Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/95

77 less important was the preacher Jon Thorkelsson Vidalin (died 1720), whose works still rank very high and are much read by the people. His postil (family book of sermons), especially, can be found everywhere both among the rich and among the poor. In profound comprehension of the Bible, and in a faculty of reproducing its passages in such a manner that they illustrate and explain one another and thus touch the heart, in force of language and boldness of thought, and in deep insight into the conditions and wants of the human soul, these sermons of Vidalin are surpassed by few religious works. Pjetursson and Vidalin were followed by a long line of talented psalmists and preachers. The former made valuable contributions to the Icelandic psalm book, which is a splendid collection of Christian hymns, while the various religious views of the successive epochs are fully and uniquely recorded in a series of postils. Among more modern works of this kind we may mention the postil of Arne Helgason (1777-1870) which contains a noble and moderate interpretation of rationalism, and a collection of sermons by the present bishop, Pjetursson.

The close of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century embraces the Learned Epoch of the North, during which the Icelanders took a noble part in the intellectual activity of Scandinavia and surely furnished their quota to the army of scholars. Their industry in thoroughly investigating and in producing scholarly works on the Old Norse and Icelandic literature is preëminently praiseworthy. Though they had ceased to produce it, their interest for the old saga literature never flagged. They preserved and multiplied the old documents by copying them. Still, much of value was not accomplished before toward the end of the sixteenth century, when the Reformation quickened the intellectual activities and gave the impulse to new and vigorous productions