Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/93

Rh which still was more or less an immediate continuation of the old peculiarly Norse development, or was at least closely related to it. The conditions under which this new Icelandic literature grew up were, indeed, anything but favorable. Again and again the island was visited by epidemics, volcanic eruptions, famine and other plagues, which devastated the country to a well nigh inconceivable extent. Most terribly did the Black Death rage here, which in the years 1402-1404 killed two thirds of the inhabitants, who before this scourge came upon them numbered 120,000 to 130,000, a loss from which the island has never since been able to recover. Even at the present the population of Iceland is not more than 70,000. The severe climate made and still makes life there a hard struggle for existence. To this was added the oppression on the part of the Danish government, which legislated injudiciously for Iceland, especially in regard to her commerce, and this unwise legislation was continued down to the most recent times. While it thus was no easy matter for the Icelanders to secure the necessities of life, nevertheless the intellectual products of this rocky island have continued to maintain a high rank since the seventeenth century. The Icelanders are an exceptionally intelligent people. There is not an individual among them who is not able to read, and in proportion to the size of the country or rather to the number of inhabitants, the modern Icelandic literature must be regarded as extraordinarily rich. They preserve, above all, a deep interest in the memories of the past. Sagas are still for the Icelanders the most delectable reading, and the most of them are familiar even with the details of the most important sagas and of their complicated genealogies.

The literary productiveness from the close of the fourteenth until toward the end of the sixteenth century was very slight, but then there sprang up a new and comparatively very vigorous life to which the (1530) by Iceland's last Catholic bishop,, mainly contributed. It was the purpose of this strong-willed man to