Byzantine seat of empire, which had already received the Varangian into its military service, and Spain as far as Compostella, were made known; the Latin language was cultivated, schools were established in Iceland; classical writings, at least important fragments of such, were read and explained. The taste for real historical composition necessarily was created. The first writers are, as always happens, unknown; they wrote from pleasure and inward impulse, not for literary fame; the first attempts were also doubtless fragmentary. Many poems and Sagas must have been written before regular historical researches could be entered upon. These were naturally at first confined to the history of Iceland itself and afterward extended to that of other countries. The first historical inquirer with whom we are acquainted, is Are Frode; before his time, therefore, according to our hypothesis, there must not only have been many narratives in circulation in Iceland, but some of them must have been committed to writing; it was his task to put in order and arrange chronologically materials previously well known. Sæmund Frode pursued similar investigations into the history of Norway. The birth of real history was simultaneous with that of chronology. It was not till these auxiliaries were acquired — a stock of material and the critical knowledge for testing and arranging them, that history could be written. This was the bright period of Icelandic literature. The child had now become a man; had learned to concentrate its powers with thought and discrimination, to fix the wandering, to unite the unconnected. Earlier times had relied on the chance interest of the narrated events; later times passed into the opposite extreme, and the living narrative, the thoroughly historical work became transformed into dry annals.

​History consists in a narrative of the events which have occurred in a country, connected, arranged, consentaneous in its parts, trustworthy and accurate, in which the spirit of the age, the actors and their transactions are exhibited in their proper order, a narrative in which not merely one or other point of time, or individual person or event is made conspicuous, but from which we are enabled to derive a clear and comprehensive view of the gradual development of a country and its inhabitants. The materials must accordingly be arranged and methodized with judgment and taste; this cannot be accomplished without producing corresponding effects upon the external form, and he only is an historian who can both embrace this harmonious arrangement in his own mind and give it utterance to others. Such a writer was Snorre Sturlason; for predecessors he had Erik Oddson, Karl Jonson, Styrmer Frode, and probably others; for a real historian does not suddenly rise up, he is the result of many antecursory and more or less unsuccessful attempts, as in like manner he draws after him a series of imitators; he himself stands alone and unapproached, because he must unite in himself many distinguished qualities, which are only occasionally exemplified in ordinary writers. His mind embraces the whole, his predecessors only succeeded in partial instances, his successors expatiate and corrupt the truth with false additions; the former strive and enquire without attaining their purpose, the latter babble without carrying conviction; he creates.

The most remarkable work of history in Icelandic literature is: Snorre Sturlason’s Sagas of the Norwegian kings, or as it is called after the initial word of the first page, Heimskringla (circle of the world). No one reads this but finds himself attracted, without perhaps being able to account for his affection, and carried back unconsciously to the times and habits of which it treats. The narrative is simple, entirely free from glitter, and the style elevated; conciseness gives it strength, the descriptions are appropriate and expressive; in short the form is throughout adapted to the matter, and both together ​coalesce into perfect unity. The author is sparing of reflections and only applies them where he wishes to place the subject before his reader in the particular point of view which he has selected; he does nothing but relate, but he shews that this relation is founded on previous reflection.

As to the manner in which this work, destined for lasting popularity, was produced, modern opinions differ. Many Sagas existed before the time of Snorre and were used by him. The historian rescues his materials from the chaos, but does not create them. It is said that he took up these older Sagas, struck out what displeased him, condensed what was scattered, added passages of his own, and interwove here and there stanzas from the ancient Skaldic songs, and then made over his manuscript to his copyists. And there are people who can believe that in this mechanical manner a work so well distributed and so well connected in all its parts, so perfect as a whole, could be produced! Was it not rather the work of his own knowledge and thought? All the older Sagas were doubtless familiar to him, he knew them by heart, at least their principal passages; the country of which he wrote and its people were well known to him; he had reflected for years on his materials, had fashioned them in his mind, and then gave them the form he had thus conceived. Snorre's merit then, was not that of collection this had already been accomplished, it was that of appropriation; neither was he the first chronologer; Are Frode had preceded him as such, and he uses Are Frode's dates; but he built upon these foundations. His merit lay in connexion and development, in novelty of views, in beauty and fitness of expression (in which qualities one rival work alone, Njal's Saga approaches him), in the judicious, critical and unprejudiced use of his sources, in his careful distinction between the certain and the doubtful, in his rejection of incidents unworthy of history, coupled with unfailing detection of the characteristic, and in the faculty of giving spirit and life to all that came under his pen. Are these not the very qualities which make the historical ​masterpieces of the classics so attractive to us? Were not these masterpieces produced by the same process as that of Snorre? Had not their authors also old materials, song and tradition and chronicle before them? Did they not, like Snorre, bring into an harmonious whole heterogeneous and disconnected elements? What great work of the human mind, historical or poetical, was ever otherwise produced? We are, at least, at a loss to imagine how a work of the spirit can be produced by a spiritless and mechanical process. The perusal of Snorre's work must satisfy us a priori, that its excellence is the fruit of intellectual activity; to prove this assertion by detail of particular passages would exceed our limits. To judge, however, justly, and feel the beauties of this author, we require a better edition than we possess. Many therefore will rejoice to hear that such an edition, with a translation to correspond, is intended to be published by the Society of Northern Antiquaries.

