Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/39

Rh to writing were at hand, the highly developed popular taste for history gave the literature the direction which it afterward maintained. The fact is, there really existed a whole literature, which was merely waiting to be put in writing. There existed a choice collection of unwritten books, which partly had accumulated since the first settlement of the island, and partly had been brought over the sea from the mother-country, and of which the contents, so far as every important feature is concerned, were faithfully preserved by oral tradition, while doubtless the form had undergone many changes, as is natural when anything is handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Many causes contributed toward making the Icelanders preëminently a historical people. The settlers were men of noble birth, who were proud to trace their descent from kings and heroes of antiquity, nay, even from the gods themselves, and we do not therefore wonder that they assiduously preserved the memory of the deeds of their forefathers. But in their minds was developed not only a taste for the sagas of the past; the present also received its full share of attention. The many small, isolated communities, in which life presented so much of common interest and welfare; the many mutual contests and feuds, which of necessity soon sprang up between these proud, ambitious and warlike men, and which rapidly spread from the individual to the family, naturally enough led to the preservation of the memory both of the events and of the persons concerned. Furthermore, as life was necessarily very monotonous in those isolated valleys of Iceland, people would be eagerly inquiring for news, when they met at the courts, at banquets, at merry-makings, etc. The news gathered was preserved, and whatever was recited as song or saga tenaciously retained its original form and was related by one generation to the other, either during the long winter evenings or whenever the proper opportunity presented itself. Nor did they interest themselves for and remember the events that took place in Iceland