Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/47

Rh on the flat fields of Denmark, in the same manner as among the mountains of Norway.

If any single country is to be claimed as the special home of these poems, Denmark would seem to be chiefly entitled to this honor, where Saxo in all probability reaped his richest harvest of myths, traditions, and poems, the original character of which is clearly noticeable in his elegant Latin translation, and which to a great extent treat of the same subjects as the poems recorded by the Icelanders, while the majority of them relate to Denmark. This assumption is also supported by the fact that according to the incontrovertible testimony of Northern antiquities, there existed in the middle iron age a rich and varied culture in Denmark, in that very time to which doubtless the bloom of Norse poetry is to be referred. Denmark is, upon the whole, throughout antiquity the one of northern countries, which seems to have acted the most conspicuous part at least in the field of culture, since the waves and movements that passed over the North proceeded from Denmark, or at least reached this country first.

The looking for a definite spot in the North as the original home of these mythic-heroic poems is, however, very unprofitable work. We get a far more attractive and interesting picture when we turn our eyes beyond the borders of Scandinavia and consider the Elder Edda in connection with the poetry of kindred nations. It then becomes evident that the Edda-literature in its nature and origin belongs to the whole Teutonic race. In Germany we recognize it in comparatively modern and greatly degenerated forms, especially in the Niebelungen Lay. Among the Anglo-Saxons we