The most important of the series of Sagas already published by the Society under the title of Fornmanna Sögur, concerns specially the history of Norway. Sverrer's Saga and Hakon Hakonson's Saga may be considered as continuations of Snorre; they do not indeed equal him in freshness and liveliness, but they are worthy associates, The remaining Norwegian Sagas have most interest when considered with reference to Snorre; his superiority becomes then most conspicuous; they bear nearly the same relation to him as the diffuse narratives of the prose Edda bear to the enigmatical but impressive strains of the poetic. Of Olaf Tryggvason's Saga we have two versions, the one by the monk Gunnlaug, the other by the monk Odd; both wrote their historical works in Latin, and what is now extant. of them are later Icelandic translations, the first with various additions, the latter more faithful. The style of neither has been improved by the circumstance of their being translations; in that of Odd especially it is evident how much trouble the translator gave himself, and how much he was seduced to render the Latin turn of expression. It seems probable that ​these compositions in their original form were among the sources of Snorre's work, and a comparison will give a conception of his vast superiority. The noble and the spirited appear to the best advantage in juxtaposition with the vapid and the flat. While reading Snorre we are hardly aware of the person of the author, we know not whether he be heathen or christian, friend or foe; in both the other works the monk appears throughout, intent on exciting admiration for the promoters of Christianity, and forgetful that his hero is to be exalted not by length of sentences and accumulation of words, but by an expressive relation of his actions. The Saga of Olaf the Saint and those which follow are of later date, and we see in them how little Snorre's successors were able to attain the purity of his historical compositions. These works have therefore no value as models, but only as sources, and in this latter respect will long remain subjects for the enquiries of future writers of history; occasionally indeed they exhibit passages which rise to a purer and higher level; and they scarcely contain any narrative which will not reward him who sifts it with some grains of gold.

The series of Sagas above specified specially illustrate the history of Norway. The ancient condition of that country derives much illustration from the collection published by Charles C. Rafn under the title of Fornaldar Sögur Nordrlanda, and most of the recent historians of Norway have consulted both these sources. Both these collections are however of value for the history also of Denmark; in conjunction with Saxo they present the foundation of our knowledge of this country in its carlier times. It is sufficiently known that without the Icelandic remains we should possess but very confused accounts of the succession of the Danish kings, and their actions in remote times. If we were without the Sagas of Rolf Krake, Ragnar Lodbrok, the narratives of Starkad, and several similar fragments, we should not be in condition to understand the histories and the songs which Saxo has preserved for us; without the Jomsvikinga Saga Palnatoke would be a mere unsubstantial ​form for us, and the relations between Christianity and heathenism at the period of the introduction of the former, would have remained involved in obscurity. There is finally one entire Saga, the Knytlinga, which treats of Denmark alone, and embraces exactly the period from Harald Bluetooth to Canute the Sixth, the period which Saxo has treated. The author of this Saga is considered to have been the nephew of Snorre Sturlason, Olaf Thordson Hvitaskald, who was attached to the court of Valdemar the second, and had a high reputation not only as a poet but as a man of learning. He had passed a portion of his youth with Snorre, and could not fail to wish to tread in his footsteps. His work may in fact be considered as a shorter Heimskringla for Denmark, and where the author's materials gave him scope for adornment he knew how to use it; read for example the story of Canute the saint in the Knytlinga Saga and Saxo. For illustration of the history of Denmark may be consulted a number of minor narratives, more or less trustworthy, which are to be found scattered through the Icelandic Sagas; they throw light on the interesting subject of the relations which subsisted between Iceland and Denmark and the Danish sovereigns, and on many characteristic features of manners and usages, and nearly all are remarkable for naiveté and delineation of character.

