Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/127

Rh Both of them belong to the second half of the twelfth century, and are in the main identical as to contents. Besides there are various Danish municipal laws and other special codes, which, however, were originally written partly, in Latin, and have come down to us in translations from a much later period, so that their value as linguistic monuments is comparatively small. An important exception is the Flensburg municipal law of 1284, of which there is a manuscript of well-nigh equally ancient date. There are also various statutes of guilds and associations, which are of linguistic and historical value.

Besides these collections of laws there are but few Danish books from the middle age, and not many of these have any general value, excepting, of course, what light they throw on the history of Danish language and culture. The "canonicus" (died 1244) of Roskilde, ordinary physician to Erik Plogpenning, wrote a small number of medical works, probably in Latin, and of these we have a few translations into Danish, made in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Of historical works written in Danish, the alone is worthy of mention. All that it contains in regard to antiquity is pure fiction, and the part relating to later times is nothing but dry annals. It exists both in Danish and in Latin, and the Danish text, which goes to the year 1313, seems to have served as the basis of the Latin version.

But while the vernacular, as we have now seen, lived but a sickly existence in the written literature, it enjoyed a youthful, vigorous life on the lips of the people in the popular ballads [sic] which were scattered throughout the north of Europe; hence it is eminently proper to consider here this poetry in its triple connection with Denmark, Norway and Sweden.