PREFACE.
Swedish version; by which every deviation would at once be detected. It behoved him therefore to be as exact as possible. Sometimes indeed, where a sentence was obscure, he hath ventured to drop it, and the asterisks which occur will denote such omissions. Sometimes for the sake of perspicuity it was necessary to alter the arrangement of a period; and sometimes to throw in a few explanatory words: and even once or twice to substitute a more simple expression instead of the complex and enigmatic phrase of the original.
For the reader must be informed that the productions of the Islandic poets, tho’ quite original and underived, are far from being so easy and simple as might be expected: on the contrary, no compositions abound with more laboured metaphors, or more studied refinements. A proof thatpoetry
