Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/64

46 belongs to the second half of the fourteenth century, and contains many passages of great beauty. With Eystein the harp of the skald ceased to reverberate, and Lilja forms a really dignified finale. A more brilliant close of the skaldic epoch could scarcely be desired. It is true that echoes of the skaldic harp were heard even in the fifteenth century, as, for instance, Lopt Guttormson's "Hattalykill" (Key to Metres), an erotic poem, which in form is an imitation of Snorre Sturlason's Háttatal (Enumeration of Metres), but they were mere echoes, and the fact remains that Eystein's Lilja marks the close of the skaldic epoch and the beginning of the Rima (ballad).

In the production of sagas the popular spirit of the North reared for itself a literary monument of no less importance than are the Eddas and the skaldic lays. The saga, too, had its principal home in Iceland. We have already indicated how circumstances naturally brought it about that valuable historical materials were collected there, which not only concerned events in Iceland, but also on account of the many threads by which the Icelanders felt themselves tied to Norway, embraced the most remarkable events of this country as well as the memory of what had happened in other lands with which the Icelanders had had intercourse. Like the poetry, these materials were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, and when at length the conditions for a real literary activity were at hand a most remarkable literature was produced out of these traditions. The first book of which we have any knowledge was, according to the unanimous testimony of all authorities, the history of Iceland, written by about the year 1120, that is to say about 250 years after the settlement of Iceland. The greatest bloom of saga writing is during the first half of the thirteenth century, and about the close of that century the saga-epoch ended.