Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/68

50 The chronological foundation having thus been laid, so that the materials at hand might be arranged in a systematic manner, the latter began to be put in writing on a more extensive scale. The Icelandic sagas proper, that is to say, the narratives which have the description of Icelandic affairs for their object, extend from the time of the first settlement of the island to about the year 1030, a period which, on account of struggles arising from the further colonization of Iceland and from the introduction and establishment of the new faith, necessarily awakened the greatest interest and furnished the richest materials for tradition. What happened after that period receives but slight attention in the sagas. Only the tells the most memorable events from the first settlement to the downfall of the republic, wherefore it is usually called the "." The rest of the Icelandic sagas find their materials in other lands, and confine themselves, so far as Iceland is concerned, to meagre chronicles or annals.

To the most striking and interesting productions that are to be found in literature belong the Icelandic. A saga of this kind is generally the story of the life of a single Icelandic gentleman, but it invariably sketches him in relation to his kin, going back to the first settler from whom he sprang, and especially giving a full account of all his relatives who have lived during the epoch embraced in the saga. The term family saga is therefore eminently appropriate. These sagas also contain many valuable contributions to the history of Iceland and of other countries with which the Icelanders had a more or less lively intercourse, and, as a matter of course, to that of Norway; but their chief value lies in their high literary form and in the materials they furnish for a history of the culture of their time. In an earnest, clear, dramatic, straightforward manner they give us a multitude of richly colored pictures of mediæval life and customs, and of striking and grandly endowed natures, which are frequently described with a surprisingly