Another series of Sagas, the publication of which has been commenced, are those which treat of Iceland itself, Íslendínga Sögur. The interest and importance of these arise partly from the claim that country has on attention, partly from the merit of their contents in respect both of form and matter. In both these separate points of view they are unquestionably among the most remarkable productions of Icelandic literature. As the nursing mother of the ancient history of the North, Iceland has claims on our respect, but also on account of her peculiar, first patriarchal, and next aristocratic constitution; while the entire North was obedient to kings, upon a remote island arose a republic, which without the influence of a numerous ​population, or any command of physical power, could contrive to make itself respected by the mightiest kings. If we seek with so much avidity as we do to learn what these Icelanders have said of our forefathers, of their kings and their institutions, we must also find peculiar interest in learning what this lively, indefatigable and intelligent people has said of itself, of its own origin and progress, of the birth and growth of the Icelandic passion for narrative. These questions find their answer in a number of sagas, which give accounts of the discovery and occupation of the country, of the process by which the republic was formed and maintained its independence, of the rise and development of the community at large, of the education of the skalds, of the labour of the historian, and finally of the cessation of this whole life of activity and the union of the country with Norway. The history, however, of this country has at the same time this peculiarity, that it is not written in any continuous narrative, but in several, which encroach on and illustrate each other; that in these sagas the predominant idea is not that of describing the transactions of an entire race or country, but only of depicting the most remarkable men of this or that race; they are therefore neither dry annals, nor regular history; and out of this peculiar constitution arise excellencies and defects, which distinguish them as unique in their kind from the history of every other people. They are, namely, representations of real occurrences, and yet have the appearance of romance; they preserve for the most part an accurate chronology, but neither was this one of the objects of their composition, nor the arrangement of events in such an order as might enable us to compare them with those of other countries; their object was to paint the hero of the tale; is he a viking, the page is thronged with naval expeditions: is he a skald, the saga is filled with his verses; is he a man of law, we have lawsuit on lawsuit in which he interferes; the slayer of men commits slaughter upon slaughter without atonement; he is found guilty and condemned at the judicial assembly, and ​then the narrative of his life expands into a description of the arts by which he outwits and escapes his pursuers. Here however, as in real life, it is not the man only who determines and acts; woman has her share in the drama, and at the side of the chief we continually find his wife sometimes soothing, sometimes exciting; there is even hardly a type of the female character which is not to be found in the pages of these sagas, from the damsel cherishing a first love in her faithful bosom, and who with eyes fixed on her lover's mantle, the only token of the absent she possesses, thinks of him as she breathes her last sigh, to the passionate, jealous female whose first youthful love has been exchanged for hate, only to be quenched in the blood of her lover; from the devoted wife who clings to her husband to perish with him in the flames with which his enemies have surrounded him, to the haughty spirit who neither forgets nor forgives, who, without complaint or sign of anger, cherishes the remembrance of a deserved chastisement, till her husband, surrounded by foes, appeals to her for aid on which his life depends, and then her hate blazes up in her stern refusal. It was a direct consequence of the republican institutions of Iceland that political relations extended their influence into the social and private life of its people; the man and his motives of action could not be displayed without shewing him in his domestic relations. Near him we see his slave, his dog, as in the pages of those romances which attract us by their fidelity to actual life. The best of these sagas not only contribute much to our knowledge of the manners of the North, but in respect of excellent delineation of character, and artistical treatment of their materials, such as are to be found in Nial's Saga, will bear comparison with distinguished specimens of the literature of other countries.

