PREFACE.
significant name of Scald, a word which implies “a smoother or polisher of language.” [1]
The Language in which their productions are preserved, and which once prevailed pretty extensively in the north, is commonly called Islandic: Iceland being the place where it was supposed to be spoken in the greatest purity, and where it is to this day in use. The Islandic is the mother of the modern Swedish and Danish tongues, in like manner as the Anglo-Saxon is the parent of our English, Both these mother-tongues are dialects of the ancient Gothic or Teutonic; and of so near affinity, that, in the opinion ofthe
- ↑ Skalld a depilando dicti videntur, quod rudem orationem tanquam evulsis pilis perpoliunt. Torfæi Præfat. ad Orcades. The name of Bard also [Isl. Barda] was not unknown among the Islandic poets.
