Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/105

Rh versing" of them, or changing them from prose to verse, and embodying their contents in so-called rimas (rhymes or ballads). This was done even before the fifteenth century, but in the above epoch it developed into great prominence.

We may take this opportunity of giving a more accurate description of these transversings. The rimas were produced according to a set of fixed rules. There is first a prelude containing a general expression of erotic sentiments. Then follows the story in a series of cantos, of which each has its own metre. This is always strophic, and the strophe generally has four lines of which each couple are alliterated, while the lines are connected by final rhymes in every conceivable way. The style in the most of the rimas is very heavy and full of metaphors either borrowed from the skaldic poetry or an imitation of it. But few specimens of rimas have been printed, but in written copies or produced with monotonous melodies, they have given pleasure to many successive generations, though the taste for them now seems to have passed away.

Both the domestic family sagas (e.g., Njala) and the romantic ones which were in part imported from foreign lands (the Karlamagnus Saga and others) were transversed in this manner. A natural result of this peculiar literary development is the interesting fact that occasionally the poetic materials have passed through all the three phases possible under the circumstances described; that is, they have first been used in ancient lays, then the lays have been transprosed into sagas, and finally the sagas have again been transversed into rimas.

The composition of rimas was followed by a long line of purely lyrical poets extending down to the present. The Icelandic language during these many hundred years has been twisted and forced into the greatest variety of metrical