It is not, meanwhile, the history of the North alone which derives its nourishment from these sources. The other three points of the European compass are indebted to the sagas for contributions to their history, their geography and their ​antiquities. The Icelander traversed Europe on his way to Rome; the geography of Germany and Italy necessarily engaged his attention, in proof of which we may observe that the seat of learning at Erfurth is first mentioned in the writings of the Icelanders. The close connexion which existed between the North and Russia, the Sclavonic countries, England, Scotland and Ireland has produced this consequence, that the historian of any of these countries will find it a duty to explore the sources of the North for many topographical and chronological illustrations, and also for traces of many historical events which such investigation and comparison will enable him to confirm or to reject. A period of Russian history, to cite instances, is illustrated by Eymund's Saga; the history of the Sclavonic countries by all the sagas which treat of Norway and Denmark; that of the British isles likewise by those which concern Iceland; that of Spain by Hakon Hakonson's Saga etc. By travels to Miklegard (Constantinople) and Palestine, the Greek empire and Asia minor are drawn within the circle; and for the history of discovery it will always be a memorable circumstance that beyond question the oldest accounts of America of a date long previous to its more recent discovery by Columbus, are preserved by the Icelanders. In this manner, and through the not improbable conjecture that Columbus either in England, or in Iceland itself, strengthened his own convictions by what he collected of the recollections preserved of the Northern navigators, the old Northern history holds out the hand of friendship to the modern.

With the historical writings upon Iceland are nearly connected the Icelandic laws. With regard to these our jurists have already made it clear and demonstrated in particular cases, that it is the laws which sustain the credibility of the sagas, and that it is only by the joint study of both that we can attain a complete insight into the life and manners of the North. The laws shew especially that among its people in times preceding and reaching down to the middle ages, no such utter ​barbarism reigned as has been too often imputed to those periods; in pursuing the laws into their details we shall find, on the contrary, occasion to admire the accuracy and the subtlety with which analogous subjects are distinguished from each other, and almost every possible case is foreseen; and further the precision with which the due enforcement of the law as well as the mere enactment is provided for, a particular in which these times far surpass our own; finally the care taken for their full promulgation, which brought them to the knowledge. of every member of the state, and made them the intellectual property of the community at large. A consequence was that no serious infraction of the law could occur without a prosecution, for to institute such was not the duty merely of the individual injured, but of the people at large, and to leave a criminal unprosecuted was a disgrace. In many particular clauses upon marriage and domestic institutions, upon the poor, upon the duties of the householder towards menials and slaves, even towards beasts, an article, the omission of which in modern times may well surprise us, we find evidence of a spirit of humanity which argues neither barbarism nor indifference to the wellfare of fellow created beings. For the study of jurisprudence itself the laws of Iceland will unquestionably prove of importance, whether considered by themselves, or with reference to those of other countries. Considered in the first point of view they will serve to shew him who investigates them how a people, separated from the rest of the North and left to itself, contrived to work out its constitution; compared with the codes of other northern districts, especially with that of Norway, the benefit of illustration will be mutual. For the history of the progress of society in general important results may fairly be expected from a comparison of Icelandic with Roman law for example, thereby tracing the progress of development in the South and in the extreme North, and marking the peculiarities of each.

​In discussing the value of a literature, the language in which it is embodied must engage consideration. Language is the instrument by which the race of man develops its intellect; for a people it is the organ of all its communications, the voice of the past to the future, and of the present to the present; in science it is the blood which pervades and nourishes the system. For the philologist it is an interesting task to investigate a language, which by its robust vigour and its artistical structure, declares itself the product of a sturdy though vanished age, just as it is interesting to after generations to listen to the narrative of the deeds of their remote progenitors, even though they may have exercised no influence on public life. This interest encreases when the language in question exhibits not merely strength, but self-dependence, unusual flexibility and richness; when in such respects it is equalled by few and surpassed by none. It is pretty generally agreed that this is to be predicated of two European languages, the Greek and the Old-Northern. Both are self-sufficient, require neither foreign words nor foreign forms, have developed themselves out of themselves, and by their inherent power; both possess an artistical, somewhat complex and yet beautiful and regular structure; both, finally, though long extinct, enjoy second life in daughter languages, which strikingly resemble their respective mothers, so that the natural graces and movements of the latter are easily recognized beneath the folds of the modern garment. The fact that two such languages with which almost all others in Europe are connected by descent or near affinity, have been preserved so true and uncorrupted in the South and North respectively, is among the most remarkable phenomena in the history of language. Our wonder however is greater, when we institute a comparison and find that however wide the local separation of the two, they yet by the most striking similitude in structure and development, betray the closeness of their sisterly affinity. With respect to philology in general, the study of the Old-Northern language is of great importance; this needs no proof, ​being universally admitted. As the Gothic race spread itself from the shores of the Black Sea to the snow-clad mountains of Iceland, in the same manner one and the same race of language extended itself over all the intervening regions. The continuity of this chain of speech may be pursued from the Mœsogothic, through the Sclavonic to the Allemannic, Frankish, and the various high and low German dialects; from these, through the Anglo-Saxon and its offshoots, to the language which was once spoken over the whole North, and which we mean to designate, when we speak of the Old-Northern, or old Icelandic. This language the Icelanders themselves often, perhaps most usually, called by the name Danish tongue (dönsk túnga) as also frequently, Norse language (norræna, norrænt mál) and finally Icelandic (vort mál), and they thus recognized no essential difference between the language spoken in Iceland, on the mountains of Norway and the plains of Denmark. We have only to inspect the modern Swedish, to satisfy ourselves that this also in its earlier age claimed to be a member of the same family. It becomes necessary then to know the primeval language and this not superficially, as well for the purpose of comprehending the mutual dependency of the other ancient Gothic tongues as for attaining any thing like a fundamental knowledge of the modern.

