Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/32

14 were in their older form known to the whole Teutonic race, while the later runes, which first appear in the younger iron age (that is from the beginning of the eighth century), and which, in spite of the essential differences between these and the older ones, must have developed out of the latter, are never found outside of the Scandinavian countries. Not until after the introduction of Christianity do we find a written literature in the North, and before that time the written monuments consist exclusively in rune-stones and other objects carved with runes, such as weapons, ornaments, etc. Despite the scarcity of these inscriptions, the excellent philologists who in later times have devoted themselves with indefatigable zeal to the study of runes, and of whom we would particularly mention the Norwegian, Sophus Bugge, and the Dane, L. Wimmer, have secured important results; they have gradually succeeded in interpreting them, and thus they have laid a firm foundation for investigating the origin and development of the ancient language of the North. It may now be assumed as an established principle that there was an uninterrupted linguistic development throughout the whole iron age, and that the Old Norse tongue, on its first appearance as such, was intimately related to the languages spoken by the Goths, Germans and Scandinavians. In the course of the development, as can be demonstrated by the runic inscriptions, the Norse language (anciently styled "dönsk tunga") took a decided direction of its own, and became separated from the kindred Teutonic tongues, and finally differences arose within that language itself, which can easily be discerned as soon as we enter the field of literature proper; for here we find Old Norwegian, Old Swedish, and Old Danish distinctly separated, though the differences are but slight in the beginning.

The history of the Scandinavian countries does not really begin before the time when Christianity, with steadily in-