Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/20

2 for themselves. In all essential respects they have given the world an intellectual product differing from all others, both in character and form, though of course continually influenced by the other streams of European culture. The fact that the northern peoples, from an intellectual standpoint, formed a national unity, that they were imbued and influenced by one and the same national spirit, was never for a moment lost sight of by the ancient inhabitants of the North; later it was somewhat obscured, though it was never utterly forgotten; and in our time the Scandinavian peoples have again become thoroughly conscious of their intimate kinship. "The age of sundering is past," said one of Sweden's greatest poets half a century ago, and in spite of the political separation, the sentiment that "we are one people, Scandinavians we are called," as a Danish poet has sung, has during the past fifty years been growing continually stronger.

This unity has found its most natural expression in the language of the peoples of the North. Not only in antiquity, but also far down into the middle ages, they all employed, absolutely, one and the same tongue, and even now the differences between the three principal languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are very insignificant. The written languages in Denmark and Norway are very nearly identical, though the Norwegians have recently, to a greater extent than ever before, enriched their tongue by the adoption of words from the dialects which have been preserved by the peasants, and which in many respects are closely related to the ancient common Scandinavian tongue. And of the written language in Sweden it may be said that it has been developed out of the original, by the side of the Dan-