Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/31

HISTORY

OF THE

LITERATURE OF THE SCANDINAVIAN NORTH.

 

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CHAPTER I.

OLD NORSE LITERATURE.

Iceland peopled from Norway becomes the original home of the Old Norse literature. Why the Icelanders became preëminently a historical people. The Elder and Younger Edda, and their principal contents. The forms of Old Norse poetry. The Skaldic poetry and its development from the drapas to the rhymes. The most famous skalds and their drapas. Saga-writing. Icelandic Genealogies. Kings' Sagas. Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla. Mythic-heroic Sagas. Romances, legends, folk-lore, laws.

IT cannot be stated with certainty at what time that branch of the Teutonic race, from which the present inhabitants of the North are descended, immigrated to the Scandinavian countries, but we are not far from the truth, when we assume that the event took place near the time of the birth of Christ. About this time the bronze age seems to be succeeded by the iron age in the North, and in all probability the ancestors of the present inhabitants of Scandinavia brought the use of iron with them, though they may possibly on their arrival have found kindred peoples who had come there still earlier. Not until some time after the beginning of the iron age, that is to say, a few centuries after the birth of Christ, do we find in the North the art of phonetic writing, the runes, which according to the most recent investigations^[1] are derived from the Latin alphabet, and

1. L. F. A. Wimmer: Runeskriftens Oprindelse og Udvikling i Norden. Copenhagen, 1874.

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