This however will only be acknowledged by those, who do not pause at the superficies, but seek to reach the deeper foundation of all science. There are two processes by which languages may be studied, the one mechanical, which seeks merely to attain an acquaintance with the forms of the language and to apply them in tolerable accordance with the prevailing usage; the other scientific, by which we seek to know the language not merely as it now exists, but to its foundation, not merely its present forms, but its rise, the changes which time has introduced, and the manner in which it has arrived at its present state. In other words the object here is not merely an acquaintance with the customary usages of a language, ​but also of their causes and of the conditions under which they exist; not merely a practical dexterity in the application of them, but a critical knowledge which can shew and explain the correctness of such an application. By the first process we learn the language as the child learns it, we learn it by imitation. By the second we think for ourselves, and this we cannot do without preparatory knowledge and persevering research. These two differ as scientific pursuit differs from the mere repetition of what others know, as the profound jurist differs from the routine practitioner, who looks not beyond the letter of the statute, in which the case he argues is concerned. Language, as a natural object, may so far come under the domain of natural history that we may compare it with botany. Frequent observation and memory will enable us to give plants their names and class them according to systems already invented; the intellectual process by which the system itself was invented, or improved, is of a different and higher order.

Our inference from these remarks and illustrations, is this, that to judge thoroughly of effects we must explore their causes, that in this view the present depends upon the past, and that we can only know a language by the study of its parents and its kindred. It is well enough known that the knowledge of Latin is of incalculable assistance towards that of Italian and French, from the continual analogies which present themselves, and this assistance would be more effective, if greater pains were taken in instruction to enable the scholar to take a systematic view of these analogies. Many perhaps will consider it an exaggeration to affirm that the philologer who would thoroughly master the Greek language, must call in to his aid the Old-Northern; the assertion however would not be far from the truth; he will at least by such aid be able to throw light on many obscurities; the converse of the proposition is obviously no less maintainable. As to the Gothic race of language, we have seen all its investigators betake themselves to the Old-Northern, as well because its literature is richer than, for example, ​that of most of the old German dialects, as also because its development has been so complete that it cannot fail to illustrate those dialects which are less perfect. It would then be a signal blunder to pursue this remarkable race step by step through Europe, and to stop short of the termination; the chain of language from Thrace to the Baltic is but a fragment if we leave it separated from its extreme link, the massy ring of the North. Even as this chain winds along through its various intervening portions from the Black Sea to the base of Hecla, so thence it winds back, eastward, southward and westward through the countries which the old Northmen in remote antiquity, and in the middle ages, visited and wasted and conquered and colonized, and where they have left their traces in the features, the hair, the appearance and the language of the existing inhabitants. Hence not only Germany and Russia, but England also, particularly Northumberland and Scotland, especially her islands, with some districts of western France, recognize idioms of their languages in the Icelandic, and much which would otherwise be obscure is explained. Without this indispensable aid, the science of European language is unattainable as a whole; without it those gaps must remain open which so often occur in the languages of the middle ages to confound and thwart the search after unity; without it we can obtain no clear view of the basis on which the principal modern languages, especially the German and English, and in part also the French, repose. For a knowledge of the living languages of the North, this insight into the old mother tongue is beyond question essential; but for the illustration of those of the South it is not less useful and important.