Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/104

  four periods in the development of the language. The first, which has been called Oldest Danish, dating from about 1100 and 1250, shows a slightly changed character, mainly depending on the system of inflections. In the second period, that of Old Danish, bringing us down to 1400, the change of the system of vowels begins to be settled, and masculine and feminine are mingled in a common gender. An indefinite article has been formed, and in the conjugation of the verb a great simplicity sets in. In the third period, 1400-1530, the influence of German upon the language is supreme, and culminates in the Reformation. The fourth period, from 1530 to about 1680, completes the work of development, and leaves the language as we at present find it.

It was not till the fourth of these periods set in that literature began to be generally practised in the vernacular in Denmark. The oldest laws which are still preserved are written in Danish of the second period. A single work detains us in the 13th century, a treatise on medicine by Henrik Harpestring, who died in 1244. The first royal edict written in Danish is dated 1386; and the Act of Union at Calmar, written in 1397, is the most important piece of the vernacular of the 14th century. Between 1300 and 1500, however, it is supposed that the Kjœmpeviser, or Danish ballads, a large collection of about 500 epical and lyrical poems, were originally composed, and these form the most precious legacy of the Middle Ages, whether judged historically or poetically. We know nothing of the authors of these poems, which treat of the heroic adventures of the great warriors and lovely ladies of the chivalric age in strains of artless but often exquisite beauty. The language in which we receive these ballads, however, is as late as the 16th or even the 17th century, but it is believed that they have become gradually modernized in the course of oral tradition. The first attempt to collect the ballads was made in 1591 by A. G. Vedel, who published 100 of them. Peder Syv printed 100 more in 1695 In 1812-14 an elaborate collection in five volumes appeared, edited by Abrahamson, Nyerup, and Rahbek. Finally, Svend Grundtvig has lately been at work on an exhaustive edition, of which six thick volumes have appeared.

In 1490, the first printing press was set up at Copenhagen, by Gottfried of Ghemen, who had brought it from Westphalia; and five years later the first Danish book was printed. This was the famous Riimkrönike, a history of Denmark in rhymed Danish verse, attributed to Niels, a monk of the monastery of Sorö. It extends to the death of Christian I., in 1481, which may be supposed to be approximately the date of the poem. In 1479 the university of Copenhagen had been founded. In 1506 the same Gottfried of Ghemen published a famous collection of proverbs, attributed to Peder Lolle. Mikkel, priest of St Alban's Church in Odense, wrote three sacred poems, The Rose-Garland of Maiden Mary, The Creation, and Human Life, which came out together in 1514, shortly before his death. These few productions appeared along with innumerable works in Latin, and dimly heralded a Danish literature. It was the Reformation that first awoke the living spirit in the popular tongue. Christian Pedersen (1480-1554) was the first man of letters produced in Denmark. He edited and published, at Paris in 1514, the Latin text of the old chronicler, Saxo Grammaticus; he worked up in their present form the beautiful half-mythical stories of Karl Magnus and Holger Danske (Ogier the Dane). He further translated the Psalms of David and the New Testament, printed in 1529, and finally—in conjunction with Bishop Peder Paladius—the Bible, which appeared in 1550. Hans Tausen, the bishop of Ribe (1494-1561), continued Pedersen s work, but with far less talent. But Vedel (1542-1616), whose edition of the

Kjœmpeviser we have already considered, gave an immense stimulus to the progress of literature. He published an excellent translation of Saxo Grammaticus in 1575. The first edition of a Danish Reinecke Fuchs appeared in 1555, and the first authorized Psalter in 1559. Arild Hvitfeld founded the practice of history by his Chronicle of the Kingdom of Denmark, printed in 10 vols. between 1595 and 1604. Hieronymus Ranch, who died in 1607, wrote some biblical tragedies, and is the first original Danish dramatist. Peder Claussen (1545-1623), a Norwegian by birth and education, wrote a Description of Norway, as well as an admirable translation of Snorre Sturlesen's Heimskringla, published ten years after Claussen's death. The father of Danish poetry, Anders Arrebo (1587-1637), was bishop of Trondhjem, but was deprived of his see for immorality. He was a poet of considerable genius, which is most brilliantly shown in Hexaemeron, a poem on the creation, in six books, which did not appear till 1641. He was followed by Anders Bording (1619-1677), a cheerful occasional versifier, and by Töger Reenberg (1656-1742), a poet of somewhat higher gifts, who lived on into a later age. Among prose writers should be mentioned Peder Syv (1631-1702); Bishop Erik Pontoppidan (1616-1678), whose Grammatica Danica, published in 1668, is the first systematic analysis of the language; and Brigitta Thott, a lady who translated Seneca and Epictetus.

In two spiritual poets the advancement of the literature of Denmark took a further step. Thomas Kingo (1634-1703) was the first who wrote Danish with perfect ease and grace. He was Scotch by descent, and retained the vital energy of his ancestors as a birthright. His Winter Psalter, 1689, and the so-called Kingo's Psalter, 1699, contained brilliant examples of lyrical writing, and an employment of language at once original and national. Kingo had a charming fancy, a clear sense of form, and great rapidity and variety of utterance. Some of his very best hymns are in the little volume he published in 1681, and hence the old period of semi-articulate Danish may be said to close with this eventful decade, which also witnessed the birth of Holberg. The other great hymn-writer was Hans Adol Brorson (1694-1764), who published in 1740 a great psalm-book at the king's command, in which he added his own to the best of Kingo's. Both these men held high posts in the church, one being bishop of Funen and the other of Ribe; but Brorson was much inferior to Kingo in genius. With those names the introductory period of Danish literature ends. The language was now formed, and was being employed for almost all the uses of science and philosophy.

Holberg.—Ludvig Holberg was born at Bergen, in Norway, in 1684. He commenced his literary career in 1711 by writing A History of the World, which attracted notice from its style, rather than its matter, and gained him a professorial chair at the university of Copenhagen. In 1719 he published his inimitable serio-comic epic of Peder Paars, under the pseudonym of Hans Mikkelsen. In 1721 the first Danish play-house was opened in Copenhagen, and in four years Holberg wrote for it his first 29 comedies. He may be said to have founded the Danish literature; and his various works have still the same freshness and vital attraction that they had a century and a half ago. As an historian his style was terse and brilliant, his spirit philosophical, and his data singularly accurate. He united two unusual gifts, being at the same time the most cultured man of his day, and also in the highest degree a practical person, who clearly perceived what would most rapidly educate and interest the uncultivated. In his 33 dramas, sparkling comedies in prose, more or less in imitation of Molière, he has left his most important