Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/57

Rh of poetic sentiment and in which the thought is not wholly smothered by a superabundance of artificial figures of speech.

The skaldic poetry, which, as already stated, extends back into the mythic or at least into prehistoric time, preserved the character above described until the close of the fourteenth century, although the genuine drapa or song of praise with its mythic or heroic contents terminated a century earlier. By the side of this poetry there gradually grew up poems on religious themes — drapas on Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints — and these eventually monopolized the field. Still these religious poems also preserved the complicated form of the old versifications even long after the drapas praising kings and heroes had ceased to be heard. About the middle of the fifteenth century a simpler form of poetry first makes its appearance, namely, the so-called rima (Icelandic pl. rimur) a kind of ballad which continued to flourish in Iceland and the Faroe Islands until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and even later. The ballads are especially intended to be sung, and thus we find them used as tunes for dancing. In regard to form they have much in common with the popular ballads of mediæval Scandinavia. Their contents are based partly on the religious stories, partly on fairy tales, and partly on history; in the last case they were frequently paraphrases of the sagas. The oldest specimen of a Rima preserved (the Olafsrima) dates from about the middle of the fourteenth century and treats of St. Olaf.

We know the names of several hundred skalds, and a very large number of their lays are preserved either complete or in fragments. As genuine historical persons we do not, as above indicated, find them before the time of the Norwegian king in the end of the ninth and in the beginning of the tenth century. This king, who was