Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/33

Rh creasing power, found its way beyond the borders of the North, that is to say, about the beginning of the ninth century. Of the prevailing culture before that time, our estimate must be based on merely general outlines. Meanwhile the zealous and successful studies which have been carried on during the past fifty years by eminent scholars in all the three Scandinavian lands, in every branch of antiquities, have produced results which have constantly increased the sharpness of those general outlines, and long since greatly modified the old theory that the ancient inhabitants of the North were nothing but rude barbarians. We now know that they were not only a warlike race, whose male members toward the end of the olden time, in the capacity of dreaded vikings, undertook expeditions in the North and far beyond its borders, seeking battle and booty, but that same mythology, which gives us so vivid a picture of this side of their character, also ascribes to them a high rank in intelligence and morality, and reveals a most weird and profound interpretation of the world and the things about them; and, moreover, the countless finds from the iron age which have turned up in every part of the whole North testify not only that they appreciated feats of arms, but also that they knew in their way how to make life beautiful. In short, we know that throughout the whole iron age, in spite of all influences unlike those operating in the South, there prevailed a high state of culture, and the many traditions and songs from the various districts of the North, which, although they were not committed to writing until after the introduction of Christianity, still belong to a hoary antiquity, afford ample testimony that the spirit was wide awake in the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the North, and that they were not merely cruel vikings.

The Old Norse literature found its real home in Iceland. In Norway, too, some beautiful buds were produced, but, however important these may be in other respects, they have but little value in a literary point of view